This page explains the science behind things that don’t exist, probably can’t exist, or both.  Basically, it gives a legitimate or at least official sounding reason for how something could work.

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Ironhead Dragon

Tall ferns and large leafy trees cut visibility down to only twenty or so feet.  The air is hot, but surprisingly quiet.  The only sounds are brief gusts of wind, echoes of jungle animals in the distance, and the buzz of insects.  Then suddenly, the ground shudders, a strong smell rushes through the foliage, and the branches of the trees, groan and crack.

A giant head lifts above the ferns.  It is reptilian and triangular.  Two wide-crested horns jut out of its head, sweeping back and upward slightly.  Two orange eyes, each a foot or so across, stare down.  Its jungle green face is studded with dirty orange and black nodes, those along its snout larger and more pronounced.  Ferocious teeth, ranging from six to twelve inches in length, rest against its outer jaw.

The beast pushes through the plants, crushing them effortlessly.  Most of its ten ton, sixty foot long bulk is in view.  It is the size of an elephant, a big one, a four-legged, deadly predator.  The orange and yellow studs continue down its green neck and body, becoming large plates and sharp spines down its vertebrae.

Color and Skin

The orange and black color of this monster is due to an unusually high amount of iron in its tough skin.  Its crest-like horns are twenty percent iron themselves; its head is duly reinforced as well, and its body is also strengthened.

The creature lowers its head and opens its gaping mouth, letting out a deafening roar laced with flame.

Fiery Breath

A look inside the beast shows that its body produces large amounts of ethanol, storing it in a special organ behind the lungs.  It also has a muscle packed third lung made up of two compartments.  One compartment compresses air down to a tenth of its original volume and stores it in the second compartment.  When needed, this compressed volume of air can be released to propel a mixture of ethanol and oxygen up a flexible, but strong, channel to a nozzle at the back of its mouth.  Inside this nozzle are two organic steel nubs that, when rubbed together, produce a spray of sparks.  These sparks ignite the burst of rapidly moving combustible fluid gas, unleashing a torrent of flame capable of reaching up to two hundred feet at its longest.

The predator lifts its head again, sucking air into the compressing, propelling lung.  It opens its fatal jaws again.  A hurricane rush of air stirs up a cloud of dust as a fireball explodes from its mouth and against the ground.

Fireballs

Another organ in the monster produces a shell of polyethylene, a common plastic.  This shell is filled with oxidized ethanol and contained in a sack that can hold six eight-inch explosives.  When called for, a plastic cannonball will slide into the flexible launch tube mentioned before and be launched by the expanding gases from the compressing lung, sending fiery oblivion to its prey up to six hundred feet away.

The creature straightens and two enormous wings unfurl and extend from two additional shoulders on its back.  Each massive wing is supported by huge, rippling muscles.

Flight

Its wings spread completely, shadowing an expanse of ground two hundred feet across.  It leaps into the air with a roar, its wings sweeping downward mightily.  The downdraft of each wingbeat increases the air pressure below it by one full atmosphere, double normal.

The dragon soars through the sky, spraying a fountain of fire.

 

Benzene Ferron JT-28

Jennifer and Ben walked into the hanger.

“What is that thing?” Jennifer exclaimed immediately.  Ben grinned.

“This is the Benzene Ferron,” he replied proudly.

The Benzene Ferron was a spacecraft one hundred feet in length.  It was comprised of a bulb section (its shape officially called an oblate spheroid, otherwise a squashed sphere) with six, thick and immobile legs each at sixty degrees off from the next.  A mostly rectangular section absorbed about a third of the spheroid and then made up the rest of the length.  There were three engines: two on rectangular portion facing back and one large one in the center of the spheroid pointing down.

“Its got support engines on the back,” Ben said. “That eliminates the need for a bunch of small engines all over the thing turn and what not.  That saves a lot of space inside.”

“What’s that big one on the bottom?” Jennifer asked pointing.

“That’s a landing engine,” Ben explained. “It takes a lot of power to overcome a planetary gravitational field and that’s what this is for.  It provides enough thrust to land on a planet at a safe speed and leave a planet in a timely fashion.”

“Oh.”

“Come inside, you ought to see what we got,” Ben insisted.  The two of them climbed up a ladder to a small indent before the airlock.  Ben keyed in a pattern into a pad on the wall and the doors opened.

Exiting the airlock on the other side, Jennifer stopped to examine the walls.  She looked on both sides of the doorway.

“The walls look kind of thin,” she noted with concern. “How well is this thing insulated?”

