Dinosaur-Faced Chicken?With the discovery of feathers on almost every dinosaur species, scepticism a

Dinosaur-Faced Chicken?With the discovery of feathers on almost every dinosaur species, scepticism around the relationship between modern birds and prehistoric dinosaurs began to dwindle. Since then, more research has been going into learning more about this topic.Most recently, researchers have put together a study that almost feels like beginnings of a real-life Jurassic Park. By playing with the genome of a chicken embryo, researchers discovered that by simply silencing the gene for beak structure, the shape of the face reverted back to the ancestral snout (see photo). This experiment also serves to illustrate that very small genomic changes can result in significant morphological changes. Unfortunately these little dino-chickens will never live past the embryonic stage due to ethical restrictions. One of the lead authors Bhart-Anjan Bhullar claims that the chickens would have been perfectly healthy, and says that “These weren’t drastic modifications. They are far less weird than many breeds of chicken developed by chicken hobbyists and breeders.” I guess for now, we’ll never know.~RosieImages and references: http://bbc.in/1BdghBXhttp://dailym.ai/1Agq8we -- source link

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