Chicken Embryo with a Dinosaur-Like Snout Developed By Scientists

Millions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed the Earth and were wiped out in an asteroid collision as per popular belief.

According to scientists, birds, particularly chickens, are closely related to a  group of flying prehistoric dinosaur that survived during the impact happened sixty-five million years ago. Called  Archaeopteryx, the prehistoric fossil of one was discovered in the 19th century. They have wings and feathers like birds and chickens but the difference between Archaeopteryx with the birds today is that they don’t have beaks. They have a dinosaur snout-like features instead.

Scientists managed to create a chicken embryo with a snout similar to a feathered dinosaur, like the Velociraptor. The results and detailed information were published in International Journal of Organic Evolution.

Lead author Bhart-Anjan Bhullar from Yale University in New Haven and Arhat Abzhanov of Harvard University in Cambridge, said that their main objective was not to create a dino-chicken, but to examine the importance of evolutionary transformation and to learn its underlying mechanism.

Although they don’t have plans to pursue the study or ethical approval to hatch the egg, Bhullar believes that if it happens, it will be able to survive.