#Ah it's ok you get it they'd get 'war of the worlds'd

[neovenatorgirlteeth]

I voted 'No' though it's really 'no to an extent'. There is a lot of factors to consider here, primarily around what exact species of dinosaur is being brought back:

Age plays a huge factor. It has been around 230Ma since the first dinosaur evolved and there has been hundreds, if not thousands, of dinosaur species at any given point during the vast majority of time since. Any species that has not existed in the past ten thousand years or so would 100% need to exist solely in captivity, and the older a species is the harder it would be to care for, especially considering Mesozoic vs Cenozoic animals. Not only would the climate and vegetation be more strange and unsuitable for a more ancient species, but the modern animals needed to model their care around become less similar as well. The care for a captive Phorusrhacos could be modeled around that of a seriema, for example, but we would have a much harder time trying to provide the proper enrichment for a Velociraptor, and harder still with an animal we know less about like Serendipaceratops. What do we feed it when we don't even know what the animal looks like? We only know it from a single arm bone! What do we do when it gets ill, or stressed?

The further we go back in time, the poorer the fossil record represents a time period due to preservation biases, meaning that perhaps we end up cloning a species we are entirely unfamiliar with and have not the slightest clue how to care for. For herbivores specifically, plants have changed so much over the course of dinosaurian evolution that you would not be able to feed them. A Jurassic herbivore such as Stegosaurus would not be able to eat grass but it would need ferns and shrubby conifers of which most would have no surviving ancestors of any similarity, so it would either starve, die of malnutrition, or be dependent on supplements which we would have to figure out properly before either of the first two happen.

Size is also important. Big animals need more resources, water, food, space, and some dinosaurs were the largest terrestrial animals ever by a long shot. The largest animal species in captivity is probably the whale shark, individuals of which can weigh up to 15-20 tonnes, though I doubt that any captive whale shark is a heavyweight record-holder. Some sauropods like Diplodocus or Apatosaurus are estimated to weigh in around this mark, though many are thought to weigh more, with adult Argentinosaurus estimated to average at anywhere between 65-80 tonnes. Add on the fact we know some of these to be herd animals and the previous point about herbivorous diet issues, feeding and housing and containing a giant herbivore seems a enormous task. For a carnivore, the largest dinosaurian carnivores could be elephantine in size, so feeding a 6 tonne Tyrannosaurus might be more also be too resource intensive.

Space is also important when thinking about how far an animal roams; some wide-ranging or migratory animals stay put when zoo keepers tend to their every need, but others don't. Birds of prey are commonly kept in captivity despite the large distances traveled by their some species in the wild, but you'll never see a captive albatross or tern (at least not a happy one). Is the same is true of extinct birds like Argentavis and Pelagornis which might have filled similar ecological niches? Perhaps!

Breeding is a whole other kettle of fish. Is cloning a new animal every time more feasible than trying to breed existing animals? How costly is the cloning technology? Can we get the necessary genetic diversity to not have effective inbreeding? Are the animal's breeding habits prohibitive to breeding in captivity? Is the animal negatively impacted by not being able to breed? Dios mio...

Some features are not genetic, however. They are learned. These behavioural traits can often be instrumental to an animal's survival, covering everything from hunting to ridding themselves of feather parasites through dust-bathing or preening. These traits cannot be recreated via cloning, and although there is much debate as to the extent and import of these learned behaviours as opposed to instinctual ones, it is undeniable something will be lost in the de-extinction process that cannot be recreated.

One thing doesn't really concern me as much as Hollywood would lead you to think it should, and that is visitor safety. While some animals are obviously dangerous, particularly larger ones, containing them becomes a priority to the facility. I don't see how they would be any more of a threat to guests than modern large animals in zoos, especially Tyrannosaurus which was physically unable to run. That is, unless, a particularly large dinosaur happens to be a cage-breaker, like elephants or parrots are today, though I doubt a Triceratops has the same escape artistry as a spider monkey.

Some people have commented on atmospheric composition, but I think there's too much uncertainty around data to pass comment. Most studies seems to suggest that % atmospheric oxygen was lower than modern during the Triassic and Jurassic and rose into the Cretaeous, with a possible Cretaceous high and fall around the KPg boundary, but the TJ low point could be as low as 16% or as much as 19% compared to our modern 21%.

To conclude, I think it is generally a bad idea to clone extinct dinosaurs, as they are surrounded by too much uncertainty to ensure their health and well-being in the modern day. The exception I would make is for de-extinction efforts of recently extinct species like the passenger pigeon or bush moa, which are an attempt to revitalise the ecology of the regions from which they are gone and into which they might be able to slot back into.

NB: In this post, I do not make a distinction between 'traditional' non-avian dinosaurs and avian dinosaurs, or birds. This is because I see this distinction as meaningless at best and obstructive to our understanding of these animals at worst. Thank you or fuck you respectively.

Like Jurassic Park, but anon offers a solution of the dinosaurs living in a natural preserve with no tourists.

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