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A helicopter skims over the surface of a dark, rough sea. "I own an island off the coast off Costa Rica," says the voice of billionaire John Hammond. "I've spent the last five years setting up a kind of biological preserve."

This is the trailer for one of the most successful films ever, Jurassic Park. And among the images flashed in front of our eyes is a mosquito trapped in amberFossilised resin - which is the viscous (thick, sticky) liquid inside a tree that protects it from external threats. Amber has been appreciated for its colour and natural beauty since Neolithic times..

In the film, a mosquito preserved in this way has sucked the blood of a dinosaur. John Hammond's team manage to use it to bring the dinosaurs back from extinctionCompletely dying out..

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Scientists have found mosquitoes preserved in amber from 125 million years ago. These mosquitoes are 30 million years older than any previously found. This means they could have had ancestors in the JurassicThe geological period between 200 and 145 million years ago when dinosaurs diversified and became the dominant land animals. period, when dinosaurs walked the Earth.

The fact that they have piercing mouthparts suggests that they sucked blood - and could have fed on dinosaurs. Some think scientists will follow in the footsteps of filmmakers and create dinosaurs from the DNA in the blood.

There are problems, however. DNA is measured in units called base pairs. Humans have three billion. Dinosaurs could have had 10 billion. But none of the DNA found in fossils has more than 250. DNA is also thought to degrade over time and so may be useless by now.

Yes! In recent years scientists have made extraordinary progress with treating DNA, so it could be in our near future.

No! Nobody has even managed to find dinosaur DNA yet, let alone clone it.