Hoax--British Scientists Clone Dinosaur

Hoax -British Scientists Clone Dinosaur

Scientists at Liverpool's John Moore University have successfully cloned a dinosaur, a spokesman from the university said yesterday.

The dinosaur, a baby Apatosaurus nicknamed “Spot,” is currently being incubated at the University's College of Veterinary Medicine.
 
The scientists extracted DNA from preserved Apatosaurus fossils, which were on display at the university’s museum of natural science. Once the DNA was harvested, scientists injected it into a fertile ostrich womb.
 
“Ostriches share a lot of genetic traits with dinosaurs,” said Dr. Gerrard Jones, a biology professor at LJMU and the project’s leading scientist. “Their eggshell microstructures are almost identical to those of the Apatosaurus. That’s why the cloning worked so perfectly.”
 
Those in the scientific community say the dinosaur cloning – the first ever of its kind – is a milestone for genetic engineering.

“I used to think this kind of thing could only happen in the movies,” said Dr. Gemma Sheridan, a LJMU chemistry professor. “But we’re making it happen right here in our lab. It’s astounding.”


 
 
The cloning attracted the attention of a wide variety of animal rights activists and religious groups. They claim that animal cloning is unethical and immoral.

PETA President Craig Farmer criticized the scientists for performing potentially life threatening threats on a new species.
 
“These scientists brought an animal from the Jurassic age back to life – just to watch it suffer!” he said.
 
But Dr. Sheridan doesn’t seem to be bothered by the activists’ quibbling. She says that the opportunities afforded by dinosaur cloning are endless.
 
Within ten years, we could repopulate the world with dinosaurs,” she said.

As of press time, the dinosaur is in stable condition. Scientists plan to run more tests on him today.
 
 
http://news-hound.biz/british-scientists-clone-dinosaur/

Talk about opening a can o' worms, from an ethical standpoint, just because we can do something should we. Perhaps if it were something relatively recently extinct, like say the dodo or passenger pigeon you might, MIGHT make a case, but a dinosaur that's been extinct for tens of thousands of years ... I say no.

Ummmmm. Jurassic Park.    

I agree Kevin we have no business creating something froom the past, it's why it's the past.      

I'm just hoping they decided to get an early start on April 1st!

 Dino.... Maybe a new Flintstones movie....   doesn't surprise me at all. Hmmm and probably using our tax dollars to.

OMG Just leave it be, poor little guy will grow up with no one to eat. So I wonder if they have a island picked out yet?

You guys know that's a baby kangaroo hey?

Never saw a baby kangaroo ... so no I wouldn't. I WAS wondering what it could actually be.

Yes that's a baby skippy! I read this article a few days ago and my biggest issue with it is the fact that they WANT to bring back dinosaurs on a large scale! I mean why would they do that? It's pretty scary!

Ugly little buggers they are ... I had a feeling it was some sort of mammal. Reptiles are generally born looking pretty much like the adult critter, and it definitely wasn't a bird. But it sure the heck wasn't anything I had ever seen.

If I looked like that I'd find a pouch to hide in too LOL!

hahahahahahah oh they are way worse when they are smaller, like little grubs with legs blah! So beautiful when they are fully formed and have hair on them LOL!

People starving in the world, the economy is going to hell and we are creating creatures that can eat us?

  

Maybe we can feed the little guy some "guru's". 
 

Yep!! It's ridiculous!

The scary part is that this is theoretically possible today. Not perfected, certainly not practical, but the science is there, or at least pretty much so.

On a more positive note, I was reading today that a treatment for regenerating failed discs in the back using your own adult stem cells is approved for human clinical trials, so we may see a practical treatment for a whole lot of chronic back pain sufferers in 3 to 5 years.

They are using your own stem cells for curing MS too Kevin! Lots of amazing break throughs happening!

Also growing simple organs. No hearts, lung etc yet, all they have had some experimental success with injecting stem cells into damaged heart tissue, but they are growing and implanting trachea, bladders and other similar organs. Very cool stuff.

Wow, pretty soon you may not be able to tell if   your talking to a human being or to a complete clone. SCARY comes to mind.

Yes I think it's scary too Saint. No good can come from cloning in my opinion.

Cloning I agree, it's scary, biomedical applications that could save lives, are another story.

FROM SNOPES.COM

The story was easily spotted as nothing more than a hoax, however, for a variety of reasons:

• First of all, the NewsHound web site was not a news site at all, and it had, in place of reporting on actual events, reproduced a number of other hoaxes and spoofs as if they were real news, such as long-debunked stories about a Chinese man suing his wife over giving birth to an ugly baby, Apple paying Microsoft [sic] a $1 billion debt all in nickels, a planetary alignment causing gravity on Earth to be negated for five minutes, and Google Earth helping to locate a woman who had been stranded on a desert island for seven years.
  
• Second, the Newshound article's photograph of the baby dinosaur was not an image of a dinosaur at all; it was a repurposed picture of a baby kangaroo which was originally published by an Australian community group to accompany an article about rescuing injured macropods (kangaroos and wallabies) and is actually an illustration of an unfurred joey (newborn kangaroo):
  
  
  image: http://www.granitenet.com.au/assets/images/GBWC/PB222344.JPG
  
  
  
• Finally, no other reports of this story or any other corroborating information related to it has been reported by the mainstream press or any other credible news outlet.
  

Read more at http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/dinosaurclone.asp#VgYSwOK21QFFsaSz.99