We know that birds are the last remaining avian dinosaurs, descendants of the theropod dinosaurs like the velociraptor.
Still, closely related as they might be, a chicken doesn't look much like how we picture a velociraptor.
But researchers have been trying to figure out which genetic changes caused dinos to change in appearance into modern birds, losing their arms, snouts, tails, and powerful legs.
Now, a group of researchers led by Joao Francisco Botelho of the University of Chile has solved another piece of that puzzle.
They've figured out why the fibula bone in birds — one of the two twin thin bones that sit side by side in a chicken leg — is too short and not as well developed as the fibula of their theropod ancestors.
And by tweaking certain genes to change bone growth, the researchers have shown they can reverse this process in chicken embryos and cause their legs to start to form in the more dinosaur-like structure.
The researchers didn't actually let these embryos grow to the hatching phase, but they did show that they've figured out how to reverse another step in evolution, able to make birds express throwback dinosaur traits.
They published these results in the journal Evolution.
Building a 'chickenosaurus'
These same researchers have done similar work in the past too, when they figured out how to make birds lose the opposable toe that lets them cling to branches to grow a more dinosaur-like foot.
Eventually, if someone can figure out how to reverse all the differences between modern birds and dinosaurs, we might be able to actually be able to make a sort of dino-bird, something with the legs, tail, and snout of a dinosaur.
It would be a dino-chicken, or a "chickenosaurus,"in the words of Jack Horner, the paleontologist who worked on "Jurassic World" (and the rest of the "Jurassic Park" films).
The group in Chile isn't trying to do that, they just want to figure out if they can explain the genetic changes that made modern birds look the way they do, compared to their ancestors.
"The experiments are focused on single traits to test specific hypotheses," Alexander Vargas of the University of Chile said in a press release announcing the finding. "Not only do we know a great deal about bird development, but also about the dinosaur-bird transition, which is well-documented by the fossil record. This leads naturally to hypotheses on the evolution of development, that can be explored in the lab."
Others, including Horner, are still interested in seeing if they can actually create a new little dinosaur.
It would be a small, feathered creature, with a tail that helps it balance, small arms with claws, and a toothy snout, instead of a beak.
"If we can make a dino-chicken, it's pretty cool,"Horner told Tech Insider in 2015.
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