Scientists attempting to hack chicken DNA to “reverse-evolve” a dinosaur from an embryo.
From the story at Wired:
Hints of long-extinct creatures, echoes of evolution past, occasionally emerge in real life—they’re called atavisms, rare cases of individuals born with characteristic features of their evolutionary antecedents. Whales are sometimes born with appendages reminiscent of hind limbs. Human babies sometimes enter the world with fur, extra nipples, or, very rarely, a true tail. Horner’s plan, in essence, is to start off by creating experimental atavisms in the lab. Activate enough ancestral characteristics in a single chicken, he reasons, and you’ll end up with something close enough to the ancestor to be a ‘saurus’…Already, researchers have found tantalizing clues that at least some ancient dinosaur characteristics can be reactivated.
Fascinating. Or something.
The Chiles Files 