Shields

“It doesn’t require material insulation,” Ben answered gleefully. “Its got a modulator that produces an oscillating energy field around the ship preventing heat from leaving.  That eliminates further space required for keeping us from freezing to death.  They call it thermal shielding.”

“Does it also keep us from cooking alive during direct assault from a star?”

“There is a second modulator that does the opposite,” Ben explained. “Instead of trapping heat in, it keeps heat out.  Both of them have additional settings that can be tuned to keep out basically any wavelength of light.  The external shield can be set to block out gamma rays that would otherwise punch large holes in our DNA.”

“Interesting,” Jennifer said. “How much energy can the shields keep out?  I mean it won’t save us if we crash into a star or anything will it?”

“No.  It is only built to withstand solar radiation.  If we get too close to a star, energy density will start to overcome the shields.  But a similar method, a more powerful one, is used to protect warships from electromagnetic weapons.”

“We ought to lead-line this thing,” Jennifer said. “What about power?  How fast does it fly?”

“The primary engines, turned all the way up, will bring us to three thousand six hundred miles per hour, or one mile per second.  But that can overpower the support system and can make turns difficult at that speed.”

“Isn’t the escape velocity way higher than that?”

“Yes, but the landing engine can move us at a rate of thirty thousand miles per hour.  Which is higher than the escape velocity.  The reason we would not normally use that engine is because it is not supported and the support systems of the primary engines can’t keep up with that rate of speed.”

“So as we are flying though space we are limited to a mile a second travel?  It would take days to get anywhere, and that is only considering things in the same orbit!” Jennifer said exasperated.

Faster Than Light Travel

“Well we have more than one mode of travel,” Ben grinned. “The primary engines have a secondary travel platform.  The support system shuts down and the engines fire into neopropulsion.  These accelerate the ship to the speed of light and then elevate it into the fourth dimension where speed is pretty loose and universal.  The three dimensional top speed is about eight times the speed of light.”

“You’ve done a bit of research,” Jennifer said. “That’s fast!  How does the ship produce enough energy to go that fast?”

“It doesn’t need to,” the other replied. “The faster you go, the closer you get to the fourth dimension.  And the closer you get, the easier it is to get there.  Basically, what the engines do is briefly fire and shut off at very rapid intervals.  This builds pressure and allows to ship to speed faster than it normally would until the pull of the fourth dimension compensates for the mass of the ship and drags it past the light barrier.”

“Wouldn’t intermittent bursts of propulsion cause the ship to accelerate at only half the rate?”

“No.  It accelerates at an exponentially increasing rate.  The propelling forces bounce off of each other and reflect back on the ship, pushing it along as it still produces more and more of those forces.  It starts cooking and it starts cooking very fast.”

“Seems like it might work,” Jennifer said.

“It does work,” Ben countered.

“Still, that would require a lot of power… at least twice normal,” Jennifer argued. “How does the ship produce that much?”

Cold Fusion

“The ship has a neutral fusion reactor.  They used to be called cold fusion, but now they are called neutral fusion.  The reactor propels neutrons together while projecting positrons on them.  The neutrons pass the strong nuclear force barrier and bind to each other as positrons pass, substituting themselves for protons.  This nuclear binding produces energy: not as much as real fusion, but more than fission.  The energy produced excites electrons as they pass through magnetic fields and produces a flow of electricity.  Then the neutron nucleus decays into deuterium.  The entire process occurs at extremely low temperatures to prevent to neutrons from decaying before they have bound together.  The end results are deuterium and power.”

“That’s convenient,” Jennifer said.

“Extremely,” Ben agreed. “It is particularly convenient because the deuterium is stored and can be used to later to restore the backup deuterium nitrite power blocks.”

“But all of that energy can’t possibly be used all at once,” Jennifer told him. “How does it store that much energy?  Batteries wouldn’t cut it.  They would explode if exposed to that much electricity.”

Infinite Energy Storage

“For that, the ship uses a storage method called stasis energy,” Ben responded. “Electrons are confined in a vacuum space and electromagnetically propelled in a circuit.  The space is confined by a dense diamond shell packed with dipolar organized lithium hydride molecules.  The hydrogen on these molecules faces inward toward the electron circuit.  Since a hydrogen atom is just a proton and electron, and since the hydrogen atom in this situation is an anion, the hydrogen atom has two electrons around it to one proton.  That is as huge ration!  The resulting strong electromagnetic repulsive and weak nuclear repulsive forces confine the electrons until they need to be used.”

