Scientists Show That Jurassic Park-Style Dinosaur Cloning Couldn't ...

There are quite a few things about the movie Jurassic Park that aren't very scientific. (Like the fact that velociraptors were actually about the size of chickens). But one intriguing aspect of both the film and novel is its very plausible-sounding premise. In the movie, scientists managed to clone dinosaurs by finding dinosaur blood within mosquitoes that had been fossilized in amber. They then used the DNA in the blood to clone the dinosaurs for their park.
In real life, alas, even the very premise of Jurassic Park turns out to be false. That's the conclusion of a group of scientists at the University of Manchester, who've pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the idea that dinosaur DNA can be extracted from insects in amber.
In their research, which was published this week, the research team examined insects that had been preserved in copal, which is an intermediate stage from tree resin to its final form as fossilized amber. The samples they used were from copal that ranged in age from 60 years to 10,600 years. But when they examined those samples with the best DNA sequencing methods known, they were unable to find any ancient DNA at all.
This same research team has successfully retrieved ancient DNA from other types of preserved life forms, so the fault isn't the method. This also goes further to demonstrate that claims that DNA had been obtained from amber in the 1990s, which had never been independently replicated, were probably the result of contamination.
"This raises further doubts about claims of DNA extraction from fossil insects in amber, many millions of years older than copal," the researchers conclude in their paper. They go on further to state that their "inability to detect aDNA in copal specimens, despite using sensitive next generation methods, suggest that there is no protected environment in this type of material, and that DNA survival in resin inclusions is no better, and perhaps worse, than that in air-dried museum insects."
Last October, a different team of researchers showed that DNA degrades pretty rapidly, with a half-life of only about 521 years. That already raised serious questions about the ability to successfully clone ancient forms of life. This new finding pretty much confirms that possibility, unless some currently unknown type of natural DNA preservation is discovered.
"Unfortunately, the Jurassic Park scenario must remain in the realms of fiction," said lead researcher Dr. David Penney in a statement.