Scientists Did Not Engineer a T-Rex Embryo From Chicken DNA
The Claim
Scientists used their knowledge of dinosaur genetics to reverse-engineer a t-rex embryo from chicken DNA-- a descendent of the dinosaur.
News posted on
Emerging story
The claim appears to have originated from the website World News Daily Report, which published its article on the topic on April 15th 2016. After several years' incubation, the story subsequently went viral on social media-- specifically twitter.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation into this claim reveals it to be false. World News Daily Report is a satirical site with the slogan “Where Facts Don’t Matter.” Furthermore, a paper from North Carolina State University has debunked the myth that scientists are trying to revive dinosaurs at all.
The article states that DNA only lasts about 6 million years in a fossil. Since the dinosaurs have been gone for 65 million years, there’s no way for us to recover their DNA and thus no way for us to revive or recreate them, or in any way modify a chicken’s genome to reflect theirs.
