Genetic Viability of Jurassic World and others in the Jurassic Park Series

I watched Jurassic World yesterday and I enjoyed it immensely. 
     So naturally I’m more bothered than usual about people complaining that the series isn’t ‘scientifically correct because those genetics aren’t possible and velociraptors aren’t how they should be and now they know better they should change things.’ 
     I'm not saying that in real life that DNA's half-life is long enough to bring back dinosaurs. (That has to purely be a suspension of belief). Rather, the complaints that people actually make are odd if one just sits back to think about them.

This incorrect view is the product of not knowing enough about genetics. If you genetically engineer something as complex as an animal, they aren’t going to be exactly the same and there will be changes. Change the DNA of anything and there will be significant changes.

Before I even go into the genetics (one of my three greatest passions) of the situation, there is a simple marketing explanation for the velociraptors being bigger than their skeletons show.

      The velociraptor is iconic: if you know about dinosaurs, it is highly unlikely that you won’ know about the velociraptor with that deadly claw. Yet dinosaurs are also known for being massive, so having tiny dinosaurs would be odd, so they were made to be human size. The size of a Utahraptor. People say it should be corrected. But for the sake of continuity and genetics, it has (rightfully) been kept the same.

      Then there’s the whole feather fiasco. ‘There’s evidence that some dinosaurs have feathers so the dinosaurs in the films should be given feathers. Birds evolved from dinosaurs so dinosaurs should have feathers’.

      No. Theropod dinosaurs (velociraptor/t-rex etc.) are the ancestors of birds, so birds are not a reason for things like diplodocus and ankylosaur for having feathers. But yes, it is highly likely that a lot of theropods had feathers. It would too simplistic to generalise this to all therpods.

Further, feathers could have been removed in most cases. In the case of the feathered males in the third film, this can be explained because it’s highly likely that given chance to breed without human intervention (as the dinosaurs were in the third film), the feathers could have ‘re-evolved’ in that the genetic alterations would have been to disinhibit the feather genes from creating feathers rather than removing said genes completely.

      Also birds often evolve to leave some bits of their bodies free of feathers. Vultures, for example, have no feathers on their head. Also, feathers alter within species by sex (the most striking example being Indian and Javan peafowl) which shows that genes with feathers can vary significantly, so having the genes ‘turned off’ is likewise possible. So it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that it is very much possible for some theropods to have lost their feathers.

      Thus, as the dinosaurs could have had feathers but there’s little certainty of which ones do, it’s understandable that the movie produces kept the dinosaurs looking the same without feathers, relying on continuity rather than speculation with little definitive answers.

Of course, it’s not 100% accurate, but the reason why people complain is invalid. The rationale is really quite simple.

      In the first film, you find out that the dinosaur DNA strands aren’t complete, so they were filled with frog and lizard DNA. This would heavily alter how a dinosaur would look and behave. This alone can justify why the velociraptors are too big.

      Further, if you add the DNA of a larger animal into a smaller one, there is a dramatic increase of the muscle and bone growth they will then exhibit. Also think about how many dog breed there are. They’ve all been bred from wolves in a very short amount of time. Think of the diversity. If an animal within the same species can show that much diversity, such as in size, then why can’t the velociraptors?

Could the DNA have been extracted from the mosquitos in the amber in the first place? Surely the DNA would have broken down? We’ll look at amber-ice and the t-rex bone marrow discovery in 2005.

      Amber-ice to start. But think about when things are preserved in amber. It’s not an imprint/changing of substances like a fossil, so nothing’s been broken down. It’s not like a human burial that’s dug up thousands of years later where the air has caused reactions. The mosquitos were perfectly preserved, just like it had been frozen and preserved in ice like that baby mammoth and various Buddhist monks who are found in the lotus position, dead and frozen high up on an icy mountain.

      Now for the t-rex bone marrow discovery in 2005. At death, iron (which is usually contained and controlled) is released into the body and, as dinosaurs had a large amount of iron in their bodies (to aid with respiration), a lot of iron was released into this t-rex’s body. Iron ties proteins (e.g. DNA) into knots which makes the tissues more resistant to decay and thus preserving the tissues and the DNA.

      So the fact the DNA can withstand millions of years without breaking down and that the DNA in the films came from a perfectly preserved mosquito in amber does suggest that the dinosaur DNA would be intact enough so that the animals could be cloned/recreated to a degree.

GENETICS RANT OVER.

That was fun for me.