“Impressive!” Jennifer said. “How large is the vacuum space the electrons are confined in?”

“It a spherical space only two millimeters in diameter.  It is kind of cool actually; it glows very bright with a muted blue color.  Cherenkov radiation is what that is called,” Ben said thoughtfully.

“Well, it seems that this Benzene ship is capable enough,” Jennifer said.

“It isn’t quite ready for us to use,” Ben said. “The external shields are pretty weak, and deep space is a lawless territory.  We need to boost our shields so that we don’t get blown to bits by exser cannons on other ships.  Plus, cannons over our own would be useful.  They are amazing the way they function.

Classic Star Wars-Style Laser Cannons

“An exser cannon is a electromagnetic plasma weapon.  The weapon uses special cartridges containing different elements or compounds.  When the weapon fires, it heats a set portion of the cartridge into the plasma phase and then electromagnetically fires it at about half the speed of light,” Ben added. “You can fire pretty much anything out of one of those.  The only requirement is that you can fit it in the ammunition slot.”

“It seems like it would be pretty hard to miss,” Jennifer commented.

“Yeah, with one of those you can pretty much hold right on target,” Ben agreed.

 

Raptor

“Everyone gets all the wrong misconceptions about dinosaurs,” Jeb Davis said, leading a small group of people through a door and out into the sunlight.  He led the group across a metal catwalk thirty feet above the ground.  “‘Do they have feathers?  Do they have scales?  Do they have skin?’  Or maybe, ‘Are they dumb animals?  Are they as intelligent as people?  Are they mindless killers?’  Blah, blah, blah; its always the same garbage.  Look down there.”  He pointed at the ground below them.

A dinosaur sped underneath them.  Large, sickle claws on its feet identified it as a raptor.  It paused underneath them, looking up at the people looking down on it.  It stood six feet high, its body around seventeen feet long, counting the tail.  Its skin was colored with short narrow stripes like blades of grass.  Most of the stripes were different shades of green, but it also sported browns, oranges, and yellows.  Its large gold eyes watched them intently.  The raptor sported relatively small, needle sharp teeth, but it made up for this restraint with eight inch long, deadly claws on its hands.  Its long tail bobbed from the back of a deceptively powerful body.  The raptor shrieked at them, a sound somewhere between the roar of a lion and the cry of an eagle.  With that, its sprinted away, rapidly vanishing in the foliage.

“I suppose that is velociraptor?” a woman in the back stated.  Jeb shook his head.

“Are you a Jurassic Park fan?” he asked, straightening his wide-brimmed hat.  The woman wavered, unsure what to say. “Are any of you Jurassic Park fans?”  A few hands went up.  “So am I,” Jeb said, leading the group along the walk again, “but Jurassic Park is the sole biggest misleading factor for people on this tour.  Everyone walks over that cage and says ‘So that is velociraptor.’ but the truth is – ” Jeb paused and pointed down into the next pen.  ” – there is your velociraptor right there.”  The group looked down, looking for another seventeen foot beast.  Instead, they saw spritely, lizard-like creatures each the size of a Labrador.  A trio of them stopped briefly providing a closer look.

It bore a smaller version of the sickle claw seen on the previous raptor, but this dinosaur was much smaller and this one had small feathers down its back.  It was red and grey in color, like desert dirt.

“Velociraptor actually does have a few feathers; it helps with camouflage as the texture of the feathers breaks up the velociraptor’s form when it is hiding,” Jeb said. “Pretty anticlimactic isn’t it?”  A few people nodded.  “That’s where you are wrong.  A small velociraptor like this is much more agile and they hunt in larger numbers.  It is every bit as deadly, but it just might take it a little longer to kill you.”

“So what was the other raptor?” a man asked.

“That is not a pure species like our velociraptors, but a hundred million years ago, that one was Achillobator,” Jeb explained. “Our digging team couldn’t get pure DNA for that one though, so what you saw isn’t exactly what it used to be.  We call it Achilleraptor.  That name is cooler anyway,” he added with a grin. “Its name originates, if you couldn’t tell, with the old Ancient Greek hero, Achilles – you know, the guy who was killed by an arrow to the heel, but was the world’s greatest warrior before that.  Just like Achilles, that raptor will win if you try to duke it out.

“Maybe you,” Jeb said, pointing out a football coach in the group, “were thinking that since Achilleraptor is only as tall as any large man, a brawl with it would be like a brawl with a guy with knives.  No, that is wrong.  Achilleraptor may look like a lean, slender lizard from above, but it is actually a five hundred pound dragon that fights like a compact tiger.”

