# De-extinct T-Rex Synthetically? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 11, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423 "2013-04-11T17:26:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2013, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/41 "2013-04-13T23:29:04Z")
> [@Darwins\_Finch](#): > > Or, we could [read that](http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/7803373/Fossil-DNA-expiry-date-found) Whoa Nellie…hold your horses there, Mr. **Finch**. There’s so much wrong with your last post, I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, a friend of mine heard from a guy, who heard from a gal, who heard from another guy who just happens to be a very prominent conspiracy theorist, highly regarded by his peers, that there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence that there are Tyrannosaurus Rex currently living amongst a nation of Big Feet in Saskatchewan. Furthermore…Australian researchers? Really? Those Aussie scientists can’t even handle a little[bunny rabbit problem](http://www.rabbitfreeaustralia.org.au/rabbit_problem.html)! ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 3:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/42 "2013-04-14T03:13:03Z")
> [@Darwins\_Finch](#): > > Or, we could [read that](http://www.stuff.co.nz/science/7803373/Fossil-DNA-expiry-date-found) And you could notice that I aknowledged in my post that DNA itself wouldn’t survive. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/43 "2013-04-14T03:21:47Z")
Which is kinda the point…no DNA, no de-extincting anything. Sure, we might be able to cobble together a Syntho-Rex[sup]TM[/sup] someday out of a combination of assorted selective breeding, DNA from extant organisms, and synthetic genes, but the point is it won’t be a _Tyrannosaurus rex_. Not even a new species of _Tyrannosaurus_. It will be a new creature entirely; contrary to the popular maxim, there’s more to _being_ a duck than looking, walking and quacking like one. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 3:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/44 "2013-04-14T03:53:03Z")
Such as a nine-inch corkscrew penis . . . ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/45 "2013-04-14T04:43:00Z")
> [@Darwins\_Finch](#): > > Which is kinda the point…no DNA, no de-extincting anything. . Read my examples. You can’t know what informations about the DNA or the living creature we’ll be able to collect with whatever technology we’ll develop or knowledge we’ll acquire during the next 100 years. We’re certainly a very long way from being able to extract all the information there is to extract from fossils, DNA of successor species, etc… ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/46 "2013-04-14T06:28:04Z")
We’ll probably be able to create a realistic-looking fully-mobile robotic T-Rex before we can make a genetic facsimile. ---
**Author:** ![snailboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/47 "2013-04-14T19:36:31Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > We’ll probably be able to create a realistic-looking fully-mobile robotic T-Rex before we can make a genetic facsimile. I can easily imagine a robotic T-Rex in the next 30 years, so that wouldn’t preclude a genetic facsimile in the next 100. What **clairobscur** is saying is that even though the data appears to us to be gone, perhaps it left some kind of shadow and we’ll be able to figure out how to detect that in the distant future, just as we can oftentimes read data from a hard drive even after it has been deleted. A hundred years is a long time in the advancement of technology. ---
**Author:** ![clairobscur](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/839c29/32.png) [@clairobscur](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/clairobscur)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/48 "2013-04-14T20:24:49Z")
> [@snailboy](#): > > What **clairobscur** is saying is that even though the data appears to us to be gone, perhaps it left some kind of shadow and we’ll be able to figure out how to detect that in the distant future, just as we can oftentimes read data from a hard drive even after it has been deleted. A hundred years is a long time in the advancement of technology. Right. You expressed it much better than I did. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/49 "2013-04-14T20:54:13Z")
> [@snailboy](#): > > I can easily imagine a robotic T-Rex in the next 30 years, so that wouldn’t preclude a genetic facsimile in the next 100. > > What **clairobscur** is saying is that even though the data appears to us to be gone, perhaps it left some kind of shadow and we’ll be able to figure out how to detect that in the distant future, just as we can oftentimes read data from a hard drive even after it has been deleted. A hundred years is a long time in the advancement of technology. That’s not really a good analogy, because there was never a time when we couldn’t read data that had been “deleted” from a hard drive. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/50 "2013-04-14T20:56:59Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > It would still be an approximation without RNA, which helps regulate gene expression. We’d otherwise be guessing at how T-Rex genes actually work. And RNA decays even faster than DNA. And who knows what other cellular structures you’d need for the task. Huh? All RNA sequences are transcribed from genomic DNA, and there isn’t any heritable information in RNA sequences\*. We could learn some useful things from the transcriptome, but it wouldn’t be necessary for reconstructing the genome. There are various sources of epigenetic information (heritable stuff that’s not DNA), but RNA _sequence_ is not one of them. \*except for viruses ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2013, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/51 "2013-04-14T21:05:38Z")
I’m assuming the idea is to look at quantitative RNA levels to give us some idea about gene regulation, which might theoretically be handy to know. But we certainly don’t have the technology to make use of that information right now. ---
**Author:** ![snailboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/97f17d/32.png) [@snailboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snailboy)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2013, 1:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/52 "2013-04-15T01:26:31Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > That’s not really a good analogy, because there was never a time when we couldn’t read data that had been “deleted” from a hard drive. I don’t simply mean deleted as in the file descriptor removed but the file overwritten. If we’ve been able to do that since hard drives were invented… well you can see what I’m getting at. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2013, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/53 "2013-04-19T21:14:16Z")
Others have mentioned the difficulty in turning a chicken into a facsimile of one of its ancestors. But in reality, it’s even more complicated than that: A T. rex isn’t an ancestor of a chicken. You’d have to go back all the way to whatever the common ancestor of a T. rex and a chicken is, and then go forward from there along a different evolutionary path. ---
**Author:** ![Zebra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c0e974/32.png) [@Zebra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zebra)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2013, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/54 "2013-04-20T05:03:44Z")
Could they make a T-Rex with long usable arms and, no they wouldn’t, hands?!?! They would never make a T-Rex that could solve a Rubic’s Cube. Would they? ---
**Author:** ![Gilbert1984](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Gilbert1984](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gilbert1984)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2013, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/55 "2013-04-20T11:55:35Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Others have mentioned the difficulty in turning a chicken into a facsimile of one of its ancestors. But in reality, it’s even more complicated than that: A T. rex isn’t an ancestor of a chicken. You’d have to go back all the way to whatever the common ancestor of a T. rex and a chicken is, and then go forward from there along a different evolutionary path. The trick is to avoid replicating the GOP en route ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2013, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/56 "2013-04-25T03:55:06Z")
> [@snailboy](#): > > I don’t simply mean deleted as in the file descriptor removed but the file overwritten. If we’ve been able to do that since hard drives were invented… well you can see what I’m getting at. It was actually easier in the past, as older hard drives were more sloppy, to put it in layman’s terms. They left more traces behind. The higher density of data means that hard drives had to get more precise. I do understand the point you were trying to make, though. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2013, 7:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423/57 "2013-04-25T07:28:29Z")
> [@Zebra](#): > > They would never make a T-Rex that could solve a Rubic’s Cube. Would they? Think [bigger](http://smartassradio.com/wp-content/gallery/site-images/dinosaur-jet.jpg). Well, that or T-Rex cavalry, we haven’t decided yet. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/de-extinct-t-rex-synthetically/655423.md?page=2)