Category: Information

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6 Dinosaur Documentaries You Don’t Want To Miss

Every Dinosaur fan loves a good Dinosaur documentary. It’s a great way to learn more about dinos; how they lived, grew and (unfortunately) died. It’s also fun to think about what it would be like if they still roamed our planet! Out of the many film and tv series you can watch about dinosaurs, here are a few of our favorites to watch!

Sky Monsters

Sky Monsters is a 2005, TV film documentary about Pterodactyls. Made by National Geographic, this dinosaur film is based on the findings of a group of researchers from Stanford University. They studied the aerodynamics and feeding patterns of the prehistoric flying reptiles to show how these amazing animals could fly. A Pterodactyl was as big as a Boeing plane… That’s a big creature!

Dinosaur 13

In 1990, paleontologist Sue Hendrickson and a team of geographical researchers discovered the largest, complete T-Rex skeleton ever documented in history. They name the dinosaur, “Sue”. Unfortunately, “Sue’s” discovery began a long legal battle over the findings. This 2014 film documentary by Todd Douglas Miller is a deep look into the T-Rex discovery near the Black Hills Institute in South Dakota, as well as the legal and political battle that took place afterward.

Walking With Dinosaurs

Walking with Dinosaurs is still one of the most highly regarded dinosaur documentaries ever made. It’s filmed like a real nature documentary, using animatronics and computer animation, making you feel like you are actually watching real dinosaurs roam. In fact, it’s so good, that it became the inspiration for the “Walking With…” series spin-off.

Clash of the Dinosaurs

This 2009 dinosaur documentary looks at the evolution of these prehistoric creatures over an entire century. It takes a deep dive into how they lived, using 3D images to show how they were built from bone to skin. The biggest thing this particular dinosaur documentary is known for is the scenes highlighting the body armor some dinosaurs had to defend themselves against predators.

Prehistoric Planet

A Dinosaur Documentary list wouldn’t be complete without Sir David Attenborough! This 2022 documentary series is narrated by the famous natural historian and is shot the same way as most of his other nature documentaries. Its high-end graphics and editing really provide an “immersive experience”. It’s also the first dinosaur documentary to ever focus on the long-debated idea that dinosaurs had feathers!

The Ballad of Big Al

If your favorite dinosaur is the Allosaurus, you’ll love this one. The Ballad of Big Al follows “Al” the Allosaurus throughout its life from hatching right up until its untimely death as a mature adolescent from injuries sustained during a fight. The BBC dinosaur documentary is a spin-off special from the Walking With Dinosaurs series creators and is based on an Allosaurus fossil found in Wyoming in the early 1990s.

With back-to-school coming up quickly, it’s a great time to watch dinosaur documentaries! With there being so much to learn about these prehistoric creatures, dinosaur films and tv series are always on the top of my watch list! I hope you enjoyed our selection; if you have seen them too, or if I have missed your favorite, let me know! Send me an email or let me know on Instagram! We would love to hear about them! And don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter! You will hear about fun dino stuff, and even get a dinosaur treat on your birthday from Vester the Velociraptor!

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5 Delicious Dinosaur Cakes That Will Get Your Mouth Watering

@shawnaodom

Dinosaur cakes are my jam. I love to bake, and I love dinosaurs, so what could top a dinosaur cake? I have all kinds of ideas for dinosaur cakes and cupcakes. Kids love dinosaur cakes for their birthday party, for sure, but so do adults! I recently made a dinosaur cake for our Lead Illustrator, Kara. It’s a cake featuring dinosaurs who get trapped in a tar pit! Yes, some dinosaur cakes can be funny, right?! You can use Dinosaur cupcakes as a delicious addition to a craft night too! Trust me, I know this from experience! Here are a few favorite dinosaur cake ideas to get you started on your dinosaur baking adventures!

IG: @merri.bakes

Roaring T-Rex Cake:
This dinosaur cake from @merri.bakes on Instagram is a pretty sweet dinosaur cake idea. Featuring a roaring T-Rex on the top, surrounded by some leaves and dirt would be a great cake for any celebration. Topped with a chocolate ganache drip and green frosting, it is sure to level up any party!

