Angelinna Faisca 11/1/20
Current Event #5
AP Bio E/F Even
Mr. Ippolito
In this article, “Could Scientists Bring Dinosaurs Back to Life?” By Emily Osterloff talked mainly about the differences between real life and Jurassic Park, a beloved movie by most children. In this article, she goes over the reality of dinosaurs and how they are depicted in Jurassic Park. First, amber is talked about. In the movie, the main reason dinosaurs were created was because of the DNA. However, Osterloff clears this by saying that the amber that does preserve most of the body of small insects, but not blood, meaning that DNA is lost by the millions of years until it is discovered, rendering it useless. She mentions that there was a mosquito that had been found with hemoglobin, which is mainly used for proteins, except that the mosquito was not found in amber.
In the next segment, crossing DNA was talked about. In the movie, they filled gaps in dinosaur DNA with frog DNA, she claims that this was not accurate enough, and that if we were to do this in real life, you would ideally choose crocodile DNA, since they share a common ancestor.
Next, the question was asked, could we actually clone a dinosaur? Well, no, mainly we could reverse create the dinosaur, but you would not have a dinosaur. This is called reverse-engineering, a scientist named Susie Maidment, a dinosaur researcher, explained it this way, “'You could take a chicken and genetically engineer it so it has teeth or a long tail. But even if you do, it's not a dinosaur, because it was reverse engineered.'” The article takes a more positive turn, in showing that we could potentially bring back extinct animals that were taken from their habitat too early, such as the Dodo, who became extinct in 1681, after they were eaten and captured to its extinction.
Finally, the article ends with the reality of not being fully able to recreate Jurassic Park, but maybe allowing extinct species to make a comeback.
This article and its findings could have a major impact on the world as we know it, including the possibility of bringing the Wooly Mammoth back, which goes all the way back to the well known ice age, yes, the one in the movie Ice Age. Also bringing back species that could bring a positive impact, such as the Passenger Pigeon, which was brought to extinction in the 20th century due to extensive hunting, and along with the Dodo bird, which was brought to extinction before scientists could ever see its effects that it could have had on humans, such as disease or its medical potential, such as some spiders have. This article also debunks some of the dramatic themes in Jurassic Park, such as recreating dinosaurs purely from blood found in a mosquito, which was debunked, since over millions of years, DNA unravels and breaks down easily due to outside temperatures and moisture, due to water. So this article shows how recreating a dinosaur may not be the most realistic option there is, but bringing back extinct animal species that are crucial to its past environment, might be a step into getting the world back into its best possible shape.
Some improvements I might add are the complex parts of recreating an animal, like what might work in DNA, and what are the requirements for a certain animal species for it to possibly work the best compared to other animals. I would also add more perspectives from other scientists from other fields of work that could have a different perspective on what to do with certain species, such as marine animals, or maine dinosaur species. I did like how the article did have certain segments that were easy to follow, and easy vocabulary as well, so it was easy to understand and to see the point. The pictures and comparisons were good as well, including the mention of extinct species that could possibly come back with DNA that animals that are alive currently, have now, giving a positive shift to reality.
Nate Kim
ReplyDeleteAP Bio
11/4/20
Osterloff, Emily. “Could Scientists Bring Dinosaurs Back to Life?” Natural History Museum, www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/could-scientists-bring-dinosaurs-back.html.
Faisca, Anngelina. “Could Scientists Bring Dinosaurs Back to Life?” Retrieved
November 4th, 2020, from
https://bronxvilleapbiology.blogspot.com/2020/11/could-scientists-bring-dinosaurs-back.html#comment-form
Anngelina’s analysis of “Could Scientists Bring Dinosaurs Back to Life?” is a perfect example of analysis that gives the reader a full understanding of the article being analyzed. Anngelina does a great job of integrating her own commentary with the facts from the article. The analysis has great flow where Anngelina basically seamlessly integrates facts and information with the summary of the article. I also liked that she gave a possible use for the information from the article. Her explanation of the possible return of the Wooly Mammoth was interesting and relevant. I also appreciated Anngelina’s return to the theme of Jurassic Park. This constant keeps the audience more interested and engaged because they subconsciously connect the points made in her article to the movie if they have watched it. If they have watched the movie, they will see that Anngelina’s points are correct which means that they will more readily believe the claims she makes in her analysis.
Although I really enjoyed reading Angelina’s analysis, I believe that there are places that could be improved. Anngelina uses sophisticated vocabulary that could make her writing a little hard to understand for readers that are not well-versed in the field of biology or science in general. This is easily remedied by just defining more terms or using simpler language. For example, in the intro/ summary paragraph, Anngelina uses the word “hemoglobin.” If this term is not known by a reader, the rest of the paragraph will be confusing. Anngelina describes the word to an extent, but her explanation could have been better. Anngelina could have added some statistics in the second paragraph to add some emphasis on the rate of extinction of the species she mentioned.
Anngelina’s writing style and interesting article made her analysis very unique and interesting to read. I learned about amber and hemoglobin as well as dinosaurs and cloning. I found it especially interesting that in order to reverse-engineer a dinosaur, you would want to use a crocodile because it is the closest thing to the dinosaur that is still alive. Anngelina’s analysis is great because a lot of times we readily believe things we hear in the media and online. Anngelina’s analysis cautions us that not everything we see is the truth or even possible. Obviously, no one really thinks that Jurassic Park could be possible anytime in the near future, but her analysis is still important nonetheless.