A story claiming that British scientists have successfully cloned an Apatosaurus, a kind of Dinosaur has gone viral. (Screen shot of the story)
A story claiming that British scientists have successfully cloned an Apatosaurus, a kind of Dinosaur has gone viral. (Screen shot of the story)

A story claiming that British scientists from Liverpool's John Moore University have successfully cloned an Apatosaurus, a kind of Dinosaur, is getting a lot of attention from befooled Internet users this week.

While the idea doesn't seem too impractical going by the pace in which scientific advancement is gaining prominence in today's world, the simple fact is that the story is just another joke originating from a hoax site called News-Hound.

The article published in News Hound just in time ahead of April Fool's Day says:

The dinosaur, a baby Apatosaurus nicknamed "Spot," is currently being incubated at the University's College of Veterinary Medicine.

The scientists extracted DNA from preserved Apatosaurus fossils, which were on display at the university's museum of natural science. Once the DNA was harvested, scientists injected it into a fertile ostrich womb.

"Ostriches share a lot of genetic traits with dinosaurs," said Dr Gerrard Jones, a biology professor at LJMU and the project's leading scientist. "Their eggshell microstructures are almost identical to those of the Apatosaurus. That's why the cloning worked so perfectly."

As fanciful as it might sound, the simple truth is scientists haven't cloned a dinosaur and there are more than few reasons why.

The total lock of sources in the article is just one thing, but people while reading the story must get plenty of hints on why the story is untrue, simply by scrolling through the various other stories that appear on the page's side bar. Only a few days ago, the name Gemma Sheridan appeared in a hoax story of the same website claiming Google Earth found a woman trapped on an island for seven years.

More importantly, it might not take more than a few seconds for any smart web-savvy netizen to find out that the picture used in the fake story is actually the photo of a newborn, furless macropod (a kangaroo) as shown on Granite Belt's online community.

Also, for any wise individual, it should not be too difficult to understand that the stories that appear on the website such as "Man found alive after three days in Sunken ship" or "Incan Girl who had been frozen for 500 years" should be, beyond reasonable doubts, fake stories.

But many people have fallen prey to the hoax posting the story in Twitter claiming that Jurassic Park is now going to be a reality.

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