Chocolate Dinosaur Eggs Cupcakes:
This is a great Easter treat! There are so many ideas you can try with dinosaur cupcakes! These chocolate cupcakes have a thin layer of chocolate frosting and then are topped with chocolate sprinkles to make the nests. You could even mix chow mein noodles with some chocolate and peanut butter to make haystack cookie nests, or sprinkle crushed-up Oreo cookies. If you want to go extra fancy, you can use a #233 (grass) piping tip, and pip brown or green frosting to get a nest or grass look for your dinosaur eggs cupcake nest. The best dinosaur eggs are the malted milk easter eggs. They make great dinosaur eggs because they are speckled. You can also use mini eggs.

chefclub.tv

Cute Brachiosaurus Cake:
For a simpler take on the dinosaur cake, this brachiosaurus is a really fun dinosaur cake idea. Make this dinosaur cake by baking a sheet (flat) cake, and then use a template to cut out the design of your dinosaur. Really, with a piece of parchment or cardboard and some buttercream, you could make any dinosaur cake you want! Then all you need to do is get some frosting to ice the cake and use candies to decorate it! The ideas for this dinosaur cake are limitless! This cake will be a hit at kids’ birthday parties, or really any party!

Tar Pit Cake

I hope you found some inspiration with these dinosaur cake ideas! Kids and adults both love dinosaur cakes; I know this because Vester, our Velociraptor Event Coordinator at the Dinoverse, and I both bake for the Dinoverse Team quite often! I will leave you with Vester’s favorite cake recipe; it’s so simple, that even a Velociraptor can bake it! And don’t forget to share your dinosaur cakes with us on Instagram! We would love to see them!

To get more dinosaur info and fun activities, and to hear about the latest The Dinoverse promotions, sign up for our email newsletter! You’ll even get a gift from Vester the Velociraptor on your birthday!

Doctored Up Boxed Cake Mix:
So good, people will think you baked it from scratch!

1 box (1 box) white cake mix
5 oz (142 g) AP flour 1 cup (spooned into cup, not scooped)
7 oz (198 g) granulated sugar 1 cup
1/4 tsp salt
9 oz (255 g) sour cream 1 cup room temp
4 oz (113 g) melted butter 1/2 cup
8 oz (227 g) milk 1 cup room temperature
4 large (4 ) egg whites at room temperature (or 3 whole eggs)
1 tsp (1 tsp) almond extract (or whatever you want the cake to taste like)

Instructions:
This cake is really easy. Preheat your oven to 350ºF. Grease and flour 2 9” or 4 6” pans. This will also make about 36 cupcakes. Then just put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix it on medium speed for 2 minutes. Tada! Your cake batter is ready to use! Pour batter into your prepared pans, and bake for 30-40 min or until a toothpick comes out clean. For cupcakes, it’s about 18-20 min, but keep an eye on them.

If you want to flavor your cake (we love coconut around the office), try adding different flavored extracts instead of the almond. This recipe also works great using lemon and strawberry flavored cake mixes!

Recipe From: sugargeekshow.com

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Our Top Favorite Dinosaur Songs For Kids And Adults

Everyone loves a song about dinosaurs. Dinosaurs are a big theme in kid’s music, and there are tons of options out there if you are looking for some good dinosaur songs to groove to with the kids on a fun afternoon. Here is a list of our favorite dinosaur songs to start your dinosaur dance party!

Dinostory: The Ultimate Dinosaur Rock Opera

This is our top pick. It has everything you could possibly want in your dinosaur songs! It’s a full album, with songs that are not only fun but educational as well. Even though it’s geared towards kids ages 4 and up, older kids and adults will enjoy the catchy tunes that tell a story about a young triceratops who gets separated from her family and learns to survive in a dangerous world by making friends.

