I enjoy good dinosaur books as much as any former nine-year old who still reads science as an adult. How to Build a Dinosaur by well-known paleontologist Jack Horner, however, is not one I'd recommend. The author's name caught my eye immediately and the "Extinction doesn't have to be forever" subtitle paired with a cover image of a dino paw breaking out of an egg shell stirred thoughts of recreating an extinct beast a la Jurassic Park.

Horner's discussion of fossil finds, genetics, and pure science kept me reading, but his end game -- seeking funding to manipulate a chicken's embryonic growth to simulate a dinosaur -- was anti-climactic. I'm not saying it wasn't an interesting idea; it just wasn't the science I had expected.

It's true that chickens host many genes inherited from dinosaurs. And some inactive genes can be prodded to activate. But much of the old genome (the dinosaur gene set) did not get passed down and no amount of embryonic poking will recover it. A manipulated chick would become a strange little chicken -- not a dinosaur -- no matter what the ancient relationship.

The title and especially the subtitle of this book are somewhat, deliberately, misleading. Paleontologist Jack Horner was a consultant on the movie Jurassic Park, however, he is quick to point out that he does not propose, or have any idea how, to produce living examples of Tyrannosaurus Rex or the much touted Velociraptor. He wrote this book, with the help of New York Times science editor, James Gorman, to propose the idea of modifying the development of a chicken, to express the dinosaur like traits of a long tail, teeth and forelimbs with clawed fingers.

This book is written in the realm of science popularization. Like Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan, Horner chose to write a book explaining his idea to the general public. Why? Most popular science books are written about advances in science that are already accomplished. This one is a proposal for experiments that scientists do not yet know how to perform. By doing this he has made the reader a part of the process, the way science is really done. Here is a thought experiment that may or may not ever be tried in the laboratory.


What the book does is show how ideas are bandied about in scientific circles, how new experiments are proposed and argued for and against, how they are not necessarily ever given the chance to see the light of day. The work needed to produce this chickeasaurus would cost many millions of dollars.

There would be a lot that could be learned from the effort, according to Horner, about the development of embryos, which could be applied to medical science, possibly preventing birth defects in human children. Or possibly producing embryologically modified, designer ubermenschen. Producing a dangerous invasive species that would have to be fought and destroyed by the air force is an impossibility, however. Science fiction fans will have to live with the disappointment.

Horner says that the traits that he wants to produce, a tail, teeth and clawed forelimbs, are already present in the genes of the domestic chicken, which is a descendant of an upright walking dinosaur. Horner insists that birds ARE dinosaurs and not just their descendants. His proposal is to learn how to trigger, and to stop, certain traits that appear during the development of the chicken embryo, in order to make the tail, teeth and forelimbs appear in the hatched adult chicken. His would not be a genetically modified creature, just one that had been coached along the way to be more dinosaur like than bird like.

I rather like dinosaurs. The chapters in which he discusses the latest discoveries and theories in paleontology were, to me, the most intriguing of the book. Although I can see that there would be spin offs, like those from the Apollo space program, from his chickenasaurus proposal, I was have not really bought in to the idea. Maybe you will think differently. Horner says that he would like to be able to bring a chickenasaurus out on a leash, when giving a lecture. King Kong anyone?

I'll Never Forget The Day I Read A Book!

There is a recurring problem of American authors: apparently writer must produce a minimum number of pages in order to publish a book, even when the core ideas can only fill half of them. In this case the mix is: 30% description of the great idea on how to test evolution by “recreating” a dinosaur staring from a chicken; 50% repetitions of the same idea over and over; 20% irrelevant and boring descriptions of marginal details.
IMHO reducing everything to a 100 pages book would make this a perfect book.
It’s like mixing half a glass of Bordeaux with half a glass of water. You can’t avoid thinking how much better would be enjoying the pure wine, without the water! ( )

So, I read this book thinking that it was going to be really awesome because I had seen the show he was featured in on the Science Channel at the beginning of the summer. Not only was I incorrect about the awesomeness of the book, but I was also incredibly incorrect thinking that he knew how to write. Horner is just all over the place with what he's talking about.First he's talking about excavations, then he's talking about someone Else's discovery, and then he's talking about collagen, and then a chapter or two later he goes back to the excavations, etc. He spends a long time just describing the area of Montana that they're excavating. Thanks Jack Horner, but I don't need half a chapter of you telling me that in Hell's Creek you can straddle the eons easily. I also don't care about you not believing that you could POSSIBLY find red blood cells, or remnants of red blood cells inside of a fossilized bone. They're fossils, you're a paleontologist, you're supposed to be open TO EVERYTHING. Well, not everything, but you should be less of a pessimist when it comes to what you're going to find. So, yeah, I got really angry while reading this book, because it seems like he has NO idea of how to lay out a book properly, nor does it seem like he knows how to get straight to the point. So thanks Jack Horner, for making me think that I had more to learn about making chicken embryo into dinosaur embryo. Thank you also, for making me waste 26$ on a book filled with what I learned on the Science Channel, in a show that you were 10 times more intresting in. ( )

I started this book thinking it would be about manipulating the genes of a chicken to give it dinosaurish characteristics, with an eye to the science behind this. What I got was a book that read like it was intended to solicit funding from a disinterested third party. There is still some good info here, but I think the real book will come after Horner wins the lottery. ( )