Will I love How to Build a Dinosaur?

One of my biggest animal-related holy sh*t moments was when I first read paleontologist Jack Horner’s plan to turn a chicken into a dinosaur.

Not an extinct dinosaur a la Jurassic Park (a movie he consulted on), but a living, breathing, ready-to-roar brand-new dinosaur. How, you ask, can he do that without, say, cloning preserved dino DNA in blood stolen by an amber-trapped mosquito (BTW, an impossible theory)? Obviously, by reverse engineering a chicken embryo.

By altering the embryo’s chemical instructions, those same genes—instead of building a barnyard icon—can theoretically develop a snout with teeth, arms with claws, and a… show more.

It’s nice when scientists talk like regular people, with a sense of humor and simple explanations of how impossibly complex stuff works. That’s paleontologist Jack Horner, who has been the dinosaur consultant on all the Jurassic Park films. He’s currently trying to re-create a real-life dinosaur, which he makes sound like tinkering with the engine of a 1960s Mustang. Who me? Just trying to get a chicken embryo to grow into a dinosaur, to see if I can. And if it works, by the way, there’s your proof about the theory of evolution.