And more importantly, is Jurassic Park accurate?
By Amber Williams Posted 03.12.2013 at 10:00 am 10 Comments

DNA Double Helix
DNA Double Helix National Human Genome Research Institute

DNA is a sturdy molecule; it can hang around for a long time in fossilized plants and animals. To find out just how long, an international team of scientists decided to determine its rate of decay—the length of time it takes half of its bonds to break.

First, the scientists extracted and measured the amount of DNA in 158 tibiotarsus leg bones of extinct moa, 12-foot, flightless birds that once roamed New Zealand. Next, they used radiocarbon dating to calculate the ages of the bones, which ranged from about 650 years old to 7,000 years old. With that data, the scientists calculated the hereditary molecule’s half-life: about 521 years.

The rate, however, isn’t slow enough for humans to take blood from an amber-encased mosquito and clone dinosaurs, like in Jurassic Park. “We believe this is the last nail in the coffin,” of claims that scientists can get DNA from million-year-old fossils, says Morten Allentoft, a scientist from Copenhagen’s Natural History Museum who worked on the project. Even in ideal preservation conditions, the scientists calculated that every single DNA bond would be broken at 6.8 million years: The youngest dino fossils are 65 million years old. And because scientists need long stretches of DNA to replicate it, they estimate that the oldest usable DNA will actually be one to two million years old. The record holder right now is DNA found in ice cores, at 500,000 years old.

So much for Jurassic Park.

10 Comments

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killerT
03/12/13 at 10:33 am

Saying things "cant be done" or are "impossible" isn't very scientific, is it?
Scientists who say things like that are usually wrong very often.

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mitEj
03/12/13 at 10:36 am

We can still have Jurassic park we will just have to do it via the work being done to reverse evolution on avians. same results but a different path. (this post is in no way an endorsement of making Jurassic park real especially if it happens and things go bad)

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AnyIcon
03/12/13 at 12:27 pm

Find a need, then science will find a way.

This is a COOL article!

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lanredneck

from Northfield, Vt

03/12/13 at 12:30 pm

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong" Arthur C. Clarke

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nicholasjh1
03/12/13 at 12:42 pm

Right, the correct question to ask is what is the half life of frozen DNA?

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bbucommander
03/12/13 at 1:36 pm

Citation please!

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Bagpipes100
03/12/13 at 3:35 pm

" the scientists calculated that every single DNA bond would be broken at 6.8 million years: The youngest dino fossils are 65 million years old."

Funny though that they have found DNA in dino fossils.

Schweitzer, M. H. et al. 2013 Molecular analyses of dinosaur osteocytes support the presence of endogenous molecules. Bone. 52 (1): 414-423.

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bbucommander
03/12/13 at 10:02 pm

@Bagpipes100 The article you cite found possible evidence for DNA, but it is not conclusive. It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Having done a bit more research, it seems this Pop Sci article is a rehash of articles written around the net on October 10th, 2012, when the following paper was published:

Allentoft, Morten E. et al. “The Half-life of DNA in Bone: Measuring Decay Kinetics in 158 Dated Fossils.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 279, no. 1748 (July 12, 2012): 4724–4733. doi:10.1098/rspb.2012.1745.

Was there a sequal paper published recently? I cannot find it.

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adaptation
03/14/13 at 2:53 am

Use more samples, splice them all together, use bird dna as a template when you don't know where things go. I see no problem here.

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arathorn867
03/14/13 at 8:18 am

DNA fragments that were intact enough for a helix to be visible have been found in soft tissue of bones that were supposedly as old as 100 million years several times. Supposedly, soft tissue can only remain for a few hundred or thousand years, and all signs of DNA should be gone by 6.8 million years, with the helix undetectable by about 4-5 million years. So the dozens of examples of soft tissue and DNA that have been discovered mean that either the estimates on the breakdown time are wrong, or the ages are wrong. Is it any wonder that scientists don't like talking about fossils with soft tissue and DNA?


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