Tweaking the beak: Retracing the bird's beak to its dinosaur origins, in the laboratory

Date:May 12, 2015

Source:Yale University

Summary:Scientists have successfully replicated the molecular processes that led from dinosaur snouts to the first bird beaks.

Using the fossil record as a guide, a research team led by Yale paleontologist and developmental biologist Bhart-Anjan S. Bhullar and Harvard developmental biologist Arhat Abzhanov conducted the first successful reversion of a bird's skull features. The scientists replicated ancestral molecular development to transform chicken embryos in a laboratory into specimens with a snout and palate configuration similar to that of small dinosaurs such as Velociraptor and Archaeopteryx.

Just don't call them dino-chickens.

"Our goal here was to understand the molecular underpinnings of an important evolutionary transition, not to create a 'dino-chicken' simply for the sake of it," said Bhullar, lead author of the study, published online May 12 in the journal Evolution.

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