Recreate dinosaur faces from chickens

After years of research, the scientific community has successfully recreated a bone-based dinosaur component of the chicken's body.

Research to recreate dinosaur faces from chickens

Revival of dinosaurs, which is considered an idea that only appears in sci-fi films. However, the moment you can see a flesh-and-blood dinosaur in the immediate future will not be too far away. Scientists have successfully reproduced the mouth of this organism for the first time on chicken embryos in the laboratory.

Accordingly, researchers at Yale University have modified the genes of chickens while in embryos and the word, "magic" in how to form their skulls. In it, the part where the experiment was conducted was the chicken mine - which evolved from the mouth of the dinosaurs more than 65 million years ago.

Specifically, the team led by Dr. Bhullar extracted DNA from different species , including the American crocodile and studied each gene segment to find specific functions of each part of the genome. Later, they created variation in chicken embryos when using small molecular inhibitors, eliminating the activity of some embryonic proteins.

CT scans of skulls of normal chicken embryos (left), modified chicken embryos (middle), and American crocodile embryos (right)

As a result, the beak returned to its mouth shape with the bone structure of the Velociraptor or Archeopteryx dinosaurs. According to Dr. Bhullar, the surprising thing here is only by changing a simple development mechanism, the group Unexpected results were obtained.

The jaw of the dinosaurs has undergone many changes to become a bird-like form today

Sharing with the press, Bhullar said that his team did not change DNA , but only inhibited some proteins produced by genes that could 'turn' or 'off' during the face-forming process. Specifically, they stopped the molecular activities in the middle of the process of forming the face of the embryo, thereby making it look more like a dinosaur's face.

Because of the ethical principles in science, after the creation of chicken dinosaur embryos, the team did not let them grow into complete chickens. In the future, however, this method could allow a bird's embryo to grow into an animal that looks like a dinosaur.