{"id":468,"date":"2009-11-27T19:36:06","date_gmt":"2009-11-28T03:36:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostlynf.wordpress.com\/?p=468"},"modified":"2009-11-27T19:36:06","modified_gmt":"2009-11-28T03:36:06","slug":"dinosaur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/?p=468","title":{"rendered":"Not Digging the Dinos"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"dinobooks3210\"<\/a>I enjoy a good dinosaur book as much as any former nine-year old, but was honestly disappointed with two new dino books this year.<\/p>\n

How to Build a Dinosaur<\/strong><\/em> by well-known paleontologist Jack Horner, was the first.\u00a0 The author’s name caught my eye immediately and the “Extinction doesn’t have to be forever” subtitle paired with a cover image of a dino paw breaking out of an egg shell stirred thoughts of recreating an extinct beast a la Jurassic Park.<\/p>\n

Horner’s discussion of fossil finds, genetics, and pure science kept me reading, but his end game — seeking funding to manipulate a chicken’s embryonic growth and simulate a dinosaur — was anti-climactic.\u00a0 I’m not saying it wasn’t an interesting idea; it just wasn’t the science I had expected.<\/p>\n

It’s true that chickens host many genes inherited from dinosaurs.\u00a0 And some inactive genes can be prodded to activate.\u00a0 But much of the old genome (the dinosaur gene set) did not get passed down and no amount of embryonic poking will recover it.\u00a0 A manipulated chick would become a strange little chicken — not a dinosaur — no matter what the ancient relationship.<\/p>\n

The other disappointment, Grave Secrets of Dinosaurs<\/strong><\/em> by Phillip Manning, was interesting but written too soon.\u00a0 Its story is unfinished.\u00a0 Dakota, a hadrosaur mummy unearthed in the Hell Creek Badlands in 2004-2005, was a remarkable find: a dinosaur still wrapped in a pebbled blanket of skin after 65+ million years!<\/p>\n

Manning gives a great amount of background information on long term preservation — both the soft tissue mummy type and the more familiar mineralized fossil sort.\u00a0 And he shares his understandable excitement regarding the dinosaur remains that appear to yield more than just stone bones.<\/p>\n

Manning takes us into the field during the excavation, plastering, and transport of the huge dinosaur.\u00a0 He also covers the tests done by CT scanners and electron microscopes.\u00a0 The science presented is fascinating.\u00a0 The preliminary results (showing that original biomolecules survived millions of years!) are tantalizing.<\/p>\n

But that’s what prompted my disappointment.\u00a0 They were preliminary <\/em>results.\u00a0 More scans and more tests were needed.\u00a0 In fact, Manning ends his book before the team determined whether Dakota was male or female — an expectation remarkable in itself.\u00a0 The studies aren’t finished.\u00a0 Most of the science is undone, conclusions unknown.\u00a0 The book was published prematurely.<\/p>\n

The dinosaur mummy awaits more scans and more tests, but what is a reader to do at the end of the book?\u00a0 Preliminary results leave you hungry.\u00a0 It’s as if Miss Marple had assembled the suspects in a room following a fascinating murder investigation only to have the last few pages torn away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I enjoy a good dinosaur book as much as any former nine-year old, but was honestly disappointed with two new dino books this year. How to Build a Dinosaur by well-known paleontologist Jack Horner, was the first.\u00a0 The author’s name … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[101,102,170,267],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-dinosaur","tag-dinosaurs","tag-paleontology","tag-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stevecampion.com\/MostlyNF\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}