On October 5, 2021, an archaeological team from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found cells carrying filamentous chromatin in the fossils of the tail feather dragon.
These cells are not only very complete, but also have a certain degree of activity, and may have preserved the DNA information of the tail feather dragon, which is a shocking discovery.
At the same time, this also makes people think: if we successfully extract dinosaur DNA, does it mean that we may be able to resurrect dinosaurs?
The tail feathered dragon, also known as the tail feather bird, was a small theropod dinosaur that lived in the early Cretaceous Period 137 million years ago. Its size was very similar to that of today's peacocks, and it had feathers on its forelimbs and the tip of its tail, not like the feathers of dragons, but very close to the feathers of modern birds.
In fact, this 125 million-year-old fossil of the tail feather dragon was discovered by the team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in the Chaoyang region of liaoning in northeast China as early as September 25 this year.
After that, the Chinese Academy of Sciences team conducted a study on the fossils of the tail feather dragon, and found a set of well-preserved chondrocytes in its leg bone slices. Among these chondrocytes, in addition to some "fossilized" chondrocytes in a healthy state, there are also some chondrocytes that are about to apoptosis.
Most excitingly, in this study, they also found that in some dinosaur chondrocytes, chromatin from the tail feathers may also be preserved.
We all know that the carrier of genetic material in an organism is a chromosome, but it is also composed of countless smaller substances, which are called chromatin. So in some ways, as long as we determine the chromatin of the tail feather dragon, it means that its DNA composition is almost determined.
From a scientific point of view, however, no matter what species it is, half of its genetic material will be lost within 500 years after its death. That is to say, as long as it dies for more than 1,000 years, the material about genetic information in its body will completely disappear.
So the question is, how did this 125 million-year-old tailed feathered dragon preserve chromatin in the body? This starts with the life habits of the tail feather dragon.
Tail feathered dragon is a plantation of food-eating dinosaurs, generally except for the incubation of eggs will live on land for a period of time, other times are living by the river, lake.
However, during the Cretaceous period when the tail feathered dragon lived, volcanic eruptions were very frequent, and some dinosaurs were buried deep in the ground by volcanic ash, which is also the main reason for the formation of existing Cretaceous fossils.
So when the volcano erupted, some tailed feather dragons living near the volcano did not have time to escape, and they were directly buried by the volcanic ash. Some of the mineral-rich fine-grained media in the volcanic ash can just protect the internal tissue structure of the tail feather dragon from the outside world. Because of this, we are able to find chromatin as active substances on fossils of " Cephalopoda " today.
It is worth noting that this is actually not the first time that the genetic material of dinosaurs has been discovered in China. The first time China truly discovered the genetic material of dinosaurs was in the 1990s, when Chinese scientists found some precious genetic fragments on a dinosaur egg.
Prior to this, in 2020, the scientific research team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China also found a set of genetic fragments of suspected DNA on a fossil of duck-billed dragon cartilage unearthed in Montana, USA.
However, it has been confirmed that the genetic information they have preserved is not as good as that found in the skeleton of the tail feather dragon this time.
So is it possible that we can "create" these dinosaurs again through cloning technology?
In fact, since the advent of the clone sheep "Dolly" in 1997, cloning technology has begun to provide "technical support" for various science fiction blockbusters, the most famous of which is the "Jurassic Series". After all, reproducing ultra-ancient creatures through modern technology is indeed an unprecedented "brain hole".
Similar theories have been proposed in the past, but they can only be used as a "science fiction dream" that cannot be implemented.
If you want to clone a creature, the necessary prerequisite is to obtain its DNA, otherwise all subsequent ideas will be empty talk. However, in the past, countries around the world rarely found "living DNA" that could be used, which made it impossible to resurrect dinosaurs.
But now, this new discovery by the research team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in China has created a "possibility" for the "impossible". Maybe in the near future, we can really do it to resurrect dinosaurs.
But that's also in the future, but now and for the foreseeable time, it is still difficult to resurrect dinosaurs. Moreover, in addition to the technical difficulties of cloning dinosaurs, we may also face difficult choices in ethics and morality.
If we do resurrect dinosaurs, how can we solve their survival problems?
It should be known that the current earth is completely different from the natural environment of 65 million years, and the earth overlord of that year may not be able to adapt at all. If they were released back into nature, they would most likely attack humans because they could not catch a large number of prey.
Of course, in the face of modern long guns and cannons, even dinosaurs are difficult to avoid being shot.
By then, the dinosaurs we have worked so hard to resurrect will either be used as "guinea pigs" for scientific research or exhibited at zoos. If so, what is the point of reviving them? Of course, this is only my personal opinion.
I don't know how you think about this, if it can be achieved, do you think it is necessary to resurrect dinosaurs? Welcome to leave a comment