The Dinosaur Song – Johnny Cash

You wouldn’t normally think of Johnny Cash as a children’s entertainer, but this dinosaur song from his 1975 album, “The Johnny Cash Children’s Album” is just plain fun. He asks, “…dinosaurs would be nice pets and friends to have around to run outside and play with every day, don’t you think?”.

Perpetual Preschool

Perpetual Preschool has some great Dinosaur song options for you to sing with the kids. Our favorite is the dinosaur version of “We Will Rock You”. It gets the kids involved by clapping their hands and stomping their feet, while singing, “We will, we will stomp you!” Each verse teaches about a different dino in the most rockin’ way!

“Walk the Dinosaur” by Was (Not Was)

Of course, we can’t talk about dinosaur songs without mentioning this gem! The lyrics, “Boom acka-lacka boom boom!” will get stuck in your head for days, and you will find yourself mindlessly shaking your hips back and forth to the rhythm long after it’s over. This particular song plays at all our get-togethers, and it has been a crowd pleaser since its release in 1988. This one will please older kids and adults alike, and should be on everyone’s playlist!

Dinosaur songs can be engaging and educational, while also incredibly entertaining! Listening to music expands the brain and stirs creative energy, and including dinosaur themed music just makes it even more fun! These are just a few of the dinosaur songs out there; If I have missed your favorite dino song, send me an email or tag us on Instagram! Everyone here at The Dinoverse would love to hear about them! And don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter! You will hear about fun dino stuff, and even get a dinosaur treat on your birthday from Vester the Velociraptor!

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Kissing Dinosaurs

image credit: Daisy Lin

You know you are in dinosaur heaven when you are welcomed by a huge statue of a dinosaur, and when I say huge, I mean huge. The town of Erenhot in Northern China is home to what is known as the “Kissing Dinosaurs”, two enormous Brontosauruses, stretching their long necks over the highway, to meet in what looks like a kiss.

The Brontosauruses are 34 meters wide, 19 meters tall, and together reach 80 meters across. That’s MASSIVE! It’s also, according to science’s best guess, larger than life. And make sure you stop to take pictures (duh!) before you pass the Kissing Dinosaurs! They have dino friends; dotting the surrounding area are smaller statues of other dinosaurs like T-Rex, Pachycephalosaurus, Triceratops, and avian dinosaurs.

This amazing site is located on the Sino-Mongolian border, on the main highway. It was built in 2007 to remind the world of the town’s reputation as a fossil hub, and it really is! During the 1920s, dinosaur fossils were discovered in the Erlian Basin, and one of those fossils is still the biggest, and best-preserved fossil to have ever been found in Asia. People started calling it, “Dinosaur City”, and rightly so.

The town of Erlian (sometimes called Erenhot) is definitely a dinosaur town. Not only do they have the huge Brontos to welcome you in, but they also have an amazing museum for you to see many of the fossils that have been found in the surrounding area. The town in Northern China was home to more than 20 different species of dinosaurs, with the most famous being the Gigantoraptor. This 8-meter-long birdlike predator was discovered in 2005. And as if that wasn’t cool enough, they even have a theme park; “Dinosaur Fairyland”.

As far as Dinosaur holidays go, this is definitely one that should be on every dino lover’s list. Giant brontosauruses kissing, dino statues, a museum; even a theme park. Doesn’t that sound like a dino-mite vacation? It’s definitely on my list of places to see!

If you have been to “Dinosaur City”, or have pictures of Erenhot to share, We would LOVE to see them! Send us an email or tag us with your pictures on Instagram! And don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter! You will hear about fun dino stuff, and even get a dinosaur treat on your birthday from Vester the Velociraptor!

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Dinosaur Puns

I dino what to tell you; I love dinosaur puns. Nothing tricera-tops good puns or jokes about dinosaurs. Kids love them, and really, what’s more important than making kids laugh? I often get many eye rolls from my grown-up kids, but around the office, the staff love my dino-mite puns! Especially Tatum Tyrannosaurus Rex. As Happiness Director at the The Dinoverse, we can always call on Tatum to share a couple of good dinosaur jokes! Here are a few great dinosaur puns; I hope you don’t find them too pterable!

via GIPHY

Why did the Archaeopteryx catch the worm?
Because it was an early bird.

