SHOULD SCIENTISTS BRING BACK DINOSAURS?

IN THE JURASSIC PARK MOVIES, scientists bring dinosaurs to life.

- KATHRYN HULICK

How? They manage to find dinosaur DNA preserved inside ancient mosquitoes that had sucked up dinosaur blood. DNA is sort of like a recipe. It contains the instructions cells use to build and maintain a living body. If scientists could get living cells to follow a dinosaur DNA recipe, they might be able to bring a dinosaur to life. However, the mosquito trick only worked in the movies. The last dinosaurs died out more than 65 million years ago—and DNA just doesn’t survive that long. Beth Shapiro, an expert in ancient DNA at the University of California, Santa Cruz, says that bringing back dinosaurs from ancient DNA is “completely impossible.”