Researchers have decoded genetic material from a 68 million-year-old tyrannosaurus rex, and a Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center researcher has used the material to confirm the genetic link between the Terrible Lizard King and the noble if not particularly terrible chicken.
“The door just opens up to a whole avenue of research that involves anything extinct,” said Matthew T. Carrano of the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History.
While dinosaur bones have long been studied, “it’s always been assumed that preservation does not extend to the cellular or molecular level,” said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University.
A team led by John M. Asara of Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston analyzed T-rex proteins in collagen and found the closest match in creatures alive today was collagen from chicken bones. The findings are in today’s issue of the journal Science.
“Most people believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but that’s all based on the architecture of the bones,” said Asara. “This allows you to get the chance to say, ’Wait, they really are related because their sequences are related.’ We didn’t get enough sequences to definitively say that, but what sequences we got support that idea.”
The team identified seven different dinosaur proteins and compared them with proteins from living species. Three matched chickens, two matched several species including chickens, one matched a protein from a newt and the other from a frog. BOSTON HERALD
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