Most biologists agree the Jurassic Park scenario isn't possible, as any blood an insect was carrying would deteriorate rapidly and be contaminated with the insect's DNA. However, scientists have extracted DNA from insects in 120-million-year-old amber.
It is therefore entirely possible for prehistoric genetic material to survive for up to one million years. But the big dinosaurs departed this life some 66 million years ago. So the prospect of finding enough viable DNA material in what remains of them today is therefore vanishingly remote.
The science behind it is real, but in practical terms nobody's ever going to recreate a non-avian dinosaur. It's possible to re-activate certain deactivated genes in birds, such as those for teeth, and indeed it has been done.
Can We Clone Extinct Dinosaurs From DNA Preserved in Their Fossils?
Could we ever recover dinosaur DNA?
Recent studies show DNA deteriorates and ultimately disintegrates after about 7 million years. That sounds like a long time, but the last dinosaur died at the end of the Cretaceous Period. That's more than 65 million years ago. Dig up a fossil today, and any dino-DNA within would have long since fallen apart.
While birds are the closest living descendants of dinosaurs, crocodilians are their closest living relatives, highlighting the diverse and complex tree of life that connects modern species with their ancient ancestors.
Rigorous attempts to reproduce these DNA sequences from amber- and copal-preserved bees and flies have failed to detect any authentic ancient insect DNA. Lack of reproducibility suggests that DNA does not survive over millions of years even in amber, the most promising of fossil environments.
Since fossilization in amber is a relatively rare event, the chances of this happening are pretty small. The lack of possible specimens isn't the only problem. Most insect fossils found in amber are also too young to contain dinosaur blood -- dinosaurs were extinct by the time the insects became trapped.
Nevertheless, it's worth thinking about the snails, locusts, moths, and butterflies (along with all the other tiny creatures) that have gone extinct under the watch of human civilization.
The revival of the woolly mammoth is a proposed hypothetical that frozen soft-tissue remains and DNA from extinct woolly mammoths could be a means of regenerating the species. Several methods have been proposed to achieve this goal, including cloning, artificial insemination, and genome editing.
Even with new collection technologies, under the best possible conditions, the limit of DNA survival is perhaps 1 million years. The last of the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago, so Jurassic Park likely won't become a reality anytime soon.
Maybe one of them is the Carcharocles megalodon. Are scientists trying to bring back a form of the Megalodon? No. Not only is that not really possible, given we have no Megalodon DNA to work with, but why would we do that?
In "Jurassic Park," scientists extract 80-million-year-old dino DNA from the bellies of mosquitoes trapped in amber. Researchers may never be able to extract genetic material that old and bring a T.
Ultimately though, we need intact DNA to resurrect species. So, although scientists have made a lot of progress, the prospect remains in the realm of science fiction. All data from fossils and experiments to date suggests that DNA is simply unlikely to survive for tens of millions of years.
How close are scientists to bringing back dinosaurs?
Scientists estimate that the final best by date for DNA is about a million years after an organism's death, and that's only under the exact right conditions. We're about 65 million years too late for retrieving viable dinosaur DNA.
There are a number of research benefits that come with de-extinction. For instance, some scientists believe studying previously extinct animals and looking at how they function could help fill some gaps in our current theories around evolution. De-extinction could also have a beneficial impact on the environment.
Many of them probably could survive today. Dinosaurs ruled the world for 150 million years, and endured hot and cold spells, volcanic eruptions, and changing sea levels. There is nothing about today's world that would be fatal to them.
Their research was published Thursday in the journal Current Biology. They say that 99 million years ago, a baby dinosaur about the size of a sparrow got stuck in tree resin and never made it out. Had the young dinosaur had a more auspicious day, it would have grown up to be a little smaller than an ostrich.
DNA was first reported to have been recovered from amber in 1992 when scientists in California claimed to have extracted fragments of DNA from an extinct species of bee ( Proplebeia dominicana) in Dominican amber.
Are Amber Mosquitoes Real? Yes, more than one mosquito in amber has been found in real life. In fact, researchers from Oregon State University found a mosquito in a piece of amber that is 100 million years old and used it to prove that mosquitoes carried the malaria virus when dinosaurs walked the earth.
The oldest DNA ever recovered has revealed a remarkable two-million-year-old ecosystem in Greenland, including the presence of an unlikely explorer: the mastodon.
For approximately 120 million years—from the Carboniferous to the middle Triassic periods—terrestrial life was dominated by the pelycosaurs, archosaurs, and therapsids (the so-called "mammal-like reptiles") that preceded the dinosaurs.
Despite their resemblance to dinosaurs, crocodiles are not directly related to them. However, crocodiles and dinosaurs do share an ancient family member from a group called archosaurs. Interestingly, modern birds are also members of the archosaur group, making them distant relatives of crocodiles.
And then onto who is older; the rhino or the elephant? Well first off, neither are related to the dinosaurs and both appeared after the dinosaurs had gone extinct 65 million years ago. Elephant and rhino are both mammals whereas dinosaurs were reptiles.
