Dinosaurs are not only seen on the big screen in blockbuster movies like “Jurassic World” or "Dino-Riders" cartoons. Actually, dino-descendants still live among humans today in the form of birds all over the world.
A group of researchers from Universidad de Chile have made a huge breakthrough in showing the evolutionary changes that occurred from dinosaur to bird by making genetic modifications on chicken embryos. Simply put, they are growing a dinosaur leg, which is a first in 65 million years.
Previous experiments on chickens have already been conducted to bring out their dormant dinosaur traits. In 2015, a research team from the U.S. was able to make embryos grow “dinosaur-like beaks.”
In 2015, the team from Chile was able to make their chicken embryos grow dinosaur-like feet. This new study, which was published in Evolution, tried to isolate a maturation gene called IHH, or Indian Hedgehog, allowed them to make the chicken's fibula grow as long as its tibia.
Some avian dinosaurs (dinosaurs that could fly) had very distinctive long leg bones. But this feature became shorter and shorter over the course of evolution and modern day chickens' fibulas naturally do not connect to their ankles anymore.
By suppressing the IHH gene, the researchers were able to bring back this ancestral trait.
"The experiments are focused on single traits to test specific hypotheses. Not only do we know a great deal about bird development, but also about the dinosaur-bird transition, which is well-documented by the fossil record. This leads naturally to hypotheses on the evolution of development, that can be explored in the lab,” said one of the team members, Alexander Vargas.
But don't expect to see dinosaur-chickens running around a coop any time in the near future. None of the embryos involved in these studies survived to the hatchling stage.
