Dinosaurs can't be cloned - Dammit

Umbran · Oct 13, 2012

trancejeremy said:
I think this is a case of Clarke's first law

I think it is a case of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Entropy increases unless you do work to counter it.

Olgar Shiverstone · Oct 13, 2012

Well, a significant amount of relevant dino DNA is probably still extant in birds and reptiles. You don't have to recover all of it; just enough of the difference. If humans and chimps are 99% common in their DNA, how much might you be able to reconstruct from critters like crocodiles?

Orius · Oct 13, 2012

Umbran said:
Entropy increases unless you do work to counter it.

Isn't that impossble according to the Laws of Thermodynamics as we understand them?

You know, when I first saw Jurassic Park, I thought Ian Malcolm was such a snarky killjoy. But he was right about his skepticism. Even if we could recreate dinosaurs, would they be able to survive in a modern Earth? The herbivores might not be able to properly digest modern plants assuming such plants aren't outright toxic. The carnivores might be able to survive by preying on modern animals, if they're generalist predators, but that's only the smaller carnivores. There really isn't any extant megafauna around to be able to properly feed a population of T. rexes. Then there's the oxygen problems as Umbran stated. And then even if some species were able to thrive, they aren't part of any existing ecological niches, so you've got the problem of something that may become an invasive species.

Dannyalcatraz · Oct 13, 2012

Yeah, given that several soecies of Giant Moa survived until we killed them off, the velociraptors would probably make the best candidates for surviving on land in the modern era.

...except STOOPID SCIENCE said it was impossible to bring 'em back!

Umbran · Oct 13, 2012

Orius said:
Isn't that impossble according to the Laws of Thermodynamics as we understand them?

Depends on what "that" is referring to. The increase in entropy or the doing of work?

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states, "The entropy of any isolated system not in thermal equilibrium almost always increases. Isolated systems spontaneously evolve towards thermal equilibrium—the state of maximum entropy of the system."

So, basically, if you stop putting energy into a system, and allow it to run down, it will grow more disordered. If you don't maintain it, your car will break down and rust. And if you leave your DNA untended for 65 million years, it will also break down, and become disordered.

JustinAlexander · Oct 14, 2012

Umbran said:
That means you have something like one part in 9 trillion left.

The human body has 50 trillion cells. And each of them contains our full DNA sequence. So if you give me 1/9-trillionth of the DNA in my body you would have 5x the material found in a full sequence.

That doesn't really mean anything, of course, since the rest of your math was nonsense. But if you actually followed your nonsense math through to conclusion, you'd discover that you were actually demonstrating yourself to be wrong.

Tonguez · Oct 14, 2012

Cadence said:
:::goes off to console himself over this by feeding the three modern-day chirping dinosaurs in the living room, at least according to the American Museum of Natural History still... and he's not going to tell the littlest one if the current theory changes... he's bitey.::::

yes, dinosaurs still exist . I had one for lunch...

Umbran · Oct 14, 2012

JustinAlexander said:
The human body has 50 trillion cells. And each of them contains our full DNA sequence. So if you give me 1/9-trillionth of the DNA in my body you would have 5x the material found in a full sequence.

I wasn't demonstrating myself to be wrong. I was demonstrating the math of half-lives.

So, let's look at what you mention more closely. If you're at 65 million years, 5x the information of your genetic material remains. if you're from 66.5 million years ago, your body has only 2.5 the material. By 68 million years ago, only 1.25. By 70 million years, you've got less than what's necessary.

And that's assuming the archaeologist can get at *all* the material that was your body. We were talking about the half-life of the genetic material - how much of it breaks down just as time passes. But that's not the only thing going on. We haven't yet discussed what else happens to your body after you died - like predators and microbes eating it, or the fossilization process, which will generally destroy that information. 65 million years is a long time for bits of you to go wandering off. So, if you find a full dinosaur encased in amber, maybe there's a shot...

Except, of course, the simple fact that the half-life isn't 1.5 million years. That was just demonstrative. The half-life is more on the order of 1000 years. So, instead of 40-some-odd half-lives, we are talking *thousands* of half-lives passing.