“One thing I want to point out,” Jeb said, pulling a piece of paper from his vest, “is that our raptors are not as lean and skin and bone as they are popularly supposed to be.  Look back at Achilleraptor over there.”  The group looked back to see the raptor padding slowly through the bushes.  “Notice how its arms and legs are not little sticks with long fingers and toes.  These raptors are muscular; they have thick arms and strong fingers, not any of this snaky nonsense.”  Jeb held up the paper.  It showed an image of velociraptor from Jurassic Park.  Murmurs of agreement moved through the group as they compared the skinny velociraptor of the movie and the muscled, fearsome Achilleraptor.  “You should notice this difference in all our raptors.”

Continuing down the catwalk, Jeb led the group over the next pen.  Below them, small fir trees covered most of the ground.  Only flashes of animals below could be seen.

“Down here, we have what originally was Deinonychus, a species limited to North America.  So far our digging teams have been unable to give us a complete DNA string, so we gave ours our own name,” Jeb said

One of the dinosaurs plodded through a clearing.  Exclamations of surprise emanated from the group.

“As I mentioned as we walked out here, people always ask if it has skin, scales, or feathers.  Deinonychus was originally supposed to have feathers.  As you can see here, this raptor has none of those.”

The dinosaur stood four feet high and twelve feet long.  It looked up at the group keenly with large, dark blue eyes.  Its curved, sickle claws bobbed up and down.  This raptor was armed with six inch finger claws.  Most distinctive for this raptor, however, was that instead of skin or scales, it was covered in fur.  It bore a summer coat of white-grey fur that rippled as the raptor moved.  It was a bizarre sight; it looked roughly similar to a mountain lion or a wolf, but it was so definitely different.

“Since our DNA for this raptor isn’t pure, we call in Lupumaraptor, partly because half our staff can’t even pronounce Deinonychus.  It has size and behavioral similarities to a modern day wolf.  They hunt in packs of four to ten and with their prehistoric weaponry, they are very effective predators.”

He led the group along the walk again.  The catwalk raised upward at a short stairway, now forty feet in the air.  The walk passed over a metal and concrete wall.  On the other side of the wall was an open space of dirt and large rocks occupied by four dinosaurs.  These too were raptors, but they were bigger than the others had been.

All four looked up at the group and snarled in a partially canine sounding way.  These bore pale yellow skin that was almost entirely white.  Their skins were spotted grey, similar to those on a leopard.  They were each around eight feet tall and twenty-four feet long.  Their hand claws were each a foot long, jet black and wicked as swords.

“Anyone recognize that one?” Jeb asked.  Nothing but head shakes.  “That one is Utahraptor; Utah’s hot desert sands don’t preserve DNA very well, but we managed to get pure DNA for these.  As you can see, it is bigger than Achilleraptor.  Its cage is higher because Utahraptor can leap significantly higher due to evolution and size.  We are safe up here,” Jeb continued, noting looks of concern on some faces. “Utahraptor can’t leap this high even if it leaps from one of the boulders.  And yes, they are smart enough to try.”

Continuing along the walk, they proceeded into the next pen.  This pen was obscured by tall trees reaching past the catwalk.

“This next dinosaur can’t climb trees, can it?” a man asked nervously.

“Oh, no,” Jeb said reassuringly. “It’s much too big.”  He grinned; he loved saying that as though it were a reassurance.

“Somewhere in here,” he said, “is Megaraptor.  Despite the name, it is not actually a raptor, but is an Allosaurid.  Still, nature seems to evolve the same sort of stuff as you will see…”

Branches crashed from below them as something very large moved about behind a screen of boughs.  Jeb led the group a bit farther along the catwalk and Megaraptor came into view.

It was a dark blue-green monster with a skin that was more scaly than the other raptors’ had been.  The dinosaur was twelve feet tall and thirty-three feet in length.  It had a partly spiny body as well as horn crests above each eye like a classic Allosaur.  It turned, looking up at the group.  Its eyes were very bright and did not seemed pleased to see them.  It roared, flashing its claws in the air.

“As you can see, Megaraptor has a sickle claw on both of its hands instead of its feet.  Typically only the Dromaeosaurs had such a claw, but apparently nature seems to find it to be a useful weapon.  Megaraptor is a particularly vicious killer in this respect.  Each of these claws is a foot and a half long.  There is no walking creature left on Earth that Megaraptor couldn’t take down by itself.”

“How high can it leap?” a woman in the group asked.

