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00:00The dinosaurs lived for 165 million years.
00:04They died out 66 million years ago.
00:07There are more than 1,000 different known species of dinosaur,
00:10and the fossil record is still growing.
00:13So, too, is the desire to see these beasts again.
00:17So, would you visit a real Jurassic Park if it opened tomorrow?
00:23As with many Crichton novels, Jurassic Park is a speculative story that dives deep into science.
00:28Biology sits at its heart, specifically the subfield of genetics and cloning.
00:33In general, the true science of genetics dates back to the experiments of Gregor Mendel,
00:38a biologist and monk born into the Austrian Empire in 1822.
00:43Mendel spent the 1850s and 60s researching pea plants in particular.
00:48His goal was to establish rules of heredity traits while crossbreeding them,
00:52but his research didn't really make a splash in the scientific community until the turn of the century.
00:57A lot has happened since then, though,
00:59and research into genetics has progressed on a somewhat parallel path in the interim.
01:04Modern-day studies are fixated on genes,
01:07the building blocks within cells that contain the blueprints for biological traits.
01:11They're linked to, but not the same as, DNA.
01:14It might be said that if genes are the blueprints, then DNA is the pencil used to draw the building.
01:20All known organisms, from a microscopic virus to the largest dinosaurs of the ancient past,
01:25are built out of DNA, and therefore wholly dependent on genes.
01:30DNA can also be thought of as complex particle chains,
01:33with these chains containing all the genetic instructions that eventually lead
01:37to the development, function, and reproduction of all life as we know it.
01:41The first steps towards discovering DNA occurred only a few years after Mendel's pea plants.
01:47A Swiss researcher named Friedrich Miescher discovered nucleic acid inside white blood cells in 1869.
01:54A Russian researcher, Phoebus Levine, developed ideas on the structure of DNA,
01:59first hypothesizing the existence of nucleotides in 1919.
02:03Various scientists each found pieces of the puzzle in the mid-20th century.
02:07James Watson and Francis Crick are most famously credited with the discovery of DNA.
02:13There was a great deal of work and a great number of prior breakthroughs before them,
02:17and much of even what they achieved is now more widely thought to have been made possible
02:21only thanks to the concurrent research made by the lesser-known Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins.
02:27Nevertheless, understanding the structure and function of DNA
02:31was central to expanding upon Gregor Mendel's early dabbling with what would come to be known as cloning.
02:37At its simplest level, the purpose of cloning is to recreate the genome of one organism inside of another.
02:44Sometimes the goal is to enhance or copy specific physical traits.
02:48Other times, scientists are looking to create an entirely identical organism.
02:52Interestingly, cloning has almost as long a history as its parent field of genetics.
02:57Although the parameters are still up for debate, the first modern experiment into cloning took place in 1885.
03:04Germany's Hans Drisch took simple two-celled sea urchin embryos and physically shook them to separate those two cells.
03:12It was found that, from that point forward, each then split and developed into an individual urchin.
03:18Afterwards, and for the next century or so, chemists and biologists intensely studied embryonic cells.
03:24By the late 1920s, the importance of the cell nucleus in embryonic development had been realized,
03:31and around the same time that Watson and Crick were publishing their research in the 1950s,
03:35other scientists, Robert Briggs and Thomas King, were already transferring embryonic nuclei from one frog cell to another.
03:43In the eyes of many, this marks the first time that an animal was ever truly cloned.
03:48Fast forward to the mid-1990s, though, during and just after the time of Crichton's Jurassic Park, and the field jets into overdrive.
03:56By now, scientists are about six years into their journey to map the human genome.
04:01DNA and RNA research in general has been around for almost 50 years.
04:06Nuclear transfer research has progressed to mammals.
04:09Embryonic cells can now be cultured.
04:11Specific genes can be spliced into or out of the nucleus, even if we don't yet fully understand the implications.
04:18In 1996, three years after Jurassic Park the movie shattered box office records,
04:23researchers in Scotland shocked the world by introducing us all to Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.
04:31Dolly was created using somatic cell nuclear transfer.
04:35The nucleus of an adult cell, an udder cell in Dolly's case, was transferred into an egg cell without a nucleus.
04:42The eventual result was a perfect genetic copy.
04:45Effectively, Dolly was the genetic twin sister of one of her biological mothers,
04:50and in the years since her birth, we've seen a growing list of animals cloned in the same or in a similar way.
04:56In real life up to this point, the applications of cloning are wide.
05:00It has led to breakthroughs in medical and pharmaceutical research.
05:04Some envision a future when fully cloned organs will keep animals and perhaps even humans alive indefinitely.
05:11Cloned food was first approved by the FDA in the US in 2008.
05:15The concept of lab-grown meat is no longer all that alien, and a scaled-up lab meat industry is said to be coming over the horizon.
05:23One of the reasons why advocates believe we need it is to reduce the effects of climate change and to slow or reverse the Holocene extinction,
05:31an extinction-level event that scientists believe we're currently in the midst of.
