Re: DNA & JP

[tonyc@foe.co.uk (Tony Canning)]

 Tom Holtz explained; 

>Of course, the use of frog DNA is purely for plot reasons.  Birds and
>crocs, and lizards and snakes, and turtles, and even mammals, have DNA
>which would be closer to dinosaur patterns than frogs (the more recent
>common ancestor of all amniotes vs the ancestor of all tetrapods).
>However, Crichton needed the sex-change ability of frogs for his plot.

Why didn't Crichton use something plausible like temperature-dependent sex
determination?  If dinosaurs shared this character with crocodiles (no evidence
they did, but totally plausible) a power failure in the incubator could have
produced the same result.  Perhaps he should have consultated a herpetologist
instead of palaeontologists :-)

Tony Canning
tonyc@foe.co.uk