Science: T. rex Related to Birds

rimrocker · Apr 24, 2008

What has been suspected since Jurassic Park came out is now proven... and if we were ever able to eat T. rex, I guess it would taste like chicken.

Tests Confirm T. Rex Kinship With Birds
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

In the first analysis of proteins extracted from dinosaur bones, scientists say they have established more firmly than ever that the closest living relatives of the mighty predator Tyrannosaurus rex are modern birds.

The research, being published Friday in the journal Science, yielded the first molecular data confirming the widely held hypothesis of a close dinosaur-bird ancestry, the American scientific team reported. The link was previously suggested by anatomical similarities.

In fact, the scientists said, T. rex shared more of its genetic makeup with ostriches and chickens than with living reptiles, like alligators. On this basis, the research team has redrawn the family tree of major vertebrate groups, assigning the dinosaur a new place in evolutionary relationships.

Similar molecular tests on tissues from the extinct mastodon confirmed its close genetic link to the elephant, as had been suspected from skeletal affinities.

“Our results at the genetic level basically agree with what has been seen in skeletal data,” John M. Asara of Harvard said in a telephone interview. “There is more than a 90 percent probability that the grouping of T. rex with living birds is real.”

Dr. Asara and Lewis C. Cantley, both of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, processed the proteins from tissue recovered deep in bones of a 68 million-year-old T. rex excavated in 2003 by John R. Horner of Montana State University. Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State University discovered the preserved soft tissues in the bones.

For the molecular study, Dr. Asara and Chris L. Organ, a researcher in evolutionary biology at Harvard, compared the dinosaur protein with similar protein from several dozen species of modern birds, reptiles and other animals.

Dr. Organ was the lead author of the journal report, which concluded that the molecular tests confirmed the prediction that extinct dinosaurs “would show a higher degree of similarity with birds than with other extant vertebrates.” The researchers said they planned to extend their investigations to include comparisons of T. rex protein with more species of birds, reptiles and other dinosaurs.

Dinosaur paleontologists were not surprised by the findings. An accumulation of fossil evidence in recent years had given them increasing confidence in their contention that birds descended from certain dinosaurs — or as they sometimes put it, birds are living dinosaurs.

The new research, Dr. Organ’s team wrote, suggests “that molecular data from long-extinct organisms may have the potential for resolving relationships at critical areas of the vertebrate evolutionary tree that have, so far, been intractable.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/25/science/25dino.html?_r=1&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
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Maazi-EZ · Apr 24, 2008

Isn't T Rex related to Fatty FatBastard?

no_answer · Apr 24, 2008

When someone says T-rex, I think of Giada.

Raaawr

SwoLy-D · Apr 24, 2008

I told you so. Like a... like a flock of birds... evading... a predator...

Signed,

There's a small illustration at the Houston Museum Of Natural Science that depicts this... it has a small t-rex-like reptile dinosaur who evolves onto a bird. I don't know if it's still there, since they're renovating so much.

weslinder · Apr 24, 2008

no_answer said:

When someone says T-rex, I think of Giada.

Raaawr
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Lots of things make me think of Giada.

dntrwl · Apr 24, 2008

if we could recreate dinosaurs, then I bet we could farm them for food. Let the chickens roam the land free!

Baqui99 · Apr 24, 2008

Does this mean that Kevin Willis' kids are birds?

pirc1 · Apr 24, 2008

dntrwl said:

if we could recreate dinosaurs, then I bet we could farm them for food. Let the chickens roam the land free!
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One of these could make lots of steaks and sausages and dino chops!

g1184 · Apr 24, 2008

rimrocker said:

What has been suspected since Jurassic Park came out is now proven... and if we were ever able to eat T. rex, I guess it would taste like chicken.
Click to expand...

well, I can cross that off my forbidden food list.

next up: manatee steaks.

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Science: T. rex Related to Birds

rimrocker Contributing Member

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