Is Jurassic park possible?

Whenever we talk about amber, there is always one question that pops up: is Jurassic Park possible?

Let us just recap this one:

The story line is simple: If we can find a piece of amber with a fossilized mosquito in it, we could extract the blood from the mosquitoes stomach. This blood could contain the blood from the animal the mosquito was feeding off, and then we should have the DNA from that animal.

When we have the DNA we quickly see where there are pieces missing and put those in. In Jurassic Park it is mostly frog DNA.

Then into to incubator and there we have a dino!

That is the story, but there are few things wrong there.

DNA is a good storage device, but the oldest DNA found is some 2 million years old (look here):

“Scientists discovered the oldest known DNA and used it to reveal what life was like 2 million years ago in the northern tip of Greenland.

With animal fossils hard to come by, the researchers extracted environmental DNA, also known as eDNA, from soil samples. This is the genetic material that organisms shed into their surroundings — for example, through hair, waste, spit or decomposing carcasses.

Studying really old DNA can be a challenge because the genetic material breaks down over time, leaving scientists with only tiny fragments.”

So, dino-DNA like 65 million years old? Probably not.

Let us just imagine then that we have a string of DNA. Found in the blood of a mosquito which must also have lived some 65 million years ago (they did, so that is a tick). But which animal? We don’t know. Maybe we clone a worm!

Inserting missing pieces? Do we know where to insert it if we don’t know the animal? Even if we have scattered pieces of DNA (broken pieces) from several pieces of amber, would it be from the same animal? If not, we have a serious problem here (herbivore T-Rex?).

And why frog DNA? In the story that is where it goes wrong because frogs can change sex. The dinos were supposed to be only females, but hey, Frog DNA – sex change – males – problems So no, good movie, but no cigar