Mutant Chickens: Bird or Dinosaur?

At three years old, when most of my peers wanted to be cupcakes and spaceships when they grew up, I wanted to be a Paleontologist. Seemingly similar, but not really, I ended up with a degree in Anthropology instead. Which, is ok. Instead of dinosaur migratory and flocking patterns, I know about human flocking patterns. Trust me, you may not think so, but humans flock.

Anyway, with that said, my so called ‘nerd’ side revealed, (I like to think of it as the interesting, intellectual side myself) I was watching the Discovery Channel the other night, when a special came on about the actuality of recreating Dinosaur DNA. I, of course, was riveted. I hope some other people watched it too. It was so interesting that they better make a follow-up on it. I’ll cover the major points:

• Number One: soft tissue has been discovered in dinosaur bones, whereas it was previously thought that soft tissue was eradicated a couple of thousand years into the fossilization process.
  
• Number Two: Can we in fact, from this soft tissue/complete cells with nuclei discovery piece together the actual DNA strand of dinosaurs and clone them? Answer: not at this time, nor likely ever.
  
• Number Three: The most popular theory around is that some dinosaurs in fact evolved into birds for the survival of their race. We can take that theory, look at the DNA chain of modern birds, work back from their genetic makeup and from there re-create the dinosaur.

Pretty interesting stuff. To me, at least. The best part about it, is scientists have been studying modern day chickens for these tests. They have found out some astounding things, that have apparently been in front of our faces since the chicken arrived from it’s egg, (dinosaur egg?) we just haven’t actually studied it until now. It’s in the process of further investigation, but in the embryology lab, it has been discovered that modern chickens in fact have all of the genetic makeup of their forefathers; evolution has just turned the genes off from maturing.

Conclusion being, if the genes are turned back on, chickens can grow sharp teeth, dinosaur tails with up to 16 vertebra, scaly legs with three toed claws, and indeed arms with three fingered clawed hands. Feathers… optional. I wonder if they would still cluck. Keep in mind, this is all embryological at this point.

Wouldn’t it be interesting though, in ten or twenty years, to have a mutant chicken farm? Chickens with long tails, or clawed-hand arms. Funny as the mental image is, going back to the famous Jurassic Park line that in this entry is completely paraphrased ‘everyone is so obsessed with the can we recreate dinosaurs, but have never stopped to think should we?’