December 2nd, 2015: Hen's Teeth

[xoxoxoBruce]

My uncle used the expression, “rare as hen’s teeth”, which is damn rare… or it was.
Science say the chicken’s great, great, many more greats, grandmother, was a dinosaur called Archaeopteryx.

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BBC says Bhart-Anjan Bhullar of Yale and Arhat Abzhanov of Harvard, figured out which genes make the beak.
They then denied an embryo the proteins they need to build a beak.
Shazam, the embryo skull tries to revert back to a previous beakless incarnation.

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For now Bhullar has no plans, or ethical approval, to hatch the snouted chickens.
But he believes they would have been able to survive "just fine".
"These weren't drastic modifications," says Bhullar. "They are far less weird than many breeds of chicken
developed by chicken hobbyists and breeders."
"The rest of the animal looked OK, but one needs to think about this carefully from an ethical point of view."

I wonder if they can grow wings that beat you skinny?