Elon Musk & Jurassic Park

[dragon53]

LINK: https://www.dailywire.com/news/real-life-jurassic-park-elon-musk-could-make-it-happen-according-to-business-partner?itm_source=parsely-api?utm_source=cnemail&utm_medium=email&utm_content=040921-news&utm_campaign=position3

[Bread]

Has he never watched the movies?

[Carnoking]

Oh please, oh please, oh pleaaaaaseee

[andrewsaurus rex]

do it, do it, DO IT. 

I do wonder if the animals would be able to live today, though.  All of the microbes they would have relied on to digest food etc are long gone and they would have no immunity to modern viruses and bacteria.  Are there ways around those problems?

btw what ever happened to the idea to make an emu-saurus ie reactivating dormant DNA in the cells of select birds?

[indohyus]

do it, do it, DO IT. 

I do wonder if the animals would be able to live today, though.  All of the microbes they would have relied on to digest food etc are long gone and they would have no immunity to modern viruses and bacteria.  Are there ways around those problems?

btw what ever happened to the idea to make an emu-saurus ie reactivating dormant DNA in the cells of select birds?

The first is a good question. Resurrecting them in the first place would be difficult. Ice age creatures perhaps, but likely not dinos.

As for the latter, think they've tried it with various birds, not sure of the results. It still isn't a dinosaur though, just a toothy bird.

[stargatedalek]

Please not this guy though. If he can't even properly care for the people in his employ how can he be trusted to care about the welfare of animals?

[BlueKrono]

A paywall to read the article and ads for Candace Owens? No thanks.

[CityRaptor]

Are we sure that website is a good source?

Please not this guy though. If he can't even properly care for the people in his employ how can he be trusted to care about the welfare of animals?

Well, we all know what happened to Hammond.

Has he never watched the movies?

Most of that can be summoned up as human fault.


Hmmm, you know, whoever makes a Jurassic Park a reality would probably have to deal with Jurassic Park Fans and their complaining about everything where reality is different from fiction.

[Cretaceous Crab]

Hmmm, you know, whoever makes a Jurassic Park a reality would probably have to deal with Jurassic Park Fans and their complaining about everything where reality is different from fiction.

If I were running the show, I would probably have at least four different focus groups before I started anything else:

• top paleontologists
• top zoo curators of the world
• top exotic veterinarians
• general public

[CityRaptor]

The first three of those sounds more like the kind of people you should have working for you. Spare no expense! Expect maybe for your game warden's pants.

Also, should one really genetically modify an animal just to make it look more like the public expects it to be? Hammond and Wu actually talked about that in the novel. Hammond was against it, by the way.
That of course includes the creation of genetically modified hybrids...

[Tyrannosauron]

I don't post much around here anymore, but this has some bearing on research I've done and so I wanted to offer some insight before saying Elon Musk and his friends are full of it.

First: the probability of successfully generating a viable nonavian dinosaur embryo through somatic cell nuclear transfer--the technique described in JP--is close enough to zero to qualify as impossible. The nucleotide backbone of DNA likely degrades entirely by the 7-million-year mark, so there really isn't any hope of recovering usable DNA from animals that died one or two orders of magnitude further back into the past.

Second: even if nonavian dinosaur-like animals were engineered through other means (e.g., through manipulation of an avian genome), there really aren't any scientifically acceptable ways of defining species such that the engineered organism would qualify as a member of the original nonavian dinosaur species. Even in the very best case--an exact duplicate of some nonavian dinosaur, feathers and warts and all--the result would be, by definition, a curiosity more like an extremely elaborate animatronic display.

As Yara Haridy said on Twitter, Mr. Musk should devote his resources to paying his taxes instead.

Sources:
https://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2012.1745
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10539-018-9639-x.pdf

[Halichoeres]

I don't post much around here anymore, but this has some bearing on research I've done and so I wanted to offer some insight before saying Elon Musk and his friends are full of it.

First: the probability of successfully generating a viable nonavian dinosaur embryo through somatic cell nuclear transfer--the technique described in JP--is close enough to zero to qualify as impossible. The nucleotide backbone of DNA likely degrades entirely by the 7-million-year mark, so there really isn't any hope of recovering usable DNA from animals that died one or two orders of magnitude further back into the past.

Second: even if nonavian dinosaur-like animals were engineered through other means (e.g., through manipulation of an avian genome), there really aren't any scientifically acceptable ways of defining species such that the engineered organism would qualify as a member of the original nonavian dinosaur species. Even in the very best case--an exact duplicate of some nonavian dinosaur, feathers and warts and all--the result would be, by definition, a curiosity more like an extremely elaborate animatronic display.

