Scientists studying how the dinosaurs may have evolved into birds have managed to produce a chicken dinosaur creation in embryonic chicken cells that shows how a dinosaur snout may have evolved into a chicken or other bird’s beak. The study, which was printed in the Evolution Journal, was started by taking dinosaur fossils and using them as a guide to cause the chicken embryos’ molecules to travel and grow into what resembled a dinosaur snout similar to that of smaller dinosaurs like the Velociraptor. This is interesting in light another bird dinosaur recently discovered in China. In order to embark on this exciting scientific adventure, the scientists had to do an in-depth study of the anatomy of not only dinosaur fossils, but that of existing animals.
According to paleontologists at Yale University, an animal’s snout is a vital part of the way a creature eats, so understanding how the bird’s beak is related to dinosaur’s snout is one of the most diverse processes and the part of the body that appears to have changed the most dramatically.
Chicken Dinosaur Creation Displayed Clues to Evolution
During the process of manipulating the chicken embryonic cells to create the dino-chicken creation, the scientists also discovered that during the development process, birds like chickens put out proteins in their cells during the development of the embryos. The amount of these proteins is much higher than in animals that don’t have a beak.
Therefore, as part of the experiment, the scientists embarking on this scientific adventure had to find a way to block the proteins from being produced, so they had to introduce a chemical inhibitor to keep the embryonic chickens from forming a beak instead of a dinosaur-like snout to produce a chicken dinosaur. When this was done, the embryos of the chickens started to form the dinosaur-like snout of a chicken dinosaur instead of forming a regular chicken beak.
Snout to Beak Evolution Said to Be Complicated, Slow
Even with the seeming success of this study to come up with a chicken dinosaur creation, some other scientists believe that the dinosaur snout being able to evolve into a bird beak had to have been a more complicated and slow process. Scientists at the University of California said that they believed that much more has to be done in learning about the evolution of dinosaurs into birds than just studying one particular gene.
However, the scientists that were able to produce the chicken dinosaur creation say that their study shows that simple gene manipulation could have been what started the evolution process of dinosaurs evolving eventually into birds. They intend to do further research that could involve other genes in the evolution process besides those that helped them to develop the embryonic dino-chicken creation.