“Normally, it does not.  It is a heavyset dinosaur and doesn’t employ that type of agility like true raptors do.  Our researchers have come up with an rough estimate, however, based on its body structure.  Relative to the others, it doesn’t leap all that high, and as an Allosaurid, it can’t leap very high by default; it only probably leaps five or six feet.  But taking its stride into consideration, that leap is really nothing more than a step up.

“Before we continue, who can tell me the function of the sickle claw on all these dinosaurs?” Jeb asked.  The football coach stepped forward.

“It was used for deep cutting to disembowel its victims,” he answered.  Jeb nodded as though he had expected that answer.

“Jurassic Park again.  ‘A six-inch retractable claw, like a razor – He slashes at you here, or here… or maybe across the belly, spilling your intestines.’  No, actually, this claw,” Jeb paused and pulled a replica sickle claw from his pocket and handed it to the coach, “cannot cut.  It is sharp on the point, which makes it good for poking holes, but the circumference is round.  Cutting with that would be like trying to cut with the edge of a broom handle.  What that claw is actually used for is holding prey in place, or in the event of larger prey, for holding onto it while the claws you saw on their hands cut it to shreds.

“Come this way, everyone.”  Jeb led the group over another pen, but this one did not have an open top like the rest; this pen had a thick glass barrier between whatever was inside and the catwalk.

“We go from Megaraptor to microraptor,” Jeb declared. “Until now, no one had been able to determine if microraptor actually flew or if it was a glider.”  Six black shapes darted beneath them, zipping from one side of the pen to the other.  “Now we can see that the microraptor does indeed fly.”

One of the raptors landed on a tree limb.  It was feathered, completely, like a hawk.  It was glossy black in color.  It bore a long tail, unlike a hawk, and did not have a beak as one might expect looking at the very birdlike raptor.  And the raptor did indeed bear the customary sickle claw on its feet.

“Microraptor gives birds of prey a whole new meaning,” Jeb said. “Microraptor is about three feet long, with a similar wingspan.  And since it can fly, we have to keep a particularly good eye on this one.

“If you are good at putting two and two together, you will notice that microraptor has the sickle claw, which we established actually holds its prey and doesn’t slash it, but it does not have prominent hand claws like its other raptor cousins.  Microraptor actually uses its strong feet to squeeze its prey to death, or to drive that sickle claw into its heart, brain, or other organs.

“We are not entirely sure, but we speculate that the microraptor has a strong enough grip to pierce a human skull, which is one reason why we have their cage blocked on all sides.  Moving on!”

At the bottom of the next pen was flat and grassy.  Lying in the middle of this were two large, stocky dinosaurs.

“This is Allosaurus,” Jeb announced. “Allosaurus is a peak predator.  It is stronger and heavier than Megaraptor and it is more versatile.”

The two beasts indeed looked stronger.  The displayed muscles of a body building carnosaur.  Their bodies were colored by small grey, white, black, and lime green spots distributed at random.  They also had long black stripes like a tiger.  Their forearms were long and maneuverable, and though their claws were not as long as the other dinosaurs’ had been, their hands seemed much more dexterous.

“Allosaurus, we have found, behaves somewhat like a lion, somewhat like a tiger.  Sometimes it will hunt in groups like a lion pride, or sometimes it will hunt alone, relying on ambush,” Jeb said. “Since they are lying down now, you can’t tell, but the one on the left stands twelve feet tall and thirty-two long; the other stands thirteen feet tall and thirty-six feet long.”

Jeb directed the group over the next pen.  A few trees were held here, but they did not hide the mighty dinosaur inside from view.

“And of course, the classic dinosaur,” Jeb said, “Tyrannosaurus Rex.”  The tyrannosaur bellowed at them.  The sound was deafening and not at all subtle like the previous raptors’ had been.  This was the roar of the king of the Earth.

The tyrannosaurus rex stood sixteen feet tall, its body and tail forty feet long.  Its skin was the same brown color as bricks.  Each tooth was between twelve to six inches, but unlike the raptors, these were enamel spikes not meant for snipping and ripping, but for crushing and tearing.  Perfectly defined muscled rolled just beneath the beast’s skin.  Its steps caused the catwalk to shudder.

“The Tyrant King, Mother Nature’s crown jewel of the food chain.  Tyrannosaurus is the single greatest predator ever to evolve.  Human beings don’t count.  But put a human one on one with that there, and the fight will be pretty short lived and entirely one-sided,” Jeb said.

“Any questions before we continue?”

