http://pixa.club/en/futurama/season-4/epizod-07-jurassic-bark

snif. So sad.

@Lemons said:

I saw a video today posted on FB by George Takei stating that scientists have DNA and could bring the following back from extinction. His quote was, "Is this how Jurassic Park starts?" What do you think? Do you see only bad things coming from this? Anything unethical about it? Kind of cool and exciting?

1.Dodo- entire population killed for food
2.Heath hen- plentiful in the early 1900s, they were eaten into extinction
3.Caribbean monk seal- hunted into extinction for their oil
4.Irish elk- died out towards end of Ice Age
5.Tasmanian tiger- last one died on 1936
6.Moa (giant flightless bird)- entire population killed for food
7.Aurochs (ancestor of domestic cattle)- died out in 1627
8.Woolly rhino- made it through the Ice Age but couldn't survive hunting
9.Saber-toothed cat- extinct after Ice Age 11,000 years ago
10.Woolly mammal- scientists hope to bring back to life with a surrogate elephant

My answer: I don't see the point of bringing back most of them, and wonder what kind of life they'd have. The only one where I could possibly see a benefit is #2, as an additional food source (if they were able to make many and they multiplied), though I don't know that we really need an extra food source. I don't think animals should be created just as a novelty.

Additional question: If there was no harm to the animal and nothing bad would come from it, which of the ten above would you most like to see first-hand?

Me: 9 (With something between us to protect me!)

Ok I'm assuming this was meant to be tongue in cheek but It isn't possible to bring a species back from extinction.

Before I come up with something sciency here Ms Franken-Lemons, please take this as a warning before you bring back the Wooly Saber Toothed Dogapus

Jurasic Park - Weird Al

@Knixon said:

http://pixa.club/en/futurama/season-4/epizod-07-jurassic-bark

snif. So sad.

That video is 22 minutes long Kernixon!! Could you summarize in a one-page, double-spaced document of 50 words or less?

@CalabrianQueen said:

Ok I'm assuming this was meant to be tongue in cheek but It isn't possible to bring a species back from extinction.

That smarted! I actually didn't mean this thread as a joke, but perhaps the joke's on me. Or maybe I didn't use the best terminology to describe. I did find this, although I haven't had any time to really look through it.

National Geographic De-extinction Info

Anyway, possible or not, I thought it was a fascinating topic and wanted to get people's thoughts, even if we were only discussing hypothetically.

@znexyish said:

Before I come up with something sciency here Ms Franken-Lemons, please take this as a warning before you bring back the Wooly Saber Toothed Dogapus

Jurasic Park - Weird Al

Do I get extra points for having seen him in concert? He didn't throw any saber-toothed cats into the crowd, though.

And if you come up with anything sciency you know I always love hearing from my Znex.

@Lemons said:

@Knixon said:

http://pixa.club/en/futurama/season-4/epizod-07-jurassic-bark

snif. So sad.

That video is 22 minutes long Kernixon!! Could you summarize in a one-page, double-spaced document of 50 words or less?

50 words? We'll see. To be brief you must be familiar with the show. Fry and the others go to a new exhibit of ancient stuff dug up/recreated from Fry's home time, including the pizza parlor he worked at. And there's also the... mummified?... body of the stray dog he kinda adopted and loved, and that loved him. Fry wanted to bring the dog back to life using cloning (although a clone would have no memory of him, etc) until he found out the dog had lived for several years after his departure so he decided to leave it alone. Flashbacks showed that the dog actually waited for him outside the pizza parlor all that time, until it finally died. This was shown over Connie Francis (I think) singing "I Will Wait For You." Heartbreaking.

Okay then Lemons. I skimmed through the Nat. Geo. article you posted and the pro and con addendum to it as well as much of the 600 comments to George Takei's FB post.as I could stand, woo boy there is a whole lots of sciency stuff there to ponder. All I will add is that whatever old DNA is is incubated to bring to life some ye olde species I will propose that it is not a new old species but a brand new one that looks just like the old one. You say Dodo I say Odo lets call the whole de-extinction off. Besides what does Sulu know anyways ? I mean what did he even do on the Enterprise except do some fancy shirtless fencing in that one episode

https://youtu.be/szS3SJDaBGc

How could exact copies - clones - of the original, not be the same species? That's even more exact than regular reproduction. Would you say that each generation of offspring back then was a different species too?

