Heather's transformation into a dinosaur was something that caught the attention of the scientists at Horizon Labs quite a bit. Of course, it would capture anyone's attention, but the scientists were wanting to know in particular how it happened. Heather was, unsurprisingly, less than willing to be cooperative, though she did boast of how she used the bones used to make the skeleton of the 'Spiny Tyrannosaur' to create her new form. Though she was more inclined to wail about the girls who had ruined her life and forced her to mutate herself into a freak.
But a blood sample from Heather was enough for the scientists to start analyzing. The DNA was remarkable for not just blending human and dinosaur genes, but genes from several dinosaurs. The 'Spiny Tyrannosaur' was not an actual species, just a skeleton cobbled together from other species's bones to create an aesthetically different theropod that could be used as a basis for the 'dinosaur ghost' that would haunt the Costa Rica museum. The name itself was a misnomer as the bones came from different species of allosaur, including Gigantosaurus. There were other theropods involved such as Carnotaurus and some actual T Rex bones.
As the stillborn Project Chimera showed, the Animalian Virus couldn't blend the DNA of just any two species. The species had to have some similarity in structure, otherwise the clashing DNA would tear each other, and the organism it was trying to uplift, apart. While the bone samples were all from dinosaurs in the theropod family, it was still astounding that so many samples from different species could blend together to make a viable whole. The current theory of how this could happen is that even with the best preservation, genetic breakdown was inevitable with 65 million year old fossils. The virus was apparently able to piece together the most suitable genes from each specimen, blended it all together with human DNA, and create a new sequence that was more patchworked than Frankenstein's monster, but still functional.
Horizon Labs wasn't interested in Heather's transformation just for its own sake. They had been actually planning something similar to this for a while. The Saturday Night Live skit about Dinotopians wasn't intended to be serious, but it came closer to the truth than they could have expected. Not that they actually had a time machine, but they were intending to use samples from dinosaur bones to see if it would blend with the Animalian Virus. The scientists expected the virus to fill in gaps in the genetic breakdown with human DNA, which might have resulted in Dinotopians that were closer to mammals than reptiles. But Heather's unintentional breakthrough opened a lot more possibilities.
Though the scientists weren't intending to start recreating dinosaurs as soon as they could. They were going to take measured steps to see if recreating extinct species as Animalians was viable in the first place. The first step would have been Project Thylacine to create an Animalian with DNA from preserved specimens of Tasmanian Tigers. Other museum specimens of species that went extinct in the last 200 years were also planned for later. The project was originally going to be called Project Dodo, but while specimens of dodo remains were not impossible to find, it was harder to find anyone who would want to be spliced with a dodo.
Once Project Thylacine was considered successful, the scientists would have moved on to more ancient creatures. Namely the megafauna that went extinct at the end of the Ice Age. DNA could be acquired for creatures like the woolly mammoth, the saber-toothed tiger, and the giant ground sloth. There were several specimens from the La Brea Tar Pits that could be used. Even the mammoth skeleton that was unearthed while building WSA could be a viable source.
The scientists hadn't been preparing to experiment with saurian fossils so Heather's transformation caught them quite by surprise. But would this allow them to start recreating extinct species even sooner and faster than before? Or will Heather's assault push the project back further than before? Time will have to tell.