It turns out that Jurassic Park is far more than an awesome movie that scared the pants of me as a teenager -- it is, in fact, a vision of the future.Remember how scientists in the movie pulled dino DNA from the butt of a fossilized mosquito, thus making it totally plausible for man-eating monsters to terrorize Laura Derm, Jeff Goldblum and that other guy? Real-life scientists have now done more or less the same thing, having "resurrected" a gene from the extinct Tasmanian tiger by implanting it in a mouse.
Not that you can expect to see Tasmanian tigers roaming the Australian plains anytime soon, but this is the first step in bringing back animals that no longer exist though cloning. The fact that researchers were able to take tissue specimens from tigers' bodies preserved in alcohol, and successfully introduce the genes they extracted into the body of a living creature is a huge step forward.
OK, yeah, yadda yadda -- but when will you get to ride a dinosaur to work like Fred Flintstone? Unfortunately, the answer is probably never -- but your kids might. Pressed on this question, one researcher told reporters: "Maybe one day this might be possible but it won't happen in my lifetime. It might happen in my children's lifetime, but there's so many steps we need to achieve before you could actually make this work."
Time to start exercising and eating right if I'm going to live long enough to see this happen. Only after witnessing a T-Rex face to face will I be able to truly die happy.
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