Talk about a Jurassic artifact.
But that doesn’t concern me.
Today I’m digging for the truth about Jurassic
Park.
Can you make DIY dinosaurs in a lab?
This is an Argentinosaurus.
Well, a model of one anyway.
It would be really cool to see a big guy like
this lumbering down the freeway, right?
Well, I don’t about you, but I wouldn’t
want a 40-foot long carnivore with teeth the
size of a banana following me.
Meet Janet Yamaguchi, zoologist and VP of
education at the Discovery Science Center
in Santa Ana, California.
It boasts an impressive array of dino bones
and artifacts, not to mention a nice view
of all those fossil fuels powering the cars
on the freeway next door.
How long has the excavation and the study
of, of dinosaur bones been happening?
Only since the 1800s.
It’s a fairly young science.
So what kind of stuff have we found since
we’ve started this?
We found bones, teeth, footprints, skin prints,
and coprolites, which is fossilised poop.
Coprolites, is that what you call it?
That’s a scientific term?
Yep.
I bet you those are pretty big specimens.
Now, there are two places in the world that
you can find fossilised Amber, right?
Yes, you tend to find it in the Baltic region
and in the Dominican Republic.
And in the movie, they were looking in the
Dominican Republic.
That’s right.
That’s what it appears.
Okay.
Okay, so on the Goldblum Scale of Mathematical
Probability, it seems like the film’s creators
did the research or did they?
The mosquitoes are only about 50 million years
old.
Whereas dinosaurs died out 65 million years
ago.
That’s a 15-million-year gap.
Small matter of 15 million years.
Okay, so what you’re saying is, is that
the mosquitoes in the Dominican Republic that
would be fossilised in Amber weren’t even
living at the same time as the dinosaurs.
That’s correct.
Uh-oh.
The science of Jurassic Park is starting to
look like a yabba dabba don’t.
Okay, but let’s say for the sake of my theoretical
pet dino, that mosquitoes and velociraptors
did co-exist.
So, the problem is that DNA is actually quite
a fragile molecule.
It’s very susceptible to chemical degradation.
And over time, it just loses its code or its
information, even if it’s preserved in Amber.
So, no skeeters and at best fuzzy, falling
apart DNA.
Hmm, these dinos are looking like Bogasauruses.
A human strand of DNA would have three billion
base hairs.
Billion with a B.
Billion with a B. But they’re only 50 trillionth
of an inch wide.
So, in Jenga terms, our model would actually
go on, and on, and on.
Well, if you take out one component of a DNA
strand, are you completely changing the, the
life form?
Absolutely.
So, for example, with a Chimpanzee, there’s
only two percent of our, our genetic makeup
is different.
And we’re quite different animals.
We’re quite different animals.
Okay.
If I take out just one piece.
I broke my dino Jenga.
But in the movie, they plug up those DNA holes
with frog DNA.
Where’d that molecular microbiologist go?
Even if you somehow manage to obtain huge
amounts of dinosaur DNA, you would still have
some holes you needed to patch.
And no halfway decent biologist would use
frog DNA.
Dinosaurs are much more closely related to
birds or even crocodiles.
But even these modern-day relatives are probably
far too distant to do the job properly.
Because the thing is, even having a little
bit of DNA that’s different can have a huge
effect.
So, our little lab experiment would croak
with that frog DNA.
What about the painstakingly reconstructed
dino-friendly environment they claim to have
created?
Some animals are very specific about what
they eat.
For example, Pandas primarily eat bamboo.
And what would a Triceratops eat?
And we don’t even know.
We don’t even know.
So, it’d be just like, let’s take him
to Sizzler for the all you can eat on Tuesday.
No, that’s not going to work.
Well, I imagine the air was a lot cleaner
back then, right?
Well, I don’t know about cleaner, but it
was different.
We don’t really know what the particulate
matter was in the air, what amount of dust
there might have been or the chemicals that
were in the air.
We do know they’re different today though.
And those could affect this animal in a bad
way.
And totally compromise the immune system essentially.
That’s true.
Even if we did clone a dinosaur and even if
we did find, you know, the right food for
it to eat, the air quality and the other qualities
of the environment just might not be suitable
for dino life.
That’s true.
In other words, T. Rex and his friends, they’re
history and they’re going to stay that way.
Alright, so it looks like the only way I’m
ever gonna see any dinosaur action is if I
rent Jurassic Park.
Because if I hold my breath waiting for a
cloned version, I’ll end up like that guy.
