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An article makes a claim that scientists have cloned a baby Apatosaurus.

From Article:

Scientists at Liverpool’s John Moore University have successfully cloned a dinosaur, a spokesman from the university said yesterday. The dinosaur, a baby Apatosaurus nicknamed “Spot,” is currently being incubated at the University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. The scientists extracted DNA from preserved Apatosaurus fossils, which were on display at the university’s museum of natural science. Once the DNA was harvested, scientists injected it into a fertile ostrich womb.

Imagee from source claiming to be the dinosaur clone

Has science finally created life from fossilized dinosaur DNA as we've seen fictionalized by the movie Jurassic Park as claimed by this article?

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    nostrils in the wrong place for an Apatosaurus (more on the top of the head rather than the snout). Shame it as a hoax though, would be cool to see a non-avian dinosaur ;o)
    – user18604
    Jul 4, 2014 at 6:38
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    They even got the name of the university wrong as well - it's Liverpool John Moores with an 's'.
    – DaveP
    Jul 4, 2014 at 15:46
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    @DikranMarsupial Your username is interestingly apt, considering Oddthinking's answer.
    – March Ho
    Mar 13, 2016 at 23:34

1 Answer 1

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This article has already been well-covered on the Internet.

  • dinosaurs.about.com says "a complete hoax, albeit a very entertaining one."

  • Snopes says "False" and explains the image is a kangaroo.

  • Hoax-Slayer says "Hoax" and attributes the origin to "NewsHound, a website that publishes all manner of fanciful nonsense disguised as news reports."

  • That's Nonsense says "none of the details are factual"

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  • Thanks, I came across it today and didn't see it here. Thought it would place well for some healthy skepticism.
    – David Hansen
    Jul 4, 2014 at 2:41
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    @DavidHansen - I'd just like to add that this has no chance of being done as far as our current scientific knowledge goes. DNA half life is few thousand years, dinosaur went extinct cca 60 million years. And even then, you can't just implant DNA into some other creatures egg and womb like that, there's no way it would work. There is a huge amount of stuff that we just don't have for such a cloning to work.
    – Davor
    Jul 4, 2014 at 9:52
  • @Davor - I agree, the only way we would ever see Dinosaurs again would be synthetically engineered assuming we advance far enough ahead in genetic research to start to custom build our own living systems through genetic modification and gene programming. And that itself is a good question for debate could we achieve sufficient technology to create new life or synthetic lifeforms?
    – David Hansen
    Jul 4, 2014 at 22:52
  • Dinosaur DNA can unfortunately not survive that long. So, this is definitely a hoax.
    – Stefan Gruenwald
    Nov 3, 2014 at 6:35

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