[HN Gopher] What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs? ___________________________________________________________________ What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs? Author : mooreds Score : 60 points Date : 2022-12-12 14:40 UTC (8 hours ago) (HTM) web link (thewalrus.ca) (TXT) w3m dump (thewalrus.ca) | bryanmgreen wrote: | Stupidity. | shp0ngle wrote: | I remember in the 90s, when they cloned Polly (or Molly? I don't | remember), people predicted crazy future where we keep cloning | animals and one day maybe humans. | | I don't hear much about cloning recently. What happened? | sseagull wrote: | Don't know about the second question, but I think you are | thinking of Dolly the sheep: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_(sheep) | sizimon wrote: | The sheep was named Dolly, after Dolly Parton, because the cell | used for cloning was taken from a mammary gland. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_(sheep) | farisjarrah wrote: | Apparently it's become so commonplace among pets that my dog's | veterinary insurance policy specifically has an exclusion | saying that our pet insurance does not cover cloning. I just | googled "Dog Cloning" and there were a bunch of results | offering the service. | nobleach wrote: | Wait... this was RePet from Total Recall. | shp0ngle wrote: | Oh wow that really is a thing! | | Why be sad for your dog's death when you can just clone him. | tsimionescu wrote: | I loved my chosen. How then could I accept the day she | died? So I took from her body a single cell - perhaps to | love her again. | | --Commisionner Pravin Lal | | (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, when finishing The Cloning | Vats secret project) | [deleted] | [deleted] | pdimitar wrote: | Wouldn't that also require the atmosphere of the Earth to contain | 33% oxygen again? | echelon wrote: | If you can construct a dinosaur zygote (genome, a wealth of | proteins and enzymes, epigenetic markers, cell environment, | etc. etc.), you can easily oxygenate a containment room or | adjust the metabolic parameters. | | DNA's short half life (relative to geological time scales) | means we likely won't be recovering enough information from | fossils. DNA is a reactive species (it has to be to undergo the | incredible mechanics it does). I'm not going to calculate the | number of samples we'd need - it's a lot. | | Any future "clones" will leverage the wealth of information we | gain from our current biodiversity. Really advanced computer- | generated approximations of what the biochemistry, | developmental biology, etc. could have been. | jaynetics wrote: | It dropped by a third, which is less than the difference | between New York and La Paz, so I guess they could deal with | it? I wonder how well their immune systems would handle modern | germs, though... | warent wrote: | It seems like they would be invulnerable to modern germs, | because how could any germs exist which would thrive off | hundred-million-year-old genomes | cogman10 wrote: | "germ" is a bad term. | | Certainly it's somewhat unlikely (but not impossible!) for | them to be susceptible to a virus. | | Bacteria/fungal/etc though? They are perfectly susceptible | to all those "germs". Strep doesn't really care if it's | infecting a human or an animal. It just needs a hospitable | environment. | VLM wrote: | We've never done the experiment, but there are innumerable | germs that infect across species, so they'd be catching all | kinds of stuff. | | "FIV cross-species transmission: An evolutionary | prospective" is an interesting paper as an example. It | seems FIV infects all cats in the cat family. That paper | has a long discussion of the old and new world cat problem | as relates to FIV. I'm well aware that saber tooth tigers | are not dinos but if we brought saber tooth tigers back | they would probably be screwed over by FIV either instantly | or at least very soon. | | An interesting google search phrase is "diseases of farmed | crocodiles and ostriches" and apparently there's a reason | our supermarkets are full of the livestock we eat; raising | meat crocs looks like a HUGE disease headache. Imagine a | giant 400 foot long dinosaur suffering from Caiman Pox. | | Raising disease free reptiles that we already have | experience with seems to be a big headache; I predict it | would be pretty tough to raise dinos. | mywittyname wrote: | Dinosaurs are distant ancestors of birds, and we keep | billions of birds in captivity all over the world, which | has allowed for a whole host of pretty nasty diseases that | affect birds to evolve. It would be surprising if none of | those were capable of infecting dinosaurs. | tracker1 wrote: | I'm generally with the detractors on a lot of this. I don't think | that bringing back dinosaurs is the best idea. I do think getting | more diversity with grazing animal populations and increasing the | numbers for ruminants would be beneficial. A lot of the | grasslands have deteriorated as the numbers of grazing | populations have declined. Nature is an ecosystem, not a mono | crop. | | On the flip side, just with breeding, we've seen what variance | can do to bee populations (africanized bees), and how a lack of | diverse pollinators are less effective than honey bees alone. | throw1234651234 wrote: | I don't think anyone is considering this as really bringing | them back and releasing them into an ecosystem, just