Science of Jurassic Park: Or how to Build a Dinosaur ANNOTATION
For the millions fascinated by Jurassic Park and The Lost World--and for all those young and old who have a secret love affair with dinosaurs--this second book in the series that began with The Physics of Star Trek brings the far-reaching imaginings of dinosaur creation into the very real world of cutting-edge science and DNA. 25 photos. Index. 176 pp. $65,000 national marketing campaign. Targeted print ads. Online & radio publicity. 125,000 print.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
Could it really happen? Could modern scientists using cutting-edge laboratory techniques really clone living, breathing, hungry dinosaurs and populate a true-to-life Jurassic Park? Along with delightful and fascinating facts and factoids - including Jurassic Park and The Lost World movie bloopers - readers will learn:. Why amber from the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean island, could never contain dinosaur DNA - and where you might try looking for the real thing. How scientists might go about getting a complete genetic blueprint of a long-extinct creature, and why they know that doing so is not enough to re-create life. Why the hardest part of the process may be finding an egg that "knows" everything a dinosaur egg would have known about turning DNA material into a living dinosaur. Why a real Jurassic Park would have to be much more than a twenty-two square mile preserve - more likely an area about as big as the state of Connecticut.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Like Dinosaur Lives (reviewed above), this entertaining look at the viability of the cloning portrayed in Michael Crichton's two dinosaur novels (and, by extension, Spielberg's films) is keyed to the release of the movie version of The Lost World. The major premise of Jurassic Parkthat dinosaurs could be recreated from bits of their DNA that has been preserved in ancient blood-sucking insects fossilized in bits of amberdoesn't seem all that far-fetched, especially given the recent scientific successes in sheep duplication. Here, in a chatty but rigorous manner, DeSalle, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, and Lindley, an editor at Science News, do a commendable job of looking at all aspects of dinosaur life, matching what is known with what Crichton's two novels and the film of Jurassic Park portray. Along the way they present, in an understated manner, much information about the life sciences, from genetic engineering to animal physiology, and from animal behavior to ecology. They also explain that both Crichton and Spielberg have taken considerable license with their science, and they convincingly demonstrate that recreating a dinosaur will be a nearly impossible feat. This book doesn't compete with Horner and Dobb's more substantial work so much as complement it, and quite nicely too. Illustrations. (June)
Library Journal
The best science fiction must be consistent with science fact. With the blockbuster status of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and its sequel, The Lost World (LJ 9/15/95), it is fair to ask, Could dinosaurs really be cloned from ancient DNA? DeSalle, an associate curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and Lindley, an associate editor of Science News, do not have a definitive answer, but they do explore how it might possibly be done. The authors take a critical approach, questioning every premise and exposing presumptions. Copious references to events and characters in Crichton's books make familiarity with them a prerequisite. George and Roberta Poinar's Quest for Life in Amber (LJ 9/14/94) would be a better choice for anybody who hasn't read the book or seen the movie. Still, this book will benefit greatly from the tie-in to the forthcoming release of the film version of The Lost World and will be in demand at public libraries.Gregg Sapp, Univ. of Miami Lib.
Kirkus Reviews
Physicist Lindley (The End of Physics, 1993) and DeSalle, a DNA-in-amber expert at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, have a fine time taking to task the tangled web Michael Crichton has spun in his Jurassic Park books and movies. Rather than producing a smug put-down, however, they provide a fine guide to the perplexed on genetic engineering and evolution.
For a start, they point out that warm tropical islands off the coast of Costa Rica may have Technicolor charm but are the wrong places to look for really old amber (65 million years at least, if you want dino DNA). You're better off in New Jersey! But that's a minor detail. All of the clever gene amplification methods today would not be enough to reconstruct all you need to know to fashion your favorite brontosaurus or velociraptor from what could be recovered from a mosquito in a chunk of amber. To understand why, the authors review what we know about fossils, about dinosaurs, and about manipulating DNA. They explain how to extract DNA, map and sequence it, identify genes, and make comparisons across species. Even presuming that the DNA recovered miraculously contains a full dinosaur recipe, the next hurdle would be to puzzle out where to grow it; you need a receptive egg and egg-layer. And other problems follow: How would a dinosaur, without parents, learn to behave like a dinosaur? There is, perhaps, a little overkill here, as the authors indulge in the numbers game of how much land (and food) it would take to maintain the dinosaurs described in the books.
Not that they are total skeptics: Recent headlines, after all, have demonstrated the spectacular possibilities of cloning. If, as they say, everything in life is a matter of timing, DeSalle and Lindley could hardly have brought out a book at a more propitious time.
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