Scientists have discovered a fossilized dinosaur fart.
They described it as a blast from the past.

What do you call a Dinosaur who can’t accept defeat?
A Saur Loser.

What do they call dinosaur farts?
An Ex-stink-tion.

Dinosaurs can’t go on boats, they cause too many Ship Rex.

What do you call it when a dinosaur has a car accident?
A tyrannosaurus Wreck!

via GIPHY

What is the scariest type of dinosaur?
A Terror Dactyl.

What do you call the ghost of a dinosaur?
A Scary Dactyl.

What do you call a dinosaur with an extensive vocabulary?
A Thesaurus.

What do you call the dog of a dinosaur with one eye?
Do-you-think-he-saurus rex.

I hope you found my dinosaur puns as humerus as I do! Dino jokes can really make a boring day a lot more funny. If I have missed any of your favourite dino-mite puns, let us know on Instagram, and don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter for more dinosaur facts and fun (you’ll even get a discount for The Dinoverse shop!)

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What is a Carnotaurus? 5 Fun Facts About This Fast Dinosaur

If you have seen Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, then you have sat on the edge of your seat watching Owen, Claire, and Franklin be attacked in the gyrosphere by this terrifying dinosaur, just hoping that the glass will hold the teeth back so they don’t get devoured! Until T-Rex saves the day by swooping in and killing the mighty Carnotaurs, allowing the humans time to get away.

The humans probably would have been a tasty treat for the Carnotaurus! Although paleontologists have only found one, almost complete skeleton, that skeleton has taught us a lot about this fast dinosaur! Here are some fun facts about the Carnotaurus that we have learned from studying the fossils we have.


Carnotaurus Was A Carnivore
Carnotaurus had super sharp teeth and long, strong legs allowing them to easily catch and devour their prey. They probably had a weak bite, due to their small jaw, but that was ok! They would have used the horns on their heads like a club or hatchet to hurt or kill their prey like the Pachycephalosaurus before having their snack. (If you want to learn more about Pachycephalosaurus, check out this blog HERE!)

Capri Carnotaurus – A super friendly character from The Dinoverse, who’s always ready with a high-five, a hug, or a wave!

The Fastest Dinosaur Alive
You wouldn’t have wanted to challenge this dinosaur to a race! The carnotaurus had long, large, and very strong lower legs, allowing it to run super fast. Scientists believe that this dino was very likely one of the fastest theropods in its 2000lb class!

If You’re Happy And You Know It…
Yup. All those T-Rex jokes? We really should be making them about the carnotaurus! The Tyrannosaurus had tiny arms, for sure, but T-Rex could use them, and their fingers and claws. The Carnotaurus? Not so much. In fact, the carnotaurus didn’t even have claws, and their fingers were fused together! This meant that not only could they not use them to grab or tear animals, but they also couldn’t even move them independently. Pretty useless back then, but if you want to see some adorable art and stickers of them, check them out here!


Skin And Bones!
Paleontologists have found an almost complete skeleton of Carnotaurus in South America, but not only that they have also found fossilized Carnotaurus skin in Argentina! This is a pretty rare find for a carnivore! This has given them some really cool information about the Carnotaurus; that it was scaly and more reptilian, like the one we saw in Jurassic Park. This is surprising for scientists because most Theropods of the late cretaceous period seem to have feathers. Even baby T-Rex may have had tiny feathers.

The skeleton of Carnotaurus on display at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Photo by Nicholas Carter

What’s In A Name?
The Carnotaurus was named the “Meat Eating Bull” by Argentinian Paeleontologist Jose Bonaparte in 1985. Dr. Bonaparte was the paleontologist to find the Carnotaurus skeleton, among many other dinosaur fossils.

