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What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

thewalrus.ca

101–110 of 147 posts

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#102

Bringing back dinosaurs is a lot like using regular expressions: Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll bring back dinosaurs." Now they have two problems.

Suddenly, I am very curious about what problem could possibly inspire bringing back dinosaurs as a potential solution...

Boredom.

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#103

The dinosaurs lived in an incomprehensibly different world. From the food and nutrition to the very air they were breathing which we only have vague ideas about. That means the first several generations at the very least would suffer and die from various nutrition, toxicity and environment issues. Even after all that got figured out the dinosaurs would likely have be confined to some small controlled environment righ…

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Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#104
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like more than an issue of DNA to create a 50 ton dinosaur that could survive in a modern climate. Dinosaurs were able to reach their sizes precisely because of the oxygen-rich environment, not just their DNA.

So we make small dinosaurs? What about not bringing back dinosaurs but changing the dna of say a chicken to resemble that what we'd consider to be a dinosaur without it actually being any historically known dinosaur?

A generically modified chicken won't help us. We're going to need actual full-blooded dinosaurs if we ever hope to find out how they built Stonehenge.

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#105
I’m surprised to see the lack of comments suggesting to use AI to piece together their DNA. Since the DNA breaks down into thousands of pieces, is it not simply a giant puzzle? Surely there are similarities in many modern species DNA that a properly trained neural network can reassemble. For the 20 or 30% of the rest of the DNA, we’ll need a lot of experimentation.

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#106

Bringing back dinosaurs is a lot like using regular expressions: Some people, when confronted with a problem, think "I know, I'll bring back dinosaurs." Now they have two problems.

Suddenly, I am very curious about what problem could possibly inspire bringing back dinosaurs as a potential solution...

Being Elon Musk and wanting to cause chaos.

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life.. uh.. finds a way

Life "finds a way" by evolving adaptations. Not by running obsolete technology in an inappropriate environment. Life has found a way - we are it!

Until life finds another way, which at this rate will probably be some kind of fungus.

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#110

I love thought experiments like these, One would have to think where could ancient dinosaur DNA survive? Antarctica has been covered by ice for 5 million years, that is still 60 million years too young. Maybe there are a few bugs that have dino dna that is better preserved than the stuff that has been exposed to sunlight and elements the past 5 million years. And even if there is viable dna you would have to drill do…

Why would 30% oxygen be hard to deal for humans? I didn't think a greater oxygen concentration really mattered to us.
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