Betting on dinosaurs was Re: [extropy-chat] Formulating a bet

[David]

Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:
> Just to change the subject:
> 
> Anybody willing to bet on the date a dinosaur walks again?
> 
> If the bones shown in "Science":
> 
> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;307/5717/1852b
> 
> http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/5717/1952
> 
> are not a sick joke, I am willing to bet that:
> 
> 1) In no more than 20 years the T.rex genome will be sequenced.
> 
> 2) In no more than fifty years a T.rex or another dinosaur will be cloned and
> hatched.
> 
> Any takers?
> 
> Rafal
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> 


If the soft tissue is real, I would bet no more than
15 years to sequence the genome and 20 to hatch an egg.
Even if I am wrong (probably) about the dates, I think
that your ratio, 20 to sequence and then 30 more to clone
barely takes into account even a linear progression in
technology, let alone the exponential improvement that
most on this list expect.

On another note, I think that there are plenty of other
more recent but still interesting candidates too -
Australia's extinct megafauna, NZ's moa, the elephant
bird, the woolly mammoth...

In a few years visiting a zoo is going to be 'interesting'  :)