Recipe for de-extinction

Cano had developed and subsequently patented a processfor extracting DNA from organisms trapped in the yellow resin. They extracted fragments of DNA from an ancient, stingless bee and then more extensive samples from a weevil that lived 120 million years ago - almost twice as long ago as the cataclysm that wiped out dinosaur species such as Tyrannosaurus rex. The paper on the recovery of DNA from the weevil appeared in the journal Nature a day after the movie's premiere in Washington DC. It seemed that the idea of bringing long-extinct species back to life might be possible, even if they were only insects. However, attempts to reproduce the original results failed and realisation dawned that the amber samples were hopelessly contaminated - much of it from the DNA of modern bacteria that had either colonised the samples, or had been picked up in the lab itself. The idea of being able to sequence the DNA of a mosquito trapped in amber millions of years ago, let alone any dinosaur DNA rapidly faded.