José Bonaparte (1928-2020). Picture Credit: Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales, Bernardino Rivadavia

The Carnotaurus was a powerful and fast carnivore, and quite a terrifying dinosaur, even if its tiny, little arms were a bit useless. I’m really glad that movies like Jurassic Park are featuring new and exciting dinosaurs. It gives us a chance to get to know them better! This dinosaur from the late cretaceous age with its horned head and scaly skin is definitely a dinosaur worth studying!

Do you have any great Carnotaurus jokes? Here at The Dinoverse we LOVE dinosaur jokes (especially Tatum!). send us an email or tag us with your best joke on Instagram! We would love to hear them! And don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter! You will hear about fun dino stuff, and even get a dinosaur treat on your birthday from Vester the Velociraptor!

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Baby Yingliang

getty images
Have you heard about Baby Yingliang? Baby Yingliang is the name of one of the most exquisitely preserved dinosaur embryos that have ever been found. For a paleontologist to find a dinosaur egg or nest is rare, and those that have been found are usually incomplete, or the bones are dislocated. This is part of the reason we don’t actually know what baby dinosaurs look like before they hatch. With this discovery, researchers can hopefully get a better picture of that!

And guess what? For the “Are dinosaurs birds or reptiles?” question, BabyYingliang is an oviraptorosaur. Oviraptorosaurs are part of a group of Theropods. Researchers believe that Theropods are closely related to birds, and with the discovery of Baby Yingliang, their theory is even more substantial! Baby Yingliang is shown to be in a “tucking” position, a position that is unique to modern baby birds before hatching. This doesn’t mean all dinosaurs are birds (check out this blog for more on that topic!), but it definitely gives us evidence that some dinosaurs were!

Life reconstruction of a close-to-hatching oviraptorosaur dinosaur embryo, based on the new specimen, Baby Yingliang. Image Credit: Lida Xing

Baby Yingliang was found in the Ganzhou region of Southern China and ended up in storage in a museum for almost 15 years before the museum staff of the Yingliang Stone Nature History noticed the exquisitely preserved bones through some cracks in the egg. They were sorting through some boxes that were in storage and discovered the fossils. What a beautiful thing to find in storage! I certainly don’t have anything like that in my attic!

It’s amazing discoveries like Baby Yingliang that help us understand more about what dinosaurs actually looked like. Researchers now have an even stronger theory that today’s modern birds evolved over millions of years from Theropod dinosaurs. Hopefully, we can look forward to more discoveries like this one for more evidence of that hypothesis!

For more interesting facts on dinosaurs, sign up for our email list! You’ll hear news on the latest discoveries and get all sorts of fun dinosaur stuff (you’ll even get a discount for The Dinoverse shop!)

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5 Fun And Easy Dinosaur Crafts That Kids Will Love

Doing Dinosaur crafts with the kids can make a rainy day or boring weekend much more fun! Here are some of our favorite easy dinosaur activities; grab your glue sticks and paper plates, there is something for kids of all ages!

Dinosaur Eggs:
This fun craft is perfect for older kids. Dinosaur eggs are so much fun, both to make and to break! It’s a fairly easy DIY activity, albeit a bit messy. (Read all about how to make this particular dinosaur craft, and get the recipe here!) However, the fun our kids got from breaking them open and excavating their dinosaur surprise from inside was totally worth it! Our older dinosaur fan even helped make the dinosaur eggs the second time around for his birthday party! (Read about that in another blog! Boy was that fun!)

Jurassic Dinosaur Mural:
This dinosaur craft takes me back to when I was a kid and is great for preschoolers and older kids to create! My dad used to hang a huge piece of paper on the wall, and then lay out all different types of craft materials on the table. We kids, (I had 5 brothers!) would then create a mural together. We did this for each season. I have very vivid memories of snowmen made from cotton balls and lots of white glue. The older we got and the better our motor skills, the more intricate the craft became! We always had so much fun together with these activities, that I continued this crafts tradition with my own kids! You can too; just add dinosaurs! Shop your local dollar store for ideas and get some foam dinosaur cut-outs, stickers, and other fun craft supplies you think would be great on your mural. Dinosaur printables are great too; color them first, then glue them on. You can get really creative with this one; you can even use potato stamps for trees!

