De-extinction: Is "Jurassic Park" a real possibility?

(CBS News) Twenty years ago, "Jurassic Park" seemed like pure science fiction. Scientists in the movie retrieved ancient DNA from bones, and the movie fantasized dinosaurs could be brought back to Earth.

Not only is "Jurassic Park" back in theaters next month in 3D, but it turns out some of the science fiction might be about to become reality.

Oamenii de ştiinţă vor să readucă la viaţă 22 de specii dispărute

Specialiștii diferitelor ramuri ale Științei au discutat recent, sub umbrela unei conferințe susținute de National Geographic, posibilitatea, premisele, mijloacele și implicațiile etice ale  „resurecției” unor specii de animale dispărute, în cadrul unui proces denumit de ei, în traducere aproximativă, „dezextincție”.

Saga of ‘the Hobbit’ highlights a science in crisis

To state the obvious: human evolution is not without its drama – and the latest salvo in the ongoing Hobbit, or Homo floresiensis, battle confirms this yet again.

The 2004 announcement of Homo floresiensis – dubbed “the Hobbit” – marked the beginning of a saga all too frequent in the rarefied field of human evolution.

Immediately upon its announcement, anthropologists divided along long-entrenched party lines to support or oppose the find as something novel to science.

Окаменелые останки огромной древней птицы найдены в Перу

Речь идет, скорее всего, о гигантском пеликане, высота которого достигала 1,8 метра. "Найденные ископаемые останки даже сохранили следы кожи, это сенсационная находка, так у нас нет задокументированных данных о чем-либо похожем ни в одной стране", - сказал палеонтолог Клаус Хеннингер.

МЕХИКО, 16 мар — РИА Новости, Дмитрий Знаменский. Сенсационную находку сделали перуанские палеонтологи: на юге страны ими обнаружены окаменелые останки древней птицы, жившей примерно 35 миллионов лет назад, сообщают в пятницу местные СМИ.

В Китае обнаружили древних четырёхкрылых птиц

"Всё равно, что пытаться найти ещё дымящийся пистолет на месте преступления", – говорит профессор Марк Норелл (Mark Norell) из Американского музея естествознания (American Museum of Natural History) о попытках учёных обнаружить свидетельства способов передвижения древних птиц, обитавших на планете во времена динозавров.

Известно, что все современные птицы обладают перьевым покровом. Расположение и конфигурация перьев может отличаться в зависимости от вида, однако общим является отсутствие оперения на задних конечностях. Каково же было удивление учёных из Поднебесной, когда они обнаружили окаменелые останки 11 особей, имеющих возраст 100-150 миллионов лет, и обладающих "солидным" оперением на всех четырёх конечностях.

Were Dinosaurs Destined to Be Big

In the evolutionary long run, small critters tend to evolve into bigger beasts-at least according to the idea attributed to paleontologist Edward Cope, now known as Cope's Rule. Using the latest advanced statistical modeling methods, a new test of this rule as it applies dinosaurs shows that Cope was right-sometimes.

"For a long time, dinosaurs were thought to be the example of Cope's Rule," says Gene Hunt, curator in the Department of Paleobiology at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Washington, D.C. Other groups, particularly mammals, also provide plenty of classic examples of the rule, Hunt says.

Huge deposit of Jurassic turtle remains found in China

Paleontologists from University of Tübingen and Berlin Natural History Mu-seum can make first statistical analysis of ancient species. 

"Bones upon bones, we couldn't believe our eyes," says Oliver Wings, paleontologist and guest researcher at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin. He was describing the spectacular find of some 1800 fossilized mesa chelonia turtles from the Jurassic era in China's northwest province of Xinjiang. Wings and the University of Tübingen's fossil turtle specialist, Dr. Walter Joyce, were working with Chinese paleontologists there in 2008. The results of their further work in 2009 and 2011 have just been published in the German journal "Naturwissenschaften." 