Jurassic | Park type novelty. | conductr wrote: | If you bring them back, it's only a matter of time before | they are in the ecosystem. Maybe we contain it for a decade, | a century at most but it's going to happen. It's basically | the plot of the entire movie series. | throw1234651234 wrote: | I think that's unrealistic - they either eat all their food | (if there is even a climate they can survive in) or they | get caught. Though this won't apply to small species as | much. But the small dynos won't necessarily ruin the | ecosystem as they won't be the apex predator. Not like a | T-Rex is going to run around without being found, unless | the host country collapses and no one cares. But it will | just go extinct again, after causing some damage. | conductr wrote: | > the small dynos won't necessarily ruin the ecosystem as | they won't be the apex predator | | Ask an aussie how much damage something as innocuous as a | rabbit or a frog can do when in an ecosystem they weren't | meant for. | | > unless the host country collapses and no one cares. | | Matter of time. Human life timescale too, not | evolutionary timescales | | > it will just go extinct again, after causing some | damage. | | Sounds real fun, I totally want that to happen /s | axytol wrote: | I think containment for such organisms could be more | challenging beyond the Jurrasic Park movie plot. For example | would we also have to account for side effects such as | horizontal gene transfer[0]? | | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer | subsubzero wrote: | I love thought experiments like these, One would have to think | where could ancient dinosaur DNA survive? Antarctica has been | covered by ice for 5 million years, that is still 60 million | years too young. Maybe there are a few bugs that have dino dna | that is better preserved than the stuff that has been exposed to | sunlight and elements the past 5 million years. And even if there | is viable dna you would have to drill down 13-15k feet of solid | ice to the antarctic landmass, which might as well be | impossible(if you knew exactly where to look). | | And lets say you bring the dinosaurs back, what was the air and | temperature like for them? back >65mya earth had 30% oxygen(its | 21% today) that much oxygen would be hard to deal with for humans | today(cuts would heal in a day though!), also forest fires would | be uncontrollably bad. And what about the temperature? It would | be 10 degrees warmer than it is today. So you would have to alter | the climate and atmosphere significantly for your newly cloned | dinosaurs to survive, or perhaps they could adapt to our current | conditions, who can say? | VaxWithSex wrote: | Only one way to find out! | russdill wrote: | If you want to make a really dramatic movie, have it survive in | giant rock fragments knocked into orbit around the sun when the | Chicxulub meteor struck the Earth. The inside would hopefully | remain very cold and shielded from external radation. | | I suspect though that not only would breakdown of DNA still | happen on it's own, but atomic decay within the rock would be | enough to destroy the DNA. | subsubzero wrote: | Lets not also forget cosmic rays and their effect on | interstellar debris(astronauts helmets showed micro holes | caused by these rays under an electron microscope) :) | radicaldreamer wrote: | Co2 levels were 5x or 10x higher back then as well, so large | forest fires weren't likely. | sohamssd wrote: | My interest was piqued when you mentioned cuts would heal | faster. Is there a video that explains what life would be like | if the earth had higher concentrations of oxygen? (30,50,70)? | mugivarra69 wrote: | so now we need dinosaur to fill labour gap? | VaxWithSex wrote: | Dr. Ian Malcolm: God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. | God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs. Dr. | Ellie Sattler: Dinosaurs eat man. Woman inherits the earth. | Zigurd wrote: | As others on this thread pointed out, faithfully replicating a | dinosaur is both difficult, due to lack of data and a bit | pointless if it could be accomplished. | | Synthetic biology has bigger fish to fry. For example we are very | likely to find that humans are really bad at living in space or | on other planets. Fixing that problem has more practical | implications. | la64710 wrote: | I did not read the article but the title of this post begs the | question "Why?". While I can understand the value of | entertainment , I think it would be better to have robotic | replicas of dinos rather than the real ones. Just my 2 cents. | TheRealPomax wrote: | You probably want to read the article, then. | cogman10 wrote: | Before we bring back dinos, I'd love to see us bring back species | we drove extinct such as the dodo. | VaxWithSex wrote: | The dodo is a dinosaur. | yamtaddle wrote: | Seems to me that until we can do it with a mammoth--which is | _way_ easier for a ton of reasons--bringing back any kind of | dinosaur is about as sci-fi as faster-than-light travel. | | Maybe as biology hacking becomes the new frontier in the coming | decades we'll be able to work back from a bird to something | impressively dinosaur-like, but I'm not optimistic about | growing one from DNA fragments or whatever. Even with a | complete genome I think it'd be damn difficult. | Iwan-Zotow wrote: | mkl95 wrote: | What would prevent them from going extinct again? | jfk13 wrote: | Absence of a suitable meteor? | photochemsyn wrote: | Dinosaurs are gone, all that remains is their bone structures. No | complete genomes are recoverable, just maybe a few fragments. | | However if you want dinosaur-like creatures, you're basically | talking giant flightless birds. So, start with something like an | ostritch or a rhea, and use CRISPR to make selective edits aimed | at increasing leg size and bone density. This would require a | comprehensive understanding of development in these species, of | course, and that's probably not there yet. You'd also want to | create a fairly diverse source population so the new species | wouldn't suffer from inbreeding issues. | | Once you got the leg strength and body mass up, it's time to go | for big sharp teeth. Increase spine strength and musculature, and | then reactive that talpid2 gene with modifications that allow the | embryos to survive to adulthood: | | https://www.science.org/content/article/mutant-chickens-grow... | | Now, would this giant mutant toothed ostrich be a dinosaur? For | all intents and purposes, yes. Would doing this be a good idea, | would you want these things running around suburban neighborhoods | devouring stray cats and terrorizing the local human population? | Maybe not. | Archelaos wrote: | Complete layman here. -- What about trying to reconstruct a | likely common ancestor of reptiles and birds on the DNA level | and combining this with the Parent's approach? | elwell wrote: | "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they | could, they didn't stop to think if they should." - Dr. Ian | Malcolm | clever-hans wrote: | I find it fascinating that we may be able to clone extinct | species, but I agree with the warnings about the dangers of de- | extinction. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we | should. It's important to consider the potential consequences of | bringing back ancient species, both for the animals themselves | and for the ecosystem. It's also worth noting that even if we are | able to successfully clone a dinosaur, it's unlikely that it | would be a true copy of the original due to the degradation of | DNA over time. Cloning a dinosaur would be more like creating a | genetically modified hybrid than reviving a true extinct species. | Robotbeat wrote: | Let's build huge new habitats for them in orbit. | DonHopkins wrote: | That's been done! | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs_on_a_Spaceship | | >"Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" is the second episode of the | seventh series of the British science fiction television | programme Doctor Who. It first aired on BBC One in the UK on | 8 September 2012 and on BBC America on the same date in the | United States. It was written by Chris Chibnall and directed | by Saul Metzstein. | | >The episode features alien time traveller the Doctor (Matt | Smith) and his companions Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) and Rory | Williams (Arthur Darvill) accompanied by Rory's father, Brian | (Mark Williams), Queen Nefertiti (Riann Steele), and John | Riddell, a British big-game hunter (Rupert Graves). The group | lands on a large spaceship that contains dinosaurs and | discover that it is a Silurian ark, though the Silurians have | been murdered by Solomon (David Bradley), a black market | trader who is intent on finding something of value. | goatlover wrote: | Lets engineer them for Mars. | ak_111 wrote: | This sounds like gpt. | autotune wrote: | And it is a new account. What is the point? | DonHopkins wrote: | To say one thing, then do the opposite. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33953823 | | clever-hans 4 hours ago | undown [flagged] | parent | | context | flag | favorite | on: Ask HN: Should HN ban | ChatGPT/generated responses? | | I agree that ChatGPT/generated responses should be banned | on HN. It undermines the integrity of the platform and goes | against the spirit of genuine discussion and collaboration. | Let's not turn HN into a spammy bot-infested wasteland. | ak_111 wrote: | For what's it worth I don't mind it. I was just pointing | out how easy it is to identify gpt content and wanted to | verify. | nathias wrote: | a good AI paired with a gene engineering | VaxWithSex wrote: | indeed | DonHopkins wrote: | Bringing back dinosaurs is a lot like using regular expressions: | | Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll | bring back dinosaurs." Now they have two problems. | TheMaskedCoder wrote: | Suddenly, I am very curious about what problem could possibly | inspire bringing back dinosaurs as a potential solution... | PeterisP wrote: | The problem of not having dinosaurs for your theme park. | skirmish wrote: | Infestation by resurrected mammoths, of course. | buggythebug wrote: | Jeff Goldblum | Doorstep2077 wrote: | Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and became extinct long | before humans existed. Even if we had the technology to bring | them back, we would not have any of their DNA to use as a | template. Additionally, the environment that they lived in no | longer exists, so even if we could bring them back, they would | not have a suitable habitat to live in. In short, the concept of | bringing dinosaurs back to life is purely fictional and not based | in science. | citizenpaul wrote: | The dinosaurs lived in an incomprehensibly different world. From | the food and nutrition to the very