@Knixon said:

How could exact copies - clones - of the original, not be the same species? That's even more exact than regular reproduction. Would you say that each generation of offspring back then was a different species too?

Exact "copies" doesn't make something a species and you clearly don't understand what the definition of species is. One of the conditions required for two organisms to be the same species is the ability to reproduce fertile offspring.

If two members of two prospective species of 99% similar birds are separated by ecological barrier that impedes reproduction those two birds become DIFFERENT species in zoological classification regardless of thier 99% percent similarity.

A " clone" is not reproductively viable in the first place.

@CalabrianQueen said:

@Knixon said:

How could exact copies - clones - of the original, not be the same species? That's even more exact than regular reproduction. Would you say that each generation of offspring back then was a different species too?

An "Exact copy" doesn't make something a species and you clearly don't understand what the definition of species is. One of the conditions required for two organisms to be the same species is the ability to reproduce fertile offspring.

If two members of two prospective species of 99% similar birds are separated by ecological barrier that impedes reproduction those two birds become DIFFERENT species in zoological classification regardless of thier 99% percent similarity.

A " clone" is not reproductively viable in the first place.

I love you, you little nerd.

@CalabrianQueen said:

@Knixon said:

How could exact copies - clones - of the original, not be the same species? That's even more exact than regular reproduction. Would you say that each generation of offspring back then was a different species too?

Exact "copies" doesn't make something a species and you clearly don't understand what the definition of species is. One of the conditions required for two organisms to be the same species is the ability to reproduce fertile offspring.

If two members of two prospective species of 99% similar birds are separated by ecological barrier that impedes reproduction those two birds become DIFFERENT species in zoological classification regardless of thier 99% percent similarity.

A " clone" is not reproductively viable in the first place.

This sounds like some kind of semantic game because one clone is not a "species." Of course no single creature of any kind is a "species" but what's the basis for claiming that two - or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million - clones of both male and female, taken from different DNA samples in different areas for the most possible variety, couldn't reproduce in the usual manner? If you're arguing that clones made now aren't the same "species" since they couldn't reproduce with members of the species from a million years ago because hey, guess what, all the million-year-old individuals are dead! that's definitely just a word game. And would most likely mean that, if such a task were accomplished, it would just change the dictionary definition of "species" again, to something more sensible than it appears some are teaching currently.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone who succeeds in re-creating a previously-extinct species were treated like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwa2FDEaXhQ

Scientists: "Waaah, we changed the definition of 'species' to stop you from doing that, and then you went and did it anyway! Waaahhh!"

@Knixon said:

@Lemons said:

@Knixon said:

http://pixa.club/en/futurama/season-4/epizod-07-jurassic-bark

snif. So sad.

That video is 22 minutes long Kernixon!! Could you summarize in a one-page, double-spaced document of 50 words or less?

50 words? We'll see. To be brief you must be familiar with the show. Fry and the others go to a new exhibit of ancient stuff dug up/recreated from Fry's home time, including the pizza parlor he worked at. And there's also the... mummified?... body of the stray dog he kinda adopted and loved, and that loved him. Fry wanted to bring the dog back to life using cloning (although a clone would have no memory of him, etc) until he found out the dog had lived for several years after his departure so he decided to leave it alone. Flashbacks showed that the dog actually waited for him outside the pizza parlor all that time, until it finally died. This was shown over Connie Francis (I think) singing "I Will Wait For You." Heartbreaking.

Thank you for trying to explain in brief terms. My attention span is not what it used to- look squirrel!

Anyway, I don't think we need to worry about any animal cloned today being the same one that waited faithfully outside the pizza cave for its Neanderthal many eons ago.

And don't poke holes in that sentence. I liked it.