Nunavut's mysterious ancient life could return by 2100

Global climate change means that recently discovered ancient forests in Canada's extreme north could one day return, according to Alexandre Guertin-Pasquier of the University of Montreal's Department of Geography, who is presenting his findings at the Canadian Paleontology Conference in Toronto

"According to the data model, climate conditions on Bylot Island will be able to support the kinds of trees we find in the fossilized forest that currently exist there, such as willow, pine and spruce.

Roland Gangloff, grandfather of Alaska paleontology has new book

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - For 15 pivotal years, University of Alaska Fairbanks professor Roland A. Gangloff was the main dinosaur man in Alaska. Starting in the 1980s, he coordinated searches for fossils in places where none had ever been found, discovering or helping to identify fantastical creatures that roamed the Arctic millions of years ago.

Those discoveries helped create a revolution in paleontology and led scientists to reconsider long-held hypotheses- particularly concerning the range and adaptability of dinosaurs. Gangloff's name popped up year after year as the author of scientific papers, the subject of magazine articles or in newspaper stories reporting what the latest digs had uncovered and how the finds were setting standard assumptions on their head.

Paleontology Laboratory

Our History Boone County home to Birthplace of Paleontology

The gigantic bones found long ago in southwestern Boone County shook the minds and beliefs of top scientists east and west of the Atlantic Ocean in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Europeans and Americans had never seen the likes of the massive skeleton of extinct mastodons until French Capt. Charles Lemoyne de Longueil came upon them during a 1739 military expedition at a place called Big Bone Lick.

The bones, molars and tusks that belonged to vanished mastodons and woolly mammoths forced the country’s future third president, Thomas Jefferson, and scientists around the world to recast their beliefs about the workings of nature and the very concept of extinction. Jefferson and others couldn’t comprehend that God, in creating the perfect world of nature, allowed a type of creature to vanish forever.

Boone County home to Birthplace of Paleontology

The gigantic bones found long ago in southwestern Boone County shook the minds and beliefs of top scientists east and west of the Atlantic Ocean in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Europeans and Americans had never seen the likes of the massive skeleton of extinct mastodons until French Capt. Charles Lemoyne de Longueil came upon them during a 1739 military expedition at a place called Big Bone Lick.

Robot Dinosaurs Printed in 3-D Using Fossil Templates

A hobbyist found the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton in New Jersey in 1858, during the era of gentlemen scientists, gas lamps and extremely ruffled skirts. A century and a half later, paleontologists are still working in one dig in the southern portion of the state. Kenneth Lacovara, a paleontologist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, inherited the site from generations of paleontologists before him.

Some of Lacovara's plans for what he finds here, however, are entirely new. Over the past few years, he has started a few projects using the latest technology for paleontology. His latest plans include making robotic dinosaurs using a 3D printer.

Printing dinosaurs: the mad science of new paleontology

In April of this year, I headed out to a marl pit in Clayton, New Jersey to watch a team of Drexel University students and their teacher, Professor Kenneth Lacovara, dig for fossils. Marl, a lime-rich mud, had been mined and used as the 19th century’s leading fertilizer, but since around World War II (with the development of more advanced, synthetic fertilizers), demand for it has steeply lessened, and there aren’t many marl mining businesses left in the US. The marl pits of Southern New Jersey are famous for something else, though: they have been incredibly rich in fossil finds.

In February, Dr. Lacovara had announced that the Paleontology department at Drexel would team up with the Engineering department for what would largely be a novel new project: scanning all of the fossils in the University's collection (including some previously unidentified dinosaurs of Lacovara's own finds in other parts of the world) using a 3D scanner. The Engineering department would then take those scans and use a 3D printer to create 1/10 scale models of the most important bones. But, he reported, that wouldn't be the end of it: they intended, he said, to use those scale polymer "printouts" to model and then engineer fully working limbs, complete with musculature — to create, in effect, a fully accurate robotic dinosaur leg or arm, and eventually, a complete dinosaur.