It’s true, due to a recent discovery, Jurassic Park will forever and always remain fiction. My initial reaction to this was “awww,” but then I realized it was for the best since mad men were actually trying to make this happen. We’ve all seen the movie, we know what happens; humanity doesn’t need that. No one needs that.
Palaeogeneticists led by Morten Allentoft at the University of Copenhagen and Michael Bunce at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia made this discovery. Apparently after something dies, their enzymes begin to break down the bonds between nucleotides. These little guys are the backbone of DNA. On top of that, environmental issues such as temperature, microbial attacks, and oxygenation all speed up the decaying function.
So how long does it take before scientists can jack your DNA? The half-life of DNA is 521 years. That’s it, so that rules reaaaaaaally rules out dinosaurs. The team even experimented on frozen Moa bones that were somewhere between 600 and 8,000 years old. They bones were kept at a cool 13.1 ºC and they showed the same results. This rules out freezing or the popular amber theories.
Dinosaurs will never rule the earth again (besides the new Jurassic Park movie they’re making; I’m not making this up).
Sorry.
[Nature]
