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.
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.
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.
Dinosaurs are still with us, in the form of birds. But could the more canonical dinosaurs, like Tyrannosaurus, Triceratops and Stegosaurus, evolve again, if the climate and temperature switched back to what the conditions were like during the Cretaceous? Probably not.
Frozen DNA can only last about a million years, and non-avian dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago. However, there is a strikingly brilliant and brave way of obtaining their DNA. If scientists had the ability to bring back dinosaurs, would a real Jurassic Park be made? Of course not.
Could Jurassic Park Happen In Real Life? | Unveiled
Could Jurassic Park happen in IRL?
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.
A team has extracted what could be DNA molecules from a 125-million-year-old fossil dinosaur, according to a study published last month (September 24) in Communications Biology.
“Humans already evolved in ecosystems that had large land animals and predators. We probably would have done okay.” “Unarmed, solitary humans are still easy targets for large predators like bears and lions,” agrees Arbour. “But overall humans are pretty good at surviving alongside large, dangerous animals.”
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.
The non-avian dinosaur part of the evolutionary tree went extinct about 66 million years ago, likely due to a catastrophic event such as an asteroid impact, leaving no real dinosaurs alive today except for their bird descendants.
Between 850 and 600 million years ago, oxygen concentrations increased steadily from 2 to about 10 per cent: still not enough for humans to survive on. Fast forward to 400 million years ago and you could just about breathe but might feel dizzy and confused on about 16 per cent oxygen.
Very hot. During this Mesozoic Era — from about 250 to 66 million years ago — the concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere were around 16 times higher than now, creating a "greenhouse climate” with temperatures on average six to nine degrees warmer than today.
The study says that early mammals evolved before a massive asteroid hit the planet 66 million years ago and therefore lived briefly with dinosaurs. A new study published in the journal Current Biology says that human ancestors did live with dinosaurs for a short time before the beasts went extinct.
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.
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.
“There are a tonne of existing technical challenges that would need to be solved in order to bring a dodo back to life,” she told BBC Wildlife in 2022. “First, one needs to be able to figure out what genetic differences in the dodo genome make the dodo look and act like a dodo.
"Because species like the woolly mammoth died 4000 years ago, we have fragments of its genome because we find woolly mammoth specimens frozen in the ice. But because these specimens are so old, their DNA isn't great, their DNA is too degraded for us to use for cloning."
There are no dinosaur cells or dinosaur eggs that could host new set of DNA. Researchers would have to find a different way to let the DNA grow into a living dinosaur.
First, it is assumed that achieving human intelligence requires evolving an equivalent of the about 200 functionally specialized cortical areas characteristic of humans. Second, it is assumed that dinosaurs had an avian nuclear type of pallial organization, in contrast to the mammalian cortical organization.
What would dinosaurs look like today if they never went extinct?
If the dinosaurs had survived they'd probably be doing the same things they did in the Cretaceous, or even the Jurassic. Giant, long-necked herbivores. Huge, two-legged carnivores. A dinosaur-dominated present would look a lot like the past.
What makes the latest discovery so remarkable is that the blood cells and collagen were found in specimens that the researchers themselves describe as “crap”. If soft tissue can survive in these fossils, then museum collections of more impressive remains could harbour troves of soft dinosaur tissue.
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.
It doesn't seem like the science to clone a full dinosaur is possible, but Jurassic Park does in part account for the limits of modern science. To fill in the gaps of their dinosaurs, InGen scientists use toad DNA. This is in part fanciful, as animal genomes can't be mixed and matched together like a LEGO set.
