60 Minutes has a fascinating piece this past Sunday on paleontologist and Montana State University professor Jack Horner.  He is your classic scientific rebel – doing things that confound the scientific establishment… and coming up with amazing and new findings as he does it…

So basically, even though we know the story about how a giant meteor crashed into the Earth 68 million years ago and killed all the dinosaurs, Horner says, “Not so fast”.  All of them didn’t go extinct – some survived and evolved into what we know today as birds.

Here’s what another post has to say about Horner and his unorthodox methods:

“Horner’s practice of breaking the bones apart and studying their insides to further his research has landed him in the middle of a huge controversy following his team’s discovery of blood vessels within the dinosaur bones.”

In Horner’s new book, “How To Build A Dinosaur“, (co-authored by New York Times deputy science editor James Gorman) he talks about the possibility of recreating dinosaurs – yes, real dinosaurs!  Here’s part of a summary from his new book:

“A kind of reverse genetic engineering could make it possible to ” build” a dinosaur embryo from the embryo of a modern bird – a chicken, say – since birds are the evolutionary descendants of dinosaurs.”

Hmmm…  Dino-chickens?

Horner is a MacArthur Award-winning paleontologist, advised director Steven Spielberg on his movie Jurassic Park, and apparently became the inspiration for Sam Neill’s character in the movie.