Chicken embryos grown with dinosaur-like lower legs

[frigidmagi]

cbc

What would it be like to chomp down on a dinosaur drumstick? Well, for one thing, it wouldn't have that weird needle-like bone you find in chicken legs.

University of Chile researchers have grown chicken embryos with "dinosaur-like" lower legs that have two connected lower leg bones instead of one big bone and a needle-like splinter.

In doing so, they say they've figured out what changed in the evolution between dinosaurs and birds to give birds their unusual leg bones.

Birds evolved about 150 million years ago from a group of two-legged meat-eating dinosaurs called theropods, which included T. rex.

n order to figure out how that evolution happened, some researchers around the world have been looking at the development of bird embryos, which are expected to be similar to dinosaur embryos early in development. By making small changes to the way genes are turned on during development, researchers can sometimes induce dinosaur-like traits in the chicken embryos.

For example, U.S. researchers have previously grown chicks with dinosaur-like snouts instead of beaks.

In the new study, Joao Botelho and Alexander Vargas at the University of Chile focused on the lower leg bones.

Most land-dwelling vertebrates with four limbs — including humans and dinosaurs — have two connected lower leg bones. The thicker tibia and the thinner fibula are usually joined at both the knee and the ankle.

In most birds, however, the fibula is extremely thin, shorter than the tibia, and only attached to the tibia at the knee, not the ankle. Early in development, though, bird embryos have a tibia and fibula of equal length, just like other animals.

'Ancestral trait'

Botelho and Vargas found that by lowering the levels of a protein called Indian hedgehog that helps the skeleton mature, they stopped the fibula from detaching at the ankle.

"Its shape did not become splinter-like, but remains tubular and dinosaur-like," the researchers wrote in a paper published in the journal Evolution.

Hans Larsson, a McGill University researcher who does similar research related to the evolution of bird wings and tails, noted that in this case, that trait isn't just "dinosaur-like."

"What they did was sort of bring back, potentially, a more ancestral trait, which dinosaurs had, but also mammals have and other reptiles have," he told CBC News in an interview Wednesday.

And while the researchers showed one way to do that, it wasn't necessarily the specific change that happened between dinosaurs and birds, he added.

The chicken embryos in the new study never did grow big enough to produce drumsticks. Generally, in such experiments, they're not allowed to hatch at all.

"It's because there's no scientific reason to do so," Larsson said, adding that allowing the chicks to hatch could raise new ethical issues.

[LadyTevar]

I can understand the ethical reasons for not allowing the chicks to hatch, however I have to wonder how the modifications would affect the chick as it grows. Would the tampering affect other organs in the body, affect its growth pattern? Will having that extra bone in the leg change its gait? Will the legs grow longer than average? Or will the chicken suffer a low quality of life?

Besides this experiment on legs, and the experiment on snouts instead of beaks, I believe there had been some preliminary research on reactivating the genetics for a long tail. There was also an experiment on chickens where a false tail was applied to chicks after hatching. As the chicks grew, the tails were modified to stay proportionate, and the chickens with the false tails developed a distinct gait to their walk. This was compared to computer models of raptorial theropodian movement, and matched the expected models.

So, we have three different genetic studies so far: Legs, Tail, and Beak/Snout. Each study was done by activating/deactivating a specific genetic marker. What will happen when they decide to "turn on" all three markers at the same time? Will the genes work in concert to make a "dino-chicken", or will it turn out unviable due to genetic mis-match? That is the study I am wanting to see next.

[Josh]

Fuck that, hatch the chickens. It's taking too long to make the dinosaur army that I used to daydream about using to attack my elementary school.

At this rate the school will be demolished before I get to smash it under the plodding feet of my brontosaurus.

[Norseman]

Fuck that, hatch the chickens. It's taking too long to make the dinosaur army that I used to daydream about using to attack my elementary school.

At this rate the school will be demolished before I get to smash it under the plodding feet of my brontosaurus.

Alas my gradeschool burned down.

Several years after I left it! :(

But I feel your pain about the lack of a dinosaur army. Also to be honest I think they should hatch the chickens by now, I hardly think that hatching them is worse than what they are subjected to in factory farms anyway.

[Josh]

I hardly think that hatching them is worse than what they are subjected to in factory farms anyway.

Yeah no shit.

[Batman]

The world is lousy with ways to reduce your elementary school to so much rubble...but you're holdingh out for chicken dinosaurs.
Really TINY chicken dinosaurs that would likely just get stepped on.

[Josh]

No, I'm trying to push the research along until they get me proper dinosaurs. None of this faint-hearted, lily-livered bullshit. I want my T-Rex legion, damn it.

I don't even have anything against the school, I barely remember it because we moved halfway through the third grade. But, y'know, bucket list item and all.