Watch out Fido, Squawkasaurus Rex just might take your place as man's best friend. According to paleontologist Jack Horner — a long-term adviser to the Jurassic Park franchise and the inspiration for the original film's protagonist Alan Grant — real, living, pet dinosaurs may not be as fictitious as they seem.
As Live Science reports, Horner admits that Jurassic Park's premise — to create dinosaurs from fossilized DNA — is unlikely. However, all modern birds carry sizeable chunks of dino DNA, probably more than they'll ever find in fossils, says Horner, whose lab at Montana State University has been experimenting with bird DNA alteration for more than 10 years.
"The proof of concept has been accomplished," Horner said. "We can get teeth into a bird and just recently a team from Yale and Harvard have managed to retro-engineer [a bird's] beak back into a dinosaur-looking mouth. So we basically have the tail to reinstate, and to transform the wings back into an arm and hand."
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While dinosaurs the size and caliber of Jurassic World's ferocious stars are far off, a "poodle-sized", chicken-like dino might not be, though Horner notes it's tough to estimate.
"We might find a couple of these genes tomorrow or it might take 10 years," Horner said. "There is just no way to predict."
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