How to Build a Dinosaur: Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever

by Jack Horner and James Gorman

Book Overview

A world-renowned paleontologist teams up with a "New York Times" science writer to reveal a new science that trumps science fiction: how humans can re-create a dinosaur.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525951040
• ISBN13: 9780525951049
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: Dutton Books
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.7" x 8.6"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 12 and higher

Customer Reviews

possibilities for the future

this book represents an intriguing look into the future of genetic manipulation. Indeed, the creation of a dinochiken may only be the first in a series of genetic recreations of past species. the genetic code hides many ancient genes that,if turned on, can shed light on the long process of evolution, perhaps all the way into deep time. This is the real "Jurassic Park", as the author describes it. This book is clear in its presentation, and is written for the layman, although a sound education in the fundamentals of Biology will surely help.Jack Horner is a masterful storyteller. I read the entire book in a few days, as I couldn't put in down once I started reading. ----Enjoy!

An Eye Into the Past

Renowned paleontologist, Jack Horner, and James Gorman, deputy science editor of The New York Times, have written a profound book in How to Build A Dinosaur. Rather than zeroing in on ancient dinosaur DNA, Horner and his colleagues instead focus on evolutionary development, or "evo-devo", as they term it. We know that the embryos of multiple creatures develop in a similar fashion, for a time featuring arm and beg buds as well as tails. Assuming that dinosaurs evolved in a similar manner, Jack Horner contends that it might be possible to reverse evolution from the embryo of a modern chicken. Such a massive step is controversial to be sure, but the benefits of manipulating genes at just the right point in development might very well assist us in resolving spinal chord problems and other birth defects in humans today. Jack Horner cites to some of the great fossil discoveries of the past, as well as current research involving exploration of past life forms on a molecular level. This book is an excellent bridge between paleontology and cutting edge technology. How to Build A Dinosaur is the marriage of two types of investigations in our continual search for the answers to the questions of evolution, selection and the tantalizing prospect of some day generating a living, breathing dinosaur. Perhaps, in the process, we can learn a little more about our own development and our place in this ever changing world.

An awesome proposal

When reading the first half of this book, this reviewer found it difficult at first to connect its subject matter with the title of the book. The expectation was that the book was going one devoted to genetic and metabolic engineering as applied to embryology. Instead the authors devote the first half to matters of paleontology and the art of fossil hunting. Readers eager to learn how to "build a dinosaur" may therefore get impatient with the authors, and may be tempted to put the book down and not go further. This would be a mistake, since in the latter half of the book the authors get down to explaining what kind of techniques or knowledge may be necessary to produce a creature that for all practical purposes, i.e. in terms of its skeletal structure and general appearance would be a living dinosaur. Studying these pages is fascinating, and indeed gives one more reason for believing that if the authors or other biologists succeed in bringing this about, then this would be the most awesome feat in scientific and technological history. What is most important about the author's proposals is that they are not dependent on having the genomes of long extinct dinosaurs. Instead, they seek to adjust the timing of the growth patterns that led to the evolution of birds from nonavian dinosaurs. This is to be done via the embryo of a domestic chicken. But changing the timing of metabolic and growth processes, this timing being regulated by genes, must respect what actually occurred in the evolutionary development of the bird from the dinosaur. Otherwise what results is a kind of "freak" that may be of interest in general but will not represent a genuine dinosaur of the kind that roamed the earth millions of years ago. A small amount of space is devoted in the book to the ethics and dangers of this kind of effort. These discussions are important but did not convince this reviewer that the author's proposals should not be carried out. On the contrary, they should be done immediately without any mental reservation. Right now. Today.

The recipe for Kentucky Fried Dinosaur

The recipe for creating a dinosaur from a chicken egg is still beyond the reach of modern technology. As shown by Jack Horner, an technical advisor to the Jurassic Park movie franchise, we are currently limited to making fat mice or fruit flies with legs growing out of their head. But even from our meager beginnings Horner shows that we may yet soon have the ability to alter the expression of DNA in chicken eggs to cause the growth of dinosaur like organs. That's because chickens evolved from dinosaurs and as such still retain the old, albeit nonused, instructions for the creation of dinosaur parts in their DNA. The only reason chickens don't look like dinosaurs now is because their DNA selects against the old traits for the more visible modern ones which are more familiar. But according to Horner we could change at least some of that by using special treatments to promote the expression of dinosaur like organs in chickens. Along the way, Horner discusses a lot of topics which are important to the overall theme of his book. He discusses his work as a paleantologist. He discusses the modern lab methods now used to extract more information about dinosaurs at the genetic level. He makes the interesting claim that some ancient dinosaurs DNA has actually been recovered (conventional wisdom says that DNA degrades on the order of thousands of years not millions as would be required for us to be able to read dinosaur DNA). He even discusses the nexus between science and religion. Sadly, the book reveals that a portion of his teaching time has been wasted on the spurious claims of those religious fanatics would say that the Earth is merely thousands and not millions of years old because they believe such a view comports with the Bible. Let alone the idea that the Bible says no such thing, the argument that even if it did it would operate to stay scientific progress is lunacy. Defty though, Horner discusses his experiences with religious extremists sensatively and with understanding. He also defly evades the moral implications of turning a chicken into a dinosaur by suggesting that because we eat billions of chickens each year as meals, certainly we can sacrifice a few to the cause of science. While I'm not completely convinced by his reasoning, it does seem that from time to time the benefits of scientific research do outweigh the humanitarian concerns we may otherwise have for other organisms. This is especially true here where they type of research he seeks to pursue could assist in preventing spina bifida a debilitating, painful and sometimes mortal disease among human infants. So while the recipe for Kentucky Fried Dinosaur may yet elude us, Horner has certainly made a compelling case for what if?

Paleontology unlike anything you've seen before

This is a new and refreshing look at paleontology. While the book is nominally about turning a bird into a dinosaur, it is really about exciting new developments in paleontology. Horner shows how paleontology is expanding beyond digging for dinosaurs and moving into molecular biology and evolutionary development (evo-devo). Horner weaves several different fields of biology and shows how inter-disciplinary studies have revolutionized the field. He chronicles the work of Mary Schweitzer, who discovered red blood cells and (perhaps) cartilage in a 68-million year old T-rex, and Hans Larson, who is investigating ancestral genes in chicken embryos. I had followed news from paleontology relatively closely for a lay observer, but even I was shocked at some of the evo-devo research currently being done. Hopefully, this book will inspire more students to go into biology. Turning a chicken into a dinosaur might be just the right hook to stimulate interest in these exciting new developments in evo-devo. My one suggestion for the book is that because it covers so many fields, Horner ends up summarizing or quoting the works of others. He tells their stories effectively. But at some point, I wonder if perhaps it would have been better to produce a joint book, with articles from several of the contributors in the field. However, it is also useful to have one voice to guide the reader through the science. Since Horner is not a native to molecular sciences (his expertise is traditional paleontology), he is perhaps better suited to explaining the complexities of genetics to lay readers. P.S. - Be sure to check out the Discovery Channel's documentary (Dinosaurs: Return To Life?) on this topic. It is a nice complement to the book.