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by blisterpeanuts 4412 days ago
We need to clone these beasts. Would love to have grilled dino meat some day!
4 comments

Well, that's one reason to bring back extinct animals from hundreds of millions of years ago.
FYI, my comment was a nebulous reference to "Steel Beach" by John Varley, about a future space civilization where dinosaurs had been cloned and were raised as game meat.

No sense of humor around here, looks like. The fact is, if we could revive dinosaurs, they would become game meat. What other purpose would they serve? To strip a forest in a day? To hunt and kill all the mammals?

As for the fundamental question of whether we should revive ancient species, the answer is "Of course!" To clone an animal using fully sequenced DNA would be an amazing achievement, and the programmed behavior in the DNA would be fascinating to study.

Of course, it's much more likely and scientifically feasible that we could clone more recent species such as Neanderthals which according to at least one scientist might be achievable today, or in the very near future. But dinosaurs are what capture people's imagination, and the bigger, the better.

Why bother, it'll taste like chicken anyway...
Hmmm, judging by the number of down-votes on my "it'll taste like chicken" comment I have the feeling I need to remind some of the evolutionary grandparents of the humble chicken. Remember that chickens, being birds, most likely are descended from small carnivorous dinosaurs. While the mentioned dinosaur is a vegetarian sauropod, both share a common ancestor.
I think diet may have a far bigger impact on taste than genetic similarity. Cows and pigs are far more closely related than chickens and sauropods, yet they taste very differently. Also, plenty of birds don't taste all that much like chicken.
But dinosaurs share a common ancester with humans. And we taste like pork, not chicken.
What common ancestor? You risk going so far back your suggestion is meaningless
Chickens share a lot of DNA with Tyrannosaurus Rex. They used to eat us. Now we eat them. One of the great ironies of evolution.
What could possibly go wrong?
Cue Weird Al's "Jurassic Park"