Dinosaur Footprints:
Here’s a dinosaur craft that’s a bit messier, but worth it. What could be more fun than making dinosaurs out of your own footprints? Use paint on the bottom of your kids’ feet, and have them step on paper. Let it dry and then add extra craft supplies like googly eyes or draw-on teeth to make your dinosaur really ferocious! Kids of all ages will love to give these dino crafts as cards!

Dinosaur Bath Bombs:
Looking for a ‘clean” dinosaur activity? Make bath time fun with Dinosaur Bath Bombs! This is a great dinosaur birthday craft for older kids or toddlers and preschoolers to help make for their teacher! The dino bath bombs are pretty easy crafts to make, and you can use a variety of different scents! Kids love to watch them fizz and bubble in the water until they find the hidden dino in the middle of the egg! Dinosaur activities that make bath time a little more fun are always a winner in my home!

Tissue Dinosaurs:
You can make dinos easily out of paper, tissue, and glue! This dinosaur craft is one of the easy crafts on our list; perfect for a toddler or preschoolers to get their hands into (although big kids will like it too!). The bigger kids can have fun cutting out small squares of paper tissue, while the smaller kids can have the fun of gluing them onto paper dinosaur shapes! Add googly eyes or a paper eye, and you have your very own fun dinosaur friend to play with after!

No matter which prehistoric craft project you choose to try, dinosaur activities are a fun way to pass some time on a rainy summer day or a Sunday afternoon. Toddlers, preschoolers, and older kids (even us really older kids) love to make our own dinosaur crafts! Get yourself some paper and scissors, and get dinosaur crafting!

What’s your favorite dinosaur craft to brighten a boring day? Send us an email or tag us with your pictures on Instagram! We would love to hear about them! And don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter! You will hear about fun dino stuff, and even get a dinosaur treat on your birthday from Vester the Velociraptor!

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Dinosaur Movies: Jurassic World Dominion, and the ending of an era.

The lights dimmed and the audience hushed as the last of the Jurassic Park series movies started…. If you are like my partner and hate spoilers, stop reading and go watch the movie. If you are like me and like to know what you’re getting into first, read on!

BEWARE! SPOILER ALERT!!

The Dinoverse Team took a trip down to Victoria, BC to see this final Dinosaur spectacle on the big screen. It was really neat to see all the main cast from both the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World series’ together in one movie. Each has their own specialty and acknowledges the others for theirs, and even Dr. Lewis Dodgson (recast by Campbell Scott) shows up. You might remember him as the “secret agent” type guy who talked Dennis Nedry into stealing the dinosaur embryos (think Barbasol…).

Speaking of that Barbasol can…

Jurassic World Dominion gives honor to just about everything the Jurassic Park franchise fans have come to love. All those memes, jokes, and other things that have become a part of pop culture were included in one form or another. Ian Malcolm makes a very obvious gesture of doing up a button, and yes, the Barbasol can DOES make an appearance.

What about redemption arks?

Oh, there are those too! Ian Malcolm gets the chance to wave a fiery stick properly, saving the day, rather than making things 10 times worse. Biosyn sanctuary ends up truly a sanctuary for the dinosaurs, but the biggest redemption was with Dr. Wu. This ambitious scientist, starting from the very first Jurassic Park movie, has been involved with all the cloning and despite everything going horribly wrong every time, he just wouldn’t give up. Finally, at the very end, he gets it right.

But are there Dinosaurs?

Of course there are Dinosaurs! It is a Jurassic Park movie after all! They aren’t quite scientifically accurate, but we’ve come to expect that over the years, and we forgive them because the movies have introduced the world to many new and exciting species. A couple of our favorites from this particular movie are the baby carnotaurus (give us all the carnotaurus!) and the feathered Pyroraptor, although we all chuckled when the Pyroraptor suddenly turned into a penguin…

So bottom line…

Was this the best of the 6 movies in the Jurassic Park franchise? Probably not, but it was still a great movie, and they did a really good job of wrapping up the two and a half decades of dinosaur films. If like our Lead Illustrator, Kara, you saw the original Jurassic Park in the theater when you were a kid, it sparked a lifelong love of these prehistoric animals. Now, as an adult, it’s more than just your love of dinosaurs that takes you to this movie, it’s nostalgia as well. The filmmakers respected that, and all in all, they gave us a movie that definitely did the series justice.

