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Why exactly don't we have a Jurassic Park?

I don't think anematronic dinos is enough of a pull for the expense. Stick one in a museum or Mall of America now and then to entertain the kiddies. That's about it.

Now the question is, is there a basis for enough DNA fragments found in an amber encased mosquito to stick it in a chicken egg and pop out a dino? I'm thinking no, then I read this link with a fairly in depth discussion of why it's not possible:

Could we really bring back dinosaurs like in Jurassic Park? No, sadly not. It would make paleontologists' work so much easier, more exciting, and better funded if we could, but we can't. Why? Dinosaurs (except birds) are extinct. Extinction is permanent! Even with modern species that go extinct, we have little, if any, chance of resurrecting them. Several reasons (6 reasons listed in article):

1. We must find intact DNA of the species in question. Amber is one of the better preservatives of DNA, so dinosaur DNA in amber would be good. Problem: DNA degrades over time, even in amber. After several million years, many lethal losses of pieces of the DNA would occur. These gaps in the DNA strand cannot be repaired; their information is lost forever. We cannot improvise the genetic code of an organism.
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Now they have found frozen mammoths in glaziers. Why not those?
 
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Why don't we have a Jurassic Park? Did you even watch the movies? :p
 
Maybe we could have a virtual one.

Imagine a huge padded hanger and everyone wearing oculus rifts! Then We could have the full dinosaur experience of being stalked and virtual eaten.
 
Apple fanboy said:
I recall taking my daughter when she was about 5 to some park in the UK (sorry don't remember where, but possibly Wales) with some very unrealistic static plastic dinosaur models. She was very into the land before time cartoons.
Anyway she was standing next to one when the tape recording of a roaring dinosaur suddenly kicked in. She must have jumped a mile!
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It is near Wales somewhere.. my folks took me there when I was a nipper.. still have the dinosaur from the gift shop somewhere!
 
Shrink said:
Are you looking for funds to build this absolutely can't miss, people will drive miles and show up in droves idea?

:rolleyes:
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Are you kidding? I'd pour the kids into the Wagon Queen Family Truckster and drive straight there, right after we visit the world's second largest ball of twine.
 
Mousse said:
That's nice and all, but the the Jurassic period was the junior varsity of dinosaurs. The most popular of the Jurassic dinos would include the Allosaurus, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus and Brontosaurus. Not exactly headliners.

You'd want to create a Cretaceous Park to get the popular dinos like T-Rex, Raptors and Triceratops. Ignorant Hollywood exec getting the most basic info wrong. T-Rex and Raptors were from the LATE Cretaceous period.
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*ahem* I believe it was a book first. :D
 
Actually, some soft tissue has been found in several fossilized dinosaur bones, and proteins and the like were extracted. It appears for example that the T-Rex is a distant relative of the modern ostrich, which more or less acknowledges the theory that birds are actually evolved dinosaurs.

In theory, bird DNA still has the genes in them that could enable them to be dinosaurs but since the dinosaur genome is unknown it would be guessing which genes do what (I'm sure sure if even the bird genome is fully known).

It is impossible with current tech but I wouldn't exclude the possibility that one day in the distant future we may be able to accurately reproduce several dinosaur species.
 
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