FANAR, Lebanon: A biting midge, now encased in amber, bit a
dinosaur 135 million years ago in what is today the country of
Lebanon. Imagine if scientists could extract the dinosaur’s DNA
from that amber, American University of Beirut professor Aftim
Acra once asked his British colleague at the Natural History
Museum of London in late 1970s. His colleague was Paul Whalley,
who worked with Acra after the latter’s discovery of the world’s
oldest amber stones with biological inclusions in south
Lebanon’s Jezzine. Their conversation on the possible extraction
of DNA made its way to American writer Michael Crichton.
Impressed with the idea, Crichton wrote in 1990 one of his best-
selling novels, Jurassic Park, which was made into a movie by
Steven Spielberg several years later. A specimen from the lower
cretaceous era preserved in one of the terrestrial ambers found
in Jezzine was one of the elements that triggered Crichton’s
imagination. While many scientists claim today that extracting
DNA from the amber is imposs