How to Build a Dinosaur: The New Science of Reverse Evolution

When reading the first half of this book, this reviewer found it difficult at first to connect its subject matter with the title of the book. The expectation was that the book was going one devoted to genetic and metabolic engineering as applied to embryology. Instead the authors devote the first half to matters of paleontology and the art of fossil hunting. Readers eager to learn how to "build a dinosaur" may therefore get impatient with the authors, and may be tempted to put the book down and not go further.This would be a mistake, since in the latter half of the book the authors get down to explaining what kind of techniques or knowledge may be necessary to produce a creature that for all practical purposes, i.e. in terms of its skeletal structure and general appearance would be a living dinosaur. Studying these pages is fascinating, and indeed gives one more reason for believing that if the authors or other biologists succeed in bringing this about, then this would be the most awesome feat in scientific and technological history.What is most important about the author's proposals is that they are not dependent on having the genomes of long extinct dinosaurs. Instead, they seek to adjust the timing of the growth patterns that led to the evolution of birds from nonavian dinosaurs. This is to be done via the embryo of a domestic chicken. But changing the timing of metabolic and growth processes, this timing being regulated by genes, must respect what actually occurred in the evolutionary development of the bird from the dinosaur. Otherwise what results is a kind of "freak" that may be of interest in general but will not represent a genuine dinosaur of the kind that roamed the earth millions of years ago.A small amount of space is devoted in the book to the ethics and dangers of this kind of effort. These discussions are important but did not convince this reviewer that the author's proposals should not be carried out. On the contrary, they should be done immediately without any mental reservation. Right now. Today.

The first 5 chapters of this book exemplify science writing at its best. There is the personal, but it always relates to the science, and is interesting besides. The chapters explain what we believe we know about dinosaurs and their evolution, the kinds of evidence, even what it is like collecting fossils; the chapters also discuss how a study of embryo development can cast light on evolution. Most amazing to me (p.108) is that there is sufficient collagen protein preserved in some dinosaur fossils that you can inject them into a rabbit, thereby generate antibodies, and these antibodies recognize the corresponding chicken protein.The last two chapters are not at the same level. Horner is interested in promoting a grand experiment: modifying embryonic chicken development so that you create a creature with the features belonging to the chicken's non-avian dinosaur ancestors. There is a lot of developmental biology which must first be mastered to accomplish this. However, at the level of detail that Horner writes, there is just not enough to say to adequately fill the 50 pages devoted to the subject. As explained I couldn't fully appreciate the concept of symmetry, and Horner did not want to go into such topics as just how staining works in tracing embryo development.Horner himself is a delightful man, careful to give credit where it is due, willing to tell some anecdotes which do not paint him in the best light, and willing to spend $40,000 of his own money to sponsor research he believes in! However, sometimes he seems to be implicitly assuming that it is only the control genes which mutate, so that just by modifying their signals you can creat a viable creature with dinosaur characteristics.

This is a new and refreshing look at paleontology. While the book is nominally about turning a bird into a dinosaur, it is really about exciting new developments in paleontology. Horner shows how paleontology is expanding beyond digging for dinosaurs and moving into molecular biology and evolutionary development (evo-devo). Horner weaves several different fields of biology and shows how inter-disciplinary studies have revolutionized the field. He chronicles the work of Mary Schweitzer, who discovered red blood cells and (perhaps) cartilage in a 68-million year old T-rex, and Hans Larson, who is investigating ancestral genes in chicken embryos. I had followed news from paleontology relatively closely for a lay observer, but even I was shocked at some of the evo-devo research currently being done.Hopefully, this book will inspire more students to go into biology. Turning a chicken into a dinosaur might be just the right hook to stimulate interest in these exciting new developments in evo-devo.My one suggestion for the book is that because it covers so many fields, Horner ends up summarizing or quoting the works of others. He tells their stories effectively. But at some point, I wonder if perhaps it would have been better to produce a joint book, with articles from several of the contributors in the field. However, it is also useful to have one voice to guide the reader through the science. Since Horner is not a native to molecular sciences (his expertise is traditional paleontology), he is perhaps better suited to explaining the complexities of genetics to lay readers.P.S. - Be sure to check out the Discovery Channel's documentary ( Dinosaurs: Return To Life? ) on this topic. It is a nice complement to the book.

I’m not finished with this book but so far the legendary Jack Horner has delved into a lot of detail pop culture ideas like Jurassic Park have simply glossed over. This probably pairs well with Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin, and I wonder if it mentions experiments on snakes to regrow entire limbs as embryos.

This concise little book is effectively a research proposal written for a public audience. It comes across as Mr. Horner's defense of his plan to 'reverse engineer' a domestic chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) embryo in order for it to express traits commonly associated with non-Avian theropod dinosauria. This book is marketed to the general reader, but the latter chapters which chronicle in minute detail the bio-chemical processes by which DNA and its associated compounds may be manipulated, are extremely jargon-heavy and dense, and likely to be largely lost on the lay-reader with no prior knowledge of genetics and biochemistry.My overall impression on finishing the work could be summarized as: "Interesting, but, what's the point?". Mr. Horner theorises the possible subsidiary benefits to our understanding of hereditary diseases &c. as a foundation for the validity of creating a 'dinosaur', but one suspects these worthy spheres of research could be undertaken without the 'de-extinction' aspect. Nor would the animal resulting from such an experiment be a 'dinosaur' in the genuine sense, rather it would be a (theoretically sterile) pseudo-animal exhibiting artificially induced archaic physiological traits.The pseudo-animal proposed by Mr. Horner would not be a dinosaur. It would be a domestic chicken expressing some physical traits from a prior stage of its evolutionary development congruent with the popular image of what a non-Avian theropod dinosaur might look like.While an interesting idea which would undoubtedly thrill school children the world over, I'm afraid I fail to see any practical application for the project which would be of benefit to either our understanding of evolution (which Mr. Horner repeatedly and unnecessarily points out he considers superior to all other conceptions of life's origins) or any other application beneficial to the advancement of society which couldn't be achieved by other avenues of research which do not involve 'reverse engineering'.

Jack Horner really makes it feel like you are sitting next to him whilst he explains to you the processes in which he believe he can use to retroengineer a dinosaur from a chicken. He talks about cutting edge science and research that helps us understand the link between dinosaurs and birds and how they evolved. If you are interested in Natural History, then buy this book!

What a wonderful book! Jack Horner has told me the chickenosaurus project is getting underway. He hopes he will be able to get the last remaining members he needs for his team.I havnt finished this book yet but I must say it's a brilliant book. If you're a fan of dinosaurs, jack horner or the chickenosaurus project then this is for you.

Not read it yet but should be good

Pacy and a fun read, and also very informative, with some of the latest discoveries and thinking - and some provocative speculation.