The BBC’s Earth Blog has a story that describes a chicken embryo that developed a dinosaur-like snout instead of a beak.  The research was performed by a team of scientists that included Bhart-Anjan Bhullar of Yale University and Arhat Abzhanov of Harvard University.  The original paper appeared in the journal Evolution.

To understand how one changed into another, a team has been tampering with the molecular processes that make up a beak in chickens.

By doing so, they have managed to create a chicken embryo with a dinosaur-like snout and palate, similar to that of small feathered dinosaurs like Velociraptor. The results are published in the journal Evolution.

The team’s aim was to understand how the bird beak evolved, because the beak is such a vital part of bird anatomy. It has been crucial for their success. The 10,000 or more bird species occupy a wide range of habitats, and many have specialised beaks to help them survive.

But they did not set out to create a “dino-chicken”, say lead authors Bhart-Anjan Bhullar of Yale University in New Haven and Arhat Abzhanov of Harvard University in Cambridge.

“Whenever you examine an important evolutionary transformation, you want to learn the underlying mechanism,” says Bhullar.