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Paleontologist against Cloning
Since you were a kid, you've been absolutely fascinated with dinosaurs. By age 5, you knew
all the names of the saurischians and ornithischians and pointed out with glee as often as
possible that birds are really "feathered dinosaurs." (You must have read the Jurassic Park
book a dozen times!). Your favorite dinosaur sites are in Argentina where hundreds of sauropod
eggs and some embryonic dinosaurs were discovered at the end of the last century. As much as
you would love to see, hear, smell, and touch a living dinosaur, you are reconciled to arguing
that evolution cannot be controlled, not even by us. According to S.J. Gould, chance plays such
an important role in evolution that using the Earth's past as a "future forecast" is foolish.
Even if the technology is developed that can replicate an entire genome from scraps of fossil
DNA, does a Mesozoic-like world still exist for the dinos to inhabit? As you know, many of
the dinosaurs' cohort species, including multituberculate mammals, archaic crocodiles,
Archaeopteryx, pterosaurs, as well as early species of cycads and angiosperms, went
extinct millions of years ago. And, for heavens sake, hasn't the Pangea world of the dinos
broken apart so that continents now exist in different climate regimes? Think about what the
Judges may wish to know about the educational or research value of studying dinosaurs out of
the Mesozoic context in which they thrived. From a paleontological perspective, would the
clones be "real" dinosaurs? Or would they be something else - what, exactly? For a variety
of reasons, you're reconciled - sadly - to convincing the Judges that cloning dinosaurs is an
idea that should go … extinct.
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