air they were breathing which | we only have vague ideas about. That means the first several | generations at the very least would suffer and die from various | nutrition, toxicity and environment issues. Even after all that | got figured out the dinosaurs would likely have be confined to | some small controlled environment right down to the air they | breath because this is not the world they are evolved to exist | in. Humans can't even figure out how to keep many currently | living species alive in captivity and we can study them in the | wild. | | Basically if we bring back dinosaurs it will be to torture them | for our amusement and curiosity. Even if unintentional. The | movies make us think Jurassic Park but the reality would be more | like a slaughter house or medical experiment lab. The movie | wouldn't be exciting if every scene was the same as that sick | triceratops. Its actually hilarious if you think up a version of | the movie in your head where they just walk around watching | animals dying and laboring to breath. | | "they're hunting us!" | | "lol JK you should have seen your face. No they would pass out | after two steps if they tried to chase us. We have to feed them | through tubes because they don't even have the energy to chew" | user3939382 wrote: | Life.. uh.. finds a way | VLM wrote: | Google searches for "high altitude dinosaur" mostly find | complaints that scientists assume they exist but mountains | are peak erosion sites so there are no fossils or other | evidence. | | Theoretically geologists could predict high altitude plains | or areas of generally high ground, probably, and it would be | interesting to see reported fossils in those known lower | PP-O2 areas. Fossilized vegetation evidence in the area of | dino fossils could indicate higher altitude for both. | | Sure, intuitively most dinos would thrive in hot swampy | jungles. But there's so much delicious higher altitude land | covered in pine trees waiting to be eaten... The cold | argument is serious, but plenty of animals migrate, so given | great forest of edible food, something should have evolved to | eat its way uphill in the summer ... | iamgopal wrote: | True, if we bring back dinosaurs, that will be the biggest | example of it | jstanley wrote: | Life "finds a way" by evolving adaptations. Not by running | obsolete technology in an inappropriate environment. | | Life has _found_ a way - we are it! | hnbad wrote: | It has. They're called birds. | lubujackson wrote: | Yes, my thought exactly. The oxygen level in the air was | significantly higher and there is no way some of those larger | dinosaurs could exist without much higher oxygen content. | erikstarck wrote: | Yeah, they need to place theses jurassic creatures in a park on | an island somewhere. | | I mean, what could possibly go wrong? | chasil wrote: | As far as I understand, keeping such creatures alive would | require facilities with enriched oxygen. If the large ones | escaped, they would suffocate. | | "...large dinosaurs really required to be living in an oxygen | tent. An atmosphere in the neighborhood of 35 percent oxygen | would be considerably more compatible with large dinosaurs than | one in the neighborhood of 28." | | Volcanic activity in the Cretaceous enabled these high oxygen | levels. | | "The Cretaceous is clearly a green house period as opposed to | the present ice house that we have... One of the problems that | people have always suggested about these high levels of oxygen | at various times in the past, is that this is comparable to | what you have in an oxygen tent in a hospital. And what about | wildfires? What they forget is that the reason for this high | oxygen is that there is also a high carbon dioxide level. We | are talking about carbon dioxide levels 6 to 10 times the | present carbon dioxide level. And that is more than enough to | essentially combat wildfires." | | https://profjoecain.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/robert-e-... | ben_w wrote: | Hmm... I have a question inspired by your choice of phrases: | | Is there a graph somewhere of Earth's mean sea level | atmospheric pressure over time? Was it significantly | different e.g. a billion years ago? | Tyrannosaur wrote: | Wait, why would carbon dioxide levels have any effect on | wildfires more than, say nitrogen? | | For wildfires, I would expect the proportion of oxygen to | matter much more than other gasses not involved in | combustion. | | Perhaps there's a difference in humidity levels, and | therefore specific heat of the air? | downrightmike wrote: | Nitrogen is inert. Combustion doesn't need nitrogen. It | just basically fills space. | Tyrannosaur wrote: | As far as wildfires go, so is carbon dioxide. CO2 is not | a typical reactant of combustion. | citizenpaul wrote: | Oxygen only one part and for all we know there were other | trace gasses in the air they required that we don't even know | about. | | There are all kinds of animals today we cannot keep alive in | captivity because they require some sort of unknown sequence | of environmental triggers to activate or deactivate various | processes in their body. | | For instance cheetahs are nearly impossible to breed in | captivity because their mating process requires running for | many miles to exhaustion. Without this the pregnancy rate is | in the abyss even with artificial methods. There are endless | examples thats just one off the top of my