05:35Which brings us back to Jurassic Park.
05:38To contemporary minds, the not-so-sci-fi science of cloning and gene editing could also become one of the best tools to combat humanity's contribution to the Holocene.
05:49Jurassic Park is easily the most prominent pop-culture example of a concept known as de-extinction,
05:55which, in short, involves extracted DNA being injected into the embryo of an extinct animal's closest living relative.
06:02The extinct animal is then brought to term and then effectively resurrected, or so the theory goes.
06:08There have already been some tentative steps towards making this actually happen, though.
06:13For instance, in 2003, the Pyrenean ibex was briefly brought back to life after it had gone extinct shortly before in 2000.
06:22Scientists used cryopreserved skin cells from the last ibex to birth another one, using a domestic goat as a surrogate.
06:30However, of all the clones they tried, only one was actually born, and it only survived for a few minutes.
06:36And crucially, compared to Jurassic Park, the experiment was really started before the species had originally gone extinct,
06:43with scientists deliberately taking cells in preparation for the future.
06:48Nevertheless, there are those who believe a more Spielbergian scenario is possible.
06:52The Harvard professor George Church has emerged as a trailblazer in gene sequencing and editing.
06:58Operating through the biotech firm Colossal, which he co-owns, he received millions in funding in 2021
07:05and has reportedly devised a plan that, if it worked, would truly take the headlines.
07:10Church wants to bring the woolly mammoth back from the dead.
07:13According to projections, it could happen by the end of the 2020s,
07:17with the procedure resting on the fact that the DNA of the mammoth is a 99.6% match to that of the Indian elephant.
07:24Using DNA samples discovered in melted Arctic permafrost, scientists, it's hoped,
07:29will be able to edit the genes of an embryo to make them more mammoth-like and implant the result into an elephant mother.
07:36If successful, that elephant would give birth to the Earth's first woolly mammoth in thousands of years.
07:42What's more, in 2023, Colossal Biosciences announced a similar initiative to bring back the dodo bird as well.
07:49Importantly, there is some debate over the authenticity of the de-extinct animals that Colossal or anyone else might produce.
07:56Because the work is so dependent on the presence and contribution of a closest living species,
08:01it's said that whatever is born will only ever be a copy of a mammoth or a dodo rather than the real thing.
08:07In terms of a real-life Jurassic Park, however, that distinction doesn't really matter.
08:12And if it ever did come to fruition,
08:14then the Colossal experiment would seemingly prove that a dino theme park scenario is possible.
08:19The big challenge, however, would be getting eyeballs on some true dinosaur DNA.
08:24In the Crichton novel, Hammond and his team famously find and extract dinosaur DNA from mosquitoes that have been long frozen in amber.
08:32In real life, it's thought that that just wouldn't be possible.
08:35DNA is extremely fragile, and the prospect of finding intact specimens after tens of millions of years is dicey at best.
08:42One 2012 study, published by the Royal Society, suggests that the half-life of genetic material is only 521 years.
08:50Under the most ideal conditions imaginable, it was calculated that there would be a best-case cutoff of about 6.8 million years.
08:58And in truth, most DNA samples that have been discovered are less than 2 million years old at best.
09:04The dinosaurs breathed their last some 66 million years ago, so all signs are that we'll never have the DNA we'd need.
09:11Even if it were possible to bring them back.
09:14That said, some possible samples have been found before.
09:17It's thought that a hadrosaur skull fragment, unearthed in 2020 for instance, may contain cartilage samples with degraded DNA.
09:25In 2021, a separate team claimed to have extracted DNA from a 125 million year old caudipter expone found in China.
09:34Some scientists have even recounted exactly what happens in Jurassic Park, but in the real world.
09:39Claiming to have extracted ancient DNA from amber.
09:42Although across the board, those studies are disputed.
09:45All in all, reproducing a Jurassic Park in real life actually isn't as crazy as it sounds, in theory.
09:52And unlike in 1990, when Michael Crichton's novel was published, a lot of the technology to make it happen does now exist.
09:59Were scientists able to find ancient enough DNA, and a viable modern-day embryo in which to implant it, then we perhaps would have a dinosaur.
10:08But don't get too excited, because the key letdown, at the moment at least, is that finding that DNA just isn't likely to happen.
10:16Not because we don't have the technology to, but because the DNA most probably no longer exists anywhere at all.
10:23So, barring the freak discovery of a mass dino graveyard that is frozen and perfectly preserved, that's why Jurassic Park is never likely to happen in real life.
10:34An Ice Age park with a mammoth as its main attraction? Maybe, but the T-Rex is too long gone.
10:40Of course, there are some ideas that scientists might one day be able to backtrack through the DNA of living species far enough to recreate a hybrid dinosaur,
10:50rather than to resurrect a real one, but that's for another time.
10:54What do you think? Is there anything we missed?
10:57Let us know in the comments, check out these other clips from Unveiled, and make sure you subscribe and ring the bell for our latest content.