@znexyish said:

Okay then Lemons. I skimmed through the Nat. Geo. article you posted and the pro and con addendum to it as well as much of the 600 comments to George Takei's FB post.as I could stand, woo boy there is a whole lots of sciency stuff there to ponder. All I will add is that whatever old DNA is is incubated to bring to life some ye olde species I will propose that it is not a new old species but a brand new one that looks just like the old one. You say Dodo I say Odo lets call the whole de-extinction off. Besides what does Sulu know anyways ? I mean what did he even do on the Enterprise except do some fancy shirtless fencing in that one episode

https://youtu.be/szS3SJDaBGc

Z, you're awfully sweet to read up on this topic and chat about it with me. When I saw it on FB, I just thought it looked interesting and knew with all the smart folks on this board, ya'll could help me hash it out inside the cockles of my brain. I think if scientists actually cloned a wooly mammoth (since that's what they're most likely to clone) it would be surreal to see it, and absolutely breathtaking. But I also just feel like there's something "not quite right" about the whole scenario. So many things would play into whether or not it would be a triumph or a disaster.

I'm not sure why there were only 10 things on that list, as there are tons of extinct species, except that Takei's post was just meant to be an interest piece and they decided to make it a nice even list of 10 things. You know what I'd like to see first hand? A parasaurolophus. Visual aid It has been proposed that they used their cranial crest as a sort of trumpet. Do you know how cool it would be to have a trumpet sticking out of your head?? Even cooler to have a saxophone.

And Sulu (glad you told me his name!) looked a bit silly in that clip if you asked me. And what did he have poured all over his collarbone? Olive oil? Was that in the episode with the Gorn? (Saying that suavely, as if I know what I'm talking about.)

@Knixon said:

@CalabrianQueen said:

@Knixon said:

How could exact copies - clones - of the original, not be the same species? That's even more exact than regular reproduction. Would you say that each generation of offspring back then was a different species too?

Exact "copies" doesn't make something a species and you clearly don't understand what the definition of species is. One of the conditions required for two organisms to be the same species is the ability to reproduce fertile offspring.

If two members of two prospective species of 99% similar birds are separated by ecological barrier that impedes reproduction those two birds become DIFFERENT species in zoological classification regardless of thier 99% percent similarity.

A " clone" is not reproductively viable in the first place.

This sounds like some kind of semantic game because one clone is not a "species." Of course no single creature of any kind is a "species" but what's the basis for claiming that two - or a hundred, or a thousand, or a million - clones of both male and female, taken from different DNA samples in different areas for the most possible variety, couldn't reproduce in the usual manner? If you're arguing that clones made now aren't the same "species" since they couldn't reproduce with members of the species from a million years ago because hey, guess what, all the million-year-old individuals are dead! that's definitely just a word game. And would most likely mean that, if such a task were accomplished, it would just change the dictionary definition of "species" again, to something more sensible than it appears some are teaching currently.

I wouldn't be surprised if someone who succeeds in re-creating a previously-extinct species were treated like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fwa2FDEaXhQ

Scientists: "Waaah, we changed the definition of 'species' to stop you from doing that, and then you went and did it anyway! Waaahhh!"

Once the species is extinct it cannot be made extant by cloning. Whatever the result of "cloning" it isn't reproductively viable with the original species, therefore it can't be classified as that"species". This is the same reason why mules and ligers can be bred but are not species.

I don't know how much clearer I can make that. Scientists don't establish definitions for you to butcher them with pseudo-science.

BTW the definition of species didn't change, you just didn't know it; but you'd rather believe scientists are collectively conspiring against you . More like " waah I don't know what I'm talking about so lemme throw out every what if in my arsonal and see what sticks!!!!"

The scenario you described to bash scientists is pure science-fiction. Science doesn't build foundation on what ifs, it builds foundation on provable , testable hypotheses. But since you're the expert go ahead and provide the example of extinct "species" being revived by "cloning" and reproducing to continue the same genetic line outside of your Jurassic Park -esque fantasies.

I'll wait.