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It is arguably one of the best-preserved fossils ever to be found. Chinese researchers from the Yingliang Stone Natural History Museum in Ganzhou who made the discovery nicknamed this little one from the oviraptorosaur family “Baby Yingliang”. Its perfect state of preservation would be due to a slide of mud which buried it and protected it from scavengers. Since our first article on the subject on December 22, images of this fossil have toured the world and on social networks. So much so that some fantasize about a scenario Jurassic Park. But is it well enough preserved so that we can extract some DNA from it and the dinosaurs are reborn? The answer is no and our journalist Charles Delouche-Bertolasi explains why in video.
Some scientists have already succeeded in extracting DNA from insects stuck in amber, which is also how John Hammond retrieves DNA from dinosaurs in “Jurassic Park”. But these mosquitoes had only been stuck in the resin for six years and two years. We are a long way from the tens of millions of years of dinosaurs.
So if even in amber the DNA does not keep that well, in a fossil, which is nothing more than stone, it is highly improbable. Even if scientists managed to extract some organic matter from “Baby Yingliang”, it would not contain any form of DNA anyway.