Horner's lecture at the museum tonight was extremely fascinating. He was talking about first, actually eliminating at least 1/3 of known dinosaurs on record by looking more closely at the bones themselves. Instead of naming new dinosaurs every time scientists discover something new, they should be looking more closely at what species they really have. He showed us examples of Edmontosaurus and Anatotitan, Pachycephalosaurus, Dracorex, and Stygimoloch, Triceratops and Torosaurus, and T.Rex and Nanotyrannus. On examining the bones via CAT scans, the fossils of the supposed smaller dinosaur is in fact just a younger version of the fully grown dinosaur (Nanot is just a young T.Rex, Edmontosaurus a young Anatotitan, etc...) He was literally cancelling out these other dinosaurs, it was nuts.
And the second half of the lecture was about hatching a chickenosaurus, if you will, from a chicken egg. By stopping the genes at the stages of chicken's embryonic development which allow for the growth of wings and instead letting them grow into arms, and stopping the gene which allows for tail reabsorption, let the tail grow much longer. In essence, you'd hatch out a chicken that looks more like an actual dromaeosaurid. Oh, and it would have teeth as well because chickens have teeth.
