Is it possible to recreate dinosaurs from their DNA?

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As a paleontologist – he’s a scientist who studies ancient life – I get asked this question all the time. After all, scientists from “Jurassic Park” (and later “Jurassic World”) used DNA to recreate dozens of dinosaurs: Triceratops, Velociraptor and T. rex.

And if you saw one of these movies, you wondered: could real scientists do this today?

The ABCs of DNA

DNA – which stands for deoxyribonucleic acid – is something in every cell of every organism that has ever lived on Earth – including dinosaurs.

Think of DNA as molecules that carry the genetic code, a set of instructions that help the body and mind to grow and flourish.

Your DNA is different from that of others. It determines many characteristics that define you, such as the color of your eyes or whether your hair is straight or curly.

DNA is much easier to find in the “soft parts” of an animal – its organs, blood vessels, nerves, muscles and fat.

But the soft parts of a dinosaur are long gone. They either decomposed or were eaten by another dinosaur.

Is DNA in Fossils?

All that remains of these prehistoric animals are dinosaur fossils.

Immersed for tens of millions of years in ancient mud, minerals and water, the fossils come from the so-called “hard parts” of the dinosaur: its bones, teeth and skull.

We find dinosaur fossils in the ground, in river and lake beds, and on the sides of cliffs and mountains. Every now and then someone finds one in their garden.

Often they are quite close to the surface, and usually they are embedded in the sedimentary rock.

With enough fossils, scientists can build a dinosaur skeleton – what you see when you go to the museum.

The problem with “dino-DNA”

But scientists have a big problem when trying to find DNA in dinosaur fossils.

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DNA molecules eventually disintegrate. Recent studies show that DNA deteriorates and eventually decays after about 7 million years.

It may sound like a long time, but the last dinosaur died at the end of the Cretaceous Period. That was over 65 million years ago.

Dig up a fossil today, and any dino-DNA inside would have collapsed long ago.

This means, as far as scientists know, and even using the best technology available today, that it is not possible to make a dinosaur from its DNA.

Although it’s too late to find the dino-DNA, scientists recently discovered something almost as intriguing.

They discovered fragments of DNA in the fossils of Neanderthals and other ancient mammals, such as woolly mammoths.

Now that makes sense; these fragments are less than 2 million years old, long before all of the DNA has decayed.

Imagine for a moment …

Just for fun, let’s imagine that somehow in the future researchers have found fragments of dinosaur DNA.

With just fragments, scientists still couldn’t create a complete dinosaur.

Instead, they would have to combine the fragments with DNA from a modern animal to create a living organism.

This creature, however, could not be called a real dinosaur. Rather, it would be a hybrid, a mixture of dinosaurs and, most likely, a bird or reptile.

Do you think this is a good idea? After all, the scientists of the “Jurassic” films tried this. And you know what happened there.

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This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: William Ausich, Ohio State University.

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Over the past 40 years, I have repeatedly received funding from the National Science Foundation and National Geographic. I am currently a consultant for the Paleontological Research Institute at the University of Kansas, as interim editor of the Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology.