[hx2a]

I once read a book about this: How to Build a Dinosaur: The New Science of Reverse Evolution, by Jack Horner and James Gorman. The basic idea is that dinosaur DNA is carried around by modern day chickens. The concept seemed pretty out there but the book does make a convincing argument for why it should be possible. The first author is a well known paleontologist, and the book was recommended to me by a paleontologist before I spent the week (as a volunteer) in his field crew.

[edit]

> The technology for this doesn't exist yet, and the ethics would be extremely questionable.

I do agree with this. Just because we can do it, doesn't mean we should.

[slashdev]

If you used DNA across all birds, maybe it would be possible to identify the different bits of dinosaur DNA they inherited. Since they branched from each other at different points in time. And presumably wouldn’t have all lost the same genes.

[mcswell]

Still looking for hen's teeth, but they seem to be as scarce as chicken breasts. (The only breasts found so far are on mammals.)

[card_zero]

"On February 29, 1980 (enough of a rarity in itself), E.J. Kollar and C. Fisher reported an ingenious technique for coaxing chickens to reveal some surprising genetic flexibility retained from a distant past."

-- Stephen Jay Gould, Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes

Two pages of technical explanation follow, but they got chicken embryo tissue to produce teeth.