Field Trip to Jurassic Park!
Imagine all your classmates piling into a bus and taking a field trip to see wooly mammoths or saber-toothed tigers just like the ones in the movie Ice Age! It seems crazy right? But, someday this kind of field trip might
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| Characters from Ice Age (2). |
Cloning is a process scientists do to create a genetic copy of an animal. An easier way to think about cloning is to think about twins (1). Do you have any friends that are identical twins? Their DNA is exactly the same so they are like clones.
Scientists are working to collect DNA from animals that have gone extinct to make clones of them and BRING THEM BACK FROM THE DEAD!
Pretend you are walking through the zoo: to your right you see a wooly mammoth exhibit, to your left you see a cage containing two Tasmanian tigers, playfully fighting, and straight ahead you see a pasture of different animals such as the Pyrenean ibex (large mountain goat) or the Auroch (large, amored cow) (3). You've probably never heard of some of these animals because they went extinct! But wouldn't it be awesome to see these amazing animals?
Someday this zoo may actually exist as scientists continue to research cloning. Animals like sheep have already been successfully cloned (4). It is just a matter of time before a wooly mammoth becomes just as common as an elephant in a zoo!
How Cloning Works
As you continue walking through the zoo, you enter a building that tells you about how cloning these extinct animals became possible. This is the interesting information you learn:
Cloning is something scientist have been working on for years. There are two main types of cloning: artificial embryo twinning and somatic cell nuclear transfer.They take embryos from an animal and make copies of them in a laboratory. After that they place the copies into a surrogate mother who carries the clone and gives birth to it (1). So when a scientist finds DNA from a wooly mammoth, they can take it, make copies, and then place it into an animal that is close to a wooly mammoth, like an elephant. The elephant carries the wooly mammoth clone and eventually gives birth to it. And wa-la! A baby wooly mammoth clone is born!
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| Peaches from Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (5). |
So remember what you learned on your imaginary field trip to the extinct animal zoo, and wait patiently as scientists try to make it REAL!
1. What is cloning? 2014. Learn Genetics. Genetic Science Learning Center. Retrieved from: http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/cloning/whatiscloning/.
2. "Ice Age" cast. [photograph]. (n.d.). Retrieved November 28, 2014, from http://www.kdramastars.com/articles/34661/20140826/ice-age-5.htm.
3. Quiros, G. (2014, April 22). Should scientists bring extinct species back from oblivion? PBS Newshour. Retrieved from: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/reawakening-extinct-species/.
4. Panno, J. (2005). Animal cloning: The science of nuclear transfer. Retrieved from: http://pilot.passhe.edu:8010/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?v1=3&ti=1,3&=&=&=&=&PID=wDOn3zPIZ6LbJ9LrUN-um9RnBFfp5&SEQ=20141023101908&SID=1.
5. Peaches portal.png. [photograph]. (n.d.) Retrieved November 28, 2014, from: http://iceage.wikia.com/wiki/File:Peaches_portal.png.
you did a good job of transforming your language into something a young child could read and understand. The yellow lettering was kind of hard to read but you made the topic easy to understand without losing the complexity of the topic.
ReplyDeleteGood job on the blog. It is easy to understand and you made it relate well to the young audience. Wording was good and making it colorful was great. Just for the yellow words, maybe use a shade darker so it is easier to read. References look good and the use of pictures as well.
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