Have you had a chance to check our Jurassic World: Dominion yet? We’d love to know what you thought! Let us know on Instagram, and don’t forget to sign up for our email newsletter for more dinosaur facts and fun (you’ll even get a discount for The Dinoverse shop!)

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Can Dinosaurs Be Cloned?

The simple answer is no, a scientist could not clone a dinosaur. Well, not yet, anyway, and it’s highly unlikely that scientists could clone a dinosaur from mosquito DNA.

Let’s start by talking about the parts in the movie “Jurassic Park” where they got it right. Amber does exist. Amber is a tree resin that has been fossilized and preserved due to high pressure and temperature, covered by many layers of sediment over thousands of years. Eventually, it can harden to make a gemstone that is actually quite expensive, and people do turn the gemstone into jewelry! It is possible things could get trapped in the amber; scientists have indeed found mosquitoes and biting flies preserved in amber from the time of the dinosaurs, but unfortunately, the amber only preserves the outside, the “husk”, not the soft tissue. Any tasty snack they had before getting trapped doesn’t get preserved.

Lebanese amber specimen from the Early Cretaceous Period

There is fun news though! Scientists have found DNA residue inside prehistoric bugs! They just weren’t found in amber, they were found in the dinosaur bones! Dr. Susie Maidment and a team of scientists from the Natural History Museum in the UK have discovered what could be red blood cells inside a dinosaur bone from the cretaceous period, and in 2020, scientists from the US and China found cartilage that possibly contains Dinosaur DNA. Unfortunately though, just because you find blood cells in dinosaur bones, doesn’t mean you have found dinosaur DNA. Cloning a dinosaur isn’t that easy; DNA is super vulnerable. It breaks down rapidly and has to be handled in very strict conditions

Here’s where Jurassic Park got the dinosaur cloning science a bit wrong. In order to clone something, you need an intact, living DNA cell, and a living host of the same species. Since dinosaurs are extinct, it would be pretty hard to use one as a host. In the movie, Jurassic Park, they took fragmented DNA, figured out where in the genetic code the holes were and filled the DNA sequence with frog DNA, then used a science lab to grow the dinosaur clone. The big problem with this is, if you don’t have the full sequence of the DNA already, you don’t know where the holes are! Even if you did, it wouldn’t help to fill it with frog DNA; you would need to use birds. Or you may use crocodiles, but to clone a dinosaur you definitely would not use frogs.

Compsognathus: SMNS, R. Haring. & M. Aurich

Scientists are giving cloning a go though. There are a few labs that are trying to reverse-engineer extinct animals (not dinosaurs…yet!). Scientists think this could be a way to bring back species that have gone extinct during the years that humans have inhabited our planet. For dinosaurs, you could in theory take a chicken and try to give it a long tail or teeth! Really though, would it be a dinosaur, if it was reverse engineered, and not grown from actual DNA? Would that not just be a really scary chicken, rather than a dinosaur clone?

Scientists have successfully created a clone of certain animals already, but that’s because they already had the DNA of the animal (again, not a dinosaur clone 😞), and they are working on reverse engineering the genetic make-up of extinct species that we already know could survive living now with care and protection. Without finding perfectly preserved, complete dinosaur DNA, the chances of cloning a real dinosaur is basically impossible. Even if it was possible to clone a dinosaur, we’ve seen how that movie ends! Like Dr. Malcolm says, “Just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should.”

To get more dinosaur info and fun activities, and to hear about the latest The Dinoverse promotions, sign up for our email newsletter! You’ll even get a gift from Vester the Velociraptor on your birthday! And don’t forget to follow us on Instagram!