head. | api wrote: | We just need to create a cheetah racing league. Problem | solved. | vkou wrote: | Why would a 2% CO2 atmosphere combat wildfires? It's a non- | reacting gas, but so is nitrogen... And yet, wildfires still | happen, despite our 79% nitrogen atmosphere. | downrightmike wrote: | Venus has a CO2 atmosphere, so the upper bar is very high. | jcfrei wrote: | Pretty unlikely that we would be able to find a complete DNA of | a single species of dinosaur. More likely we would have to | patch it together and while we're at it might as well modify it | allow them to survive under current conditions. Just speaking | hypothetically here but that seems like the more probable | scenario. | hvs wrote: | It seems like more than an issue of DNA to create a 50 ton | dinosaur that could survive in a modern climate. Dinosaurs | were able to reach their sizes precisely because of the | oxygen-rich environment, not just their DNA. | rrgok wrote: | "Basically if we bring back dinosaurs it will be to torture | them for our amusement and curiosity". Just a thought | experiment, I hope I won't be downvoted to hell. Isn't this the | predicament of all beings? You might say, that some people | enjoy life, but at that point you should | | 1) Confirm that all beings are not answering with a Stockholm | Syndrome | | 2) Confirm what is the subjective experience of the dinosaur | downrightmike wrote: | If the Antarctic thaws, it would be probably the best place | for them. | Name_Chawps wrote: | I have neutral or positive emotions most of the time, and | negative emotions only rarely. I almost never have negative | thoughts (anymore). | | You hit me with Stockholm Syndrome; I respond with Typical | Mind Fallacy. Just because your life is largely suffering, | you assume that all humans lives must largely consist of | suffering. This is not true. | treis wrote: | I don't think it's this simple. The structure of the egg and | uterine environment play important roles in development. It's | like a programming language with a compiler written in it's own | language. Losing the living animals is like losing the compiler. | Using a related animal is like using a fork of the lost compiler | to recompile the lost compiler. If that fork has changed | something you'll end up with something slightly different than | the lost one. | rirze wrote: | I partly think the first animal born from such a process will | not be a true representation of the genes it's born from-- that | would require a second-generation organism borne from a | pregnancy of its own kind. | tsimionescu wrote: | You would possibly need many more generations, if it can even | be achieved, as the Tyrannosaurus born from a chicken egg is | not itself a true Tyrannosaurus and may not be able to create | the right kinds of eggs because of that. | jameshart wrote: | I find a mixture of nuts and seeds in a wire mesh container in my | yard brings them back on a daily basis. | irrational wrote: | Pedantically, we don't need to bring back the dinosaurs since | they are already here. All birds are dinosaurs. If we want to | bring back the non-avian dinosaurs, cause a mass extinction of | mammals (we are doing a great job at that) and then wait millions | of years. | VaxWithSex wrote: | We want Ornitishian dinosaurs, too. | moloch-hai wrote: | Sauropods, particularly. And while we are at it, pterosaurs, | which are not dinosaurs, and mosasaurs, likewise. All are | equally plausible, meaning _not_. | | The original article is actually promoting inventing new | animals that _look like_ dinosaurs. Or rather what we _guess_ | they looked like. We might be able to do that, someday. | | Anything that looks like a sauropod would need solutions for | all the problems anything sauropod-shaped would necessarily | have had, and solved. There is no reason to think our | solutions would match what they had, but we could anyway | determine whether they were plausible solutions. My bet is on | two-chambered auxiliary hearts all the way up the neck. (The | null hypothesis is a volkswagen-sized heart and very, very | thick artery walls, assuming new circulatory structures were | out of reach.) | VaxWithSex wrote: | Sauropods are Saurischian not Ornitishian. But you are | right, we want them too. | | The vw sized heart was in a dinosaur show when I was a kid. | Either David Norman or Bob Baker stood below a brachiosaur | and told the audience about the heart. wow 30 years. Time | flies. | moloch-hai wrote: | Right, not ornithischian. | | For those in the back, sauropods, _despite appearances_ , | run with the tyrannosaurs and birds, not the | triceratopses and hadrosaurs. Or anyway walk. Or did. | | My solution to their energy problem is eusociality: big | Mama stays put and is fed by the small fry who range far | and wide. They also tend her eggs. She eats their first- | level output, then they eat her better-digested leavings. | The digestion scheme is like rabbits, and addresses the | problem that absorbing nutrients through a 2D intestinal | wall scales badly to a 3D animal. If she doesn't need to | heave her bulk around the forest, her energy needs are | lessened. Meanwhile, the small fry don't need to digest | everything all the way. | | The small fry are no bigger than elephants. | jvanderbot wrote: | Well that was the most interesting sci-fi-that-might-be- | real I've read all week. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-12 23:00 UTC)