The CBS news program 60 Minutes had reporter Leslie Stahl interview Jack Horner and Mary Schweitzer (North Carolina State University) about trying to re-creating dinosaurs using chickens. The B-rex named in the title is named after a T-rex specimen found by Bob Harmon in 2000. The fossil was too big to airlift from the find location so they cut it to reduce weight. The part of the cut fossil bone were then sent to researcher Dr. Schwitzer who after dissolving pieces in acid found a soft tissue like substance. She was able to reproduce this with other dinosaur fossils. Now they are trying to find DNA which could then be used to replicate a dinosaur.
Here is a direct link to the story if the embedded video is not showing up correctly on Blogger. Dinosaur fossil cast shown in this post does not relate to this story and is just here for reference. It is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History as of August 2010.
Mr. Horner will be at the University of Kentucky in February 2011 for a free lecture. See earlier post for more information about that lecture. Jack Horner and James Gorman have a book as well entitled How To Build a Dinosaur - Extinction Doesn't Have to Be Forever that one can find on Amazon.com
