Posted on 11/03/2007 7:44:49 PM PDT by 49th
The chicken egg has been prepped for surgery – a pea-size hole cut in the shell and covered with sticky tape. And now Hans Larsson, a McGill University researcher, removes it from the incubator, places it under a microscope and prepares to operate.
He gently peels off the tape and teases back the membranes that line the shell with tweezers. Through the eyepiece, he can see the tiny dot of a heart, steadily beating. He can also see the bud where he implants a milky bead doused in a protein. He hopes it will coax the embryo to grow a big tail. A dinosaur-like tail.
paleontologist, Prof. Larsson spends a significant portion of his time doing traditional dinosaur hunting, digging fossils as far afield as the Arctic and Africa with jackhammers and pickaxes. But he has long been frustrated with the limitations of studying old bones and what they reveal about the mysteries of evolution.
It was by examining ancient skeletons that paleontologists learned that modern birds, including chickens, descended from dinosaurs and that their relatives include such fierce predators as Tyrannosaurus rex. What fossils don't reveal, though, is how exactly such dramatic anatomical changes first arose. How did teeth the size of bananas turn into beaks? Or mighty tails become wimpy, feathered stumps?
For answers, Prof. Larsson has turned to the burgeoning field of evo-devo – or evolutionary developmental biology – a radical new approach to understanding the past.
It is based on the astonishing discovery that modern animals, including humans, share many of the same body-building genes and that some of these genes have been around for millions of years.
(Excerpt) Read more at theglobeandmail.com ...
Jurassic Park?
Humor is lost on some on FR.
I know. LOL But we can have fun.
Might = 4
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No, he's not. He's trying, but has so far been unsuccessful according to the article.
You think the article is interesting I submit this to you. What came first the chicken or the egg?
My house shares 99% of it’s construction materials with one of Trump’s mansion; too!
You has to recapitulate the diagenesis of the theory too.
Latent genes are going to be the next theory that goes the way of recapitulation.
Total BS (paleontologists learned that modern birds, including chickens, descended from dinosaurs) they wish it were true, but wishing is not science.
They figured this one out last year. It was the egg.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/05/26/chicken.egg/
Where did the egg come from?
Shudder. Sounds like someone wants to make the Island of Dr. Moreau a reality.
Thought so. No answer says it all. Go back to DC.
A Red Junglefowl somewhere in South Asia, possibly Gallus gallus spadiceus. Does that answer your question?
Where did the Red Junglefowl come from?
Ah, now that's a different question. All extant junglefowl are descended from primitive junglefowl which emerged as the genus Gallus in Eastern Europe in the Pleistocene; they're all members of the pheasant family.
We can go back up the evolutionary ladder to prokaryotes if you'd like, but I think I've answer your "chicken and egg" question.
So easy to state that the egg came from the junglefowl but it gets extremely difficult (impossible) to backtrack that egg all the way back to....to....what?
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