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Cloning dinosaurs

Hundreds of thousands poured into theatres this weekend to experience Jurassic World. While movie-goers are excited, not everyone is thrilled about the film. Some palaeontologists are preparing themselves for all of the stupid questions they will have to answer about dinosaur cloning. So, do we need to worry about a Jurassic Park disaster?

https://youtu.be/duTJP-ePewU

There you have it. Based on what we currently understand about cloning, we don’t have any way to regenerate a dinosaur. We’re just going to have to rely on time travel. Of course, there are other historic creatures that are within the reasonable DNA half-life, including Neanderthal Man. In this interview with Spiegel from several years ago, scientist, George Church, discusses the plausibility of cloning a Neanderthal Man and other topics that may shock or delight you. Church denied that he was seeking an “Adventurous Woman,”  as some reported, to be a surrogate for a baby Neanderthal. We don’t know if he didn’t get a volunteer or if there were too many. (Can you just imagine the email?)

Photo of Alvin the bearded dragon
Alvin, a bearded dragon, is our official lucky lizard, live and on display

Are these places where science dare not go? If someone discovers a way around the half-life issue or wants to explore brining back a woolly mammoth or Neanderthal should we be worried or buy tickets? As host to the one and only Iceman, we would love to have a pet dinosaur. I guess we’ll have to be content to enjoy our lucky lizard, Alvin, on display in the museum.

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NEW DINOSAUR SPECIES DISCOVERED IN MADAGASCAR

_67099219_farke_dahalokely_bigOn the tiny secluded island of Madagascar, the remains of an undocumented dinosaur species have been discovered. The Dahalokely tokana, whose name means “lonely small bandit”, was a meat-eating dinosaur, paleontologists have determined, that thrived approximately 90-million years ago when India and Madagascar were still one landmass, isolated from the rest of the world. This discovery marks the first new prehistoric species unearthed in Madagascar in nearly a decade and assists with the connection between evolutionary points of animals in both countries.

“The most intriguing thing for me is that it fills a major gap in what we know about the history of dinosaurs in Madagascar,” said paleontologist Andrew Farke. “It shortens it by about 20 million years. It would have been a meat-eater, walking on two legs about the size of a large cow, with a tail.”

Joe Sertich, the curator of the dinosaur exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science was the one to make the exciting discovery. According to Sertich, the Dahalokely tokana was a close relative of a group of dinosaurs known as the Abelisauridae, which resided in the southern continents of the age.

“This just reinforces the importance of exploring new areas around the world where undiscovered dinosaur species are still waiting.” Sertich told BBC News.

**Photo credit: BBC News

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PREHISTORIC MACHINERY DISCOVERED IN RUSSIA

Let’s take a brief look back 300 million years into Earth’s history. Just what was happening at this volatile juncture in time? The planet was dominated by a single supercontinent known as Pangaea amidst the massive ocean known as Panthalassa. Deserts covered the majority of the interior of the continent where the first reptiles began to rise to dominance. The Permian Era saw the evolution of amniotes into the first groups of mammals, turtles, lepidosaurs and archosaurs. Hardly the time one would picture ancient machinery being constructed by an alien race. However, according to the Voice of Russia and other sources this was a time when some of our cosmic cousins just may have set up residence within the primordial chaos of prehistoric Earth.

Sections of an aluminum gear rail found near Vladivostok are now believed to have been manufactured by a possible ancient alien civilization. A resident discovered the artifact when the light of his fire revealed the outline of what appeared to be a piece of machinery in a clump of coal he was about to use to heat his home. Convinced that what he possessed was more than merely a naturally occurring coincidence the man sought out the professional opinions of scientists located in the Primorey region of Russia. After lengthy analysis by said scientists, it was determined that the approximate age of the artifact is 300 million years. This is an assumption, however, due to the fact that the coal being used by the man was delivered to the Primorey area from the Chernogorodskiy mines of Khakasia region of the same age. It is not specified as to whether or not this artifact has been carbon-dated—as to what tests exactly were run on the gear rail, it is also not revealed.

The discovery of such artifacts is surprisingly not that uncommon. In 1851 workers removed a zinc and silver vase embedded in a block of coal. This vase was carbon-dated and estimated to be nearly 500 million years in age. Six decades after the initial discovery scientists in Oklahoma extracted an iron pot, also embedded in coal, which they later determined to be 312 million years old. The most recent artifact, before the current Russian gear rail, was in 1974—an aluminum “assembly part” was found within a sandstone quarry in Romania. The item was said to resemble either a hammer or the leg of an unknown spacecraft, such as that used in Earth’s own “Apollo”, and was dated to be from the Jurassic era. Can we say Aliens meets Jurassic Park?

Natalia Ostrowski at the KP UA Daily stated that the Russian machine part holds similarities in its design to that of modern microscopes and various technical and electronic devices. Currently, the theory that this new item is evidence of ancient alien inhabitants is based largely on the presence of magnesium-26. Aluminum-26, which is an off-world element found only in meteorites, breaks down into magnesium-26 over time as it interacts with Earth’s atmosphere. This points to either the gear itself having been manufactured elsewhere in the universe or that it was the product of alloy brought to Earth millions of years ago from another world.

Analysis of the Russian gear rail continues as world experts search for the truth behind its origins. Look for our updates as news surfaces!

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