In a recipe that turned into disaster in the movies, the inspiration behind the Jurassic Park franchise is trying to genetically engineer a dinosaur.
Jack Horner isn't little anymore, and it out of his corner to attempt to create a "chickenosaurus". Perhaps it's not as threatening as what happens in the movies, but Horner is adamant that reverse-engineering the DNA of a chicken could create a small dinosaur.
Chickens are the modern descendants of dinosaurs, and Horner is aiming to do three 'simple' things to try to re-engineer a small dinosaur - turn the beak into a snouty nose, create a tail, and turn the chicken's wings into fingers and claws.
According to Horner, the nose is already possible, while work on the tail isn't too far away. When they are in the embyro stage of development chickens actually have tails before the embyro absorbs it through a genetic mutation. Humans are another species that have this gene meaning that some human embyros will have tails before the tail is absorbed later in the pregnancy.
For more information, listen to the QI elves talk about the fact in a typically humourous fashion on their latest episode of their great podcast "No Such Thing As A Fish".