“I have noticed,” a man said, stepping forward, “that all of these dinosaurs have paid us attention.  How intelligent are they?”

Intelligent Dinosaurs

Jeb leaned against the catwalk’s railing.  “Velociraptor, credited with great intelligence by Michael Crichton, is the least intelligent, due to limited brain space, but they are just as intelligent as any dog.  Lupumaraptor also has limited brain space, but has creditable intelligence.  Microraptor is more difficult to determine, but it does have an extraordinarily weak bite, indicative of increased brain volume, so we can say that microraptor is probably smarter than every other bird in the sky.  Megaraptor, Utahraptor, and Achilleraptor all have about the same degree of intelligence which is just as intelligent as any given human.  Tyrannosaurus is not as intelligent as those three, but it is more strategically minded.  That is to say in a straight up fight between Megaraptor and tyrannosaurus, the Megaraptor is like a cage fighter and the rex is like a karate master.  The tyrannosaurus rex knows all the right moves to make.

“Allosaurus is the most intelligent of the dinosaurs we have raised here.  It sacrifices some of the jaw strength that tyrannosaurus possesses in exchange for a more complex brain.  The average Allosaurus, if it were a human, would be an Einstein, a Da Vinci, or a Holmes.  They are incredibly intelligent, enough so we are not actually sure how smart they are.  We take extreme precautions and overkill in containing them.”

“So could those three intelligent raptors that you mentioned, as well as Allosaurus – could they be communicated with or taught like people teach gorillas and chimpanzees?” a woman asked.  Jeb shook his head.

“No.  A gorilla or chimpanzee has a lot in common with a human physically and psychologically.  These dinosaurs (Megaraptor isn’t a raptor, remember) are like an alien species.  They are just as intelligent, but they have evolved in an entirely separate way.

“For example,” Jeb explained, “look at humans.  We are all the same species, but we have come up with so many different languages to communicate with each other, and some of these languages are almost incompatible with each other, they are so different.  All of that complexity arose from one single intelligent species.  These dinosaurs are another intelligent species.  They think differently.  The dinosaurs we hold here communicate – some of them.  But think, all the diversity they have cooked up over a billion years, humans could never understand what they are saying.  Just like a nod is a universally recognized gesture for humans, a dinosaur mightn’t even know that a nod is a gesture.  We are just too different.  Even holding them is dangerous, because eventually, they could learn how to escape.  So no, the most we can communicate to each other is that we don’t like each other very much.”

“So if you put a human and a raptor each in a room with a lock on the door, they should theoretically figure out how to unlock the door at the same time?”

“Yes, theoretically,” Jeb said. “But the method of unlocking the lock will probably be different.  The human would probably try to pick the lock and the raptor would probably try to systematically take it apart.”

“So these dinosaurs could never be used to serve some purpose for humanity?” a man asked.

“Excuse me; my previous comment on the impossibility was a personal opinion,” Jeb said. “I believe it is a valid opinion, but we haven’t proved that yet.  The administration is confident that they can be taught and subdued.  Then, of course, it becomes an ethical question.  These are intelligent creatures, more so than humans in some cases, so do we have the right to enslave them like we have enslaved other humans in the past?  Food for thought.”

“How did you get the DNA to create these dinosaurs?” a man asked.

Getting Dinosaur DNA

“We collect it from fossilized bones,” Jeb said. “In the past, collecting DNA from bones has been a very unprofitable endeavor.  DNA either isn’t there or it isn’t intact.  It has never been intact, or even abundant, actually.  But the problem hasn’t been the bones themselves, but where we have been looking for them.

“Our digging teams have been looking for fossils near deposits of shale.  The pressurized conditions in which shale forms fossilizes dinosaur bones faster than in normal conditions, and that in turn preserves the DNA.  Their digs in these areas have been a hundred times more profitable.  The standard methods for extracting the DNA has always been good; we’ve just never had enough DNA before.”

“How did you get from DNA to a living creature, though?” the man asked. “DNA requires a medium, an egg to assemble an organism?  What was your host?”

Hatching Dinosaurs

“We used birds, particularly the ostrich,” Jeb answered. “Birds are the most genetically similar creatures to extinct dinosaurs; ostriches are especially similar.  They have roughly the same bone structures.  We injected our DNA into ostrich egg nuclei and effectively turned them into dinosaurs eggs.  For our larger dinosaurs, like Tyrannosaurus, ostrich eggs were not big enough to contain a normally sized fetus, and they were stunted for a few generations.  But now they are what fossils have shown to be full size.”