This isn't a joke: Scientists are bringing back dinosaurs

This isn't going to end well. The journey, though, will be spectacular.

Dinosaurs are coming back!

It's true: A group of scientists at Harvard and  Yale have worked with Dr. Jack Horner (a paleontologist who consulted for the Jurassic Park films after a childhood spent sitting in a corner eating a Christmas pie before using his thumb to remove a plum and declare how great he was) to bring back dinosaurs.

Within a decade.

Seriously.

Scientists are trying to mutate chickens – a well-known modern variant of the dinosaur. It's not hard to see how this could go wrong, right?

The scientists are making the chickens "look more like a dinosaur," according to Horner. Seem crazy? Well, those same scientists already injected the DNA from a woolly mammoth into an elephant in an attempt to  bring back the woolly mammoth, you see.

Concerning the dinosaurs, Horner's team started by trying to reverse engineer the chicken's beak into a snout. That's just the first step. In a March interview, Horner said, "The tail is the biggest project. But on the other hand, we have been able to do some things recently that have given us hope that it won't take too long."

"Hope that it won't take too long." This is when the scary music plays.

Horner then proclaimed that a "chickensaurus" will be alive within 10 years.

Imagine a future – say the year 2029 –in which a dinosaur lives in Solano County. My guess, based on watching the "Jurassic Park" movies, is it will live at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo/ Theme parks are a natural fit.

It will be spectacular.

You will be able to go see the dinosaur. You will feed it. You will cheer as it hatches new dinosaurs.

But we know what happens next.

The dinosaur will gradually gain intelligence. The general public won't realize it – only the renegade scientist who has a reputation as being too clever for his own good will know.

Horner and his colleagues will insist everything is fine.

Until the day when the dinosaur breaks loose. It will begin in Vallejo (again, I'm presuming) and will work its way along Interstate 80 until it gets to Fairfield-Suisun, knocking over the auto dealership signs west of town.

You can fill in the other details (the scientists who created the monster insisting things are OK, a kid who somehow outwits the dinosaur despite being terrified, a romance between someone who works with the dinosaur and someone who left "the dinosaur project" in disgust a few years earlier), but the return of the dinosaur will be great. Until it's terrible.

This is happening because scientists didn't distinguish between what the can do and what they should do.

Here's the truth: When something goes extinct (the mullet, Ford Pinto, Pepsi Blue, "Knight Rider"),  it's usually best left alone.

But this is happening. A group of scientists from America's most prestigious universities have somehow convinced themselves that what we need in the 21st century is dinosaurs.

I am planning ahead.

I'm going to eat as much chicken as possible, reducing the number of chickensaurus candidates. I'm going to keep making cheap jokes about Jack Horner's name. I'm going on record that I think this is a bad idea.

Who wants a chicken with a snout, anyway?

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.