As Yara Haridy said on Twitter, Mr. Musk should devote his resources to paying his taxes instead.

Sources:
https://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11555
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rspb.2012.1745
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10539-018-9639-x.pdf

Thank you. Came here to post something along these lines. I would like to have just one corner of the Internet where I don't have to hear this loathsome man's name.

[suspsy]

I can think of few other people who have so consistently proven themselves as useless as they are reprehensible.

[Dusty Wren]

I try to give Musk as little of my attention as I possibly can, so I'm just gonna say that Beth Shapiro has a really excellent book on the actual challenges facing de-extinction efforts: How to Clone a Mammoth.

[amargasaurus cazaui]

I kinda get the entire "hateraide Vitriol" type thing about Elon and his various comments and actions but for me he is a mixed bag. Some of his ideas and efforts are actually rather brilliant, and would benefit mankind in many ways.
 
   I guess I might not have understood the link or its comments, but it wasnt even Elon that made the statement...it was his business partner. Shouldnt we  perhaps at least crucify the correct person here .....

   I also read to his comments where he is talking about the ability to link computers with animals and or people...and creating "exotic species of dinosaurs" ....notice he did not suggest recreating formerly living animals but rather implied the creation of new ones...at least the way it looked to me. Perhaps it might have been more sensible to use a term like "similar to a dinosaur" or something not quite as suggestive .....but sure, why not? I believe he could create some form of Jurassic park, in the near future if he chose to.....I doubt the animals would be created in a similar way, but we already knew that right?

       

[Crackington]

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." Dr I Malcolm.

(Sorry, couldn't resist! 😉)

[Ezikot]

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." Dr I Malcolm.

(Sorry, couldn't resist! 😉)

ehm... I think it's exactly the point!
What should we, as human beings/H. sapiens, do?
Forget about dinosaurs, but what about those species, from ice age to modern days, that went extinct because of us?
Is talking of de-extinction in regard to those species (just to name a few, dodo, thylacine, moa,... maybe also mammoth & co.) unethical?

[Smilodon P.]

I kinda get the entire "hateraide Vitriol" type thing about Elon and his various comments and actions but for me he is a mixed bag. Some of his ideas and efforts are actually rather brilliant, and would benefit mankind in many ways.
 
   I guess I might not have understood the link or its comments, but it wasnt even Elon that made the statement...it was his business partner. Shouldnt we  perhaps at least crucify the correct person here .....

   I also read to his comments where he is talking about the ability to link computers with animals and or people...and creating "exotic species of dinosaurs" ....notice he did not suggest recreating formerly living animals but rather implied the creation of new ones...at least the way it looked to me. Perhaps it might have been more sensible to use a term like "similar to a dinosaur" or something not quite as suggestive .....but sure, why not? I believe he could create some form of Jurassic park, in the near future if he chose to.....I doubt the animals would be created in a similar way, but we already knew that right?

     

So, I understood correctly what Hodak wrote, that it would be possible to use current animals to - through a mix between artificial selection and bioengineering during embryogenesis - create new species that would look like prehistoric animals even if not genetically authentic (Not that Jurassic Park and World have also succeeded look at the frog DNA problem and the colors of the raptor squads).

Even though the idea of ​​using a water monitor to create through artificial selection - and after an absurd amount of generations - animals that look like mosasaurs, every time I see the horrors that we hominids created when playing Melkor/Morgoth with other forms of
life makes me give up the idea: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage (damn those responsible for carrying out the artificial breeding that generated them and decided that they should be used as food) ... sphynx cat ... And, worst of all, Pinscher (after all , which sick mind would be able to create an animal that is 50% pure hatred and another 50% pure shaking?) 

[Tyrannosauron]

ehm... I think it's exactly the point!
What should we, as human beings/H. sapiens, do?
Forget about dinosaurs, but what about those species, from ice age to modern days, that went extinct because of us?
Is talking of de-extinction in regard to those species (just to name a few, dodo, thylacine, moa,... maybe also mammoth & co.) unethical?

Recommended reading: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137337641

[amargasaurus cazaui]

ehm... I think it's exactly the point!
What should we, as human beings/H. sapiens, do?
Forget about dinosaurs, but what about those species, from ice age to modern days, that went extinct because of us?
Is talking of de-extinction in regard to those species (just to name a few, dodo, thylacine, moa,... maybe also mammoth & co.) unethical?

Recommended reading: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137337641

had a look, was going to download it, but yeah at almost a 100 for that privilige I had to let it go.