Friday, April 25, 2008 | Science : Evolution and Biology | print version

Gunk in T. Rex Fossil Confirms Dino-Bird Lineage

by AP, CBS News

Thanks to Rob Singleton and Brian Burgess for the links.

Reposted from:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080424/sc_livescience/gunkintrexfossilconfirmsdinobirdlineage

Tyrannosaurus rex just got a firm grip on the animal kingdom's family tree, right next to chickens and ostriches. New analyses of soft tissue from a T.rex leg bone re-confirm that birds are dinosaurs' closest living relatives.

"We determined that T. rex, in fact, grouped with birds - ostrich and chicken - better than any other organism that we studied," said researcher John Asara of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School. "We also show that it groups better with birds than [with] modern reptiles, such as alligators and green anole lizards." Continue reading

Also see:
Today's Chickens Are Descended From Dinos

Harvard Scientists Say T-Rex Was A Close Cousin Of Barnyard Fowl

(AP) It looks like chickens deserve more respect.

Scientists are fleshing out the proof that today's broiler-fryer is descended from the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex.

And, not a surprise, they confirmed a close relationship between mastodons and elephants.

Fossil studies have long suggested modern birds were descended from T. rex, based in similarities in their skeletons.

Now, bits of protein obtained from connective tissues in a T. rex fossil shows a relationship to birds including chickens and ostriches, according to a report in Friday's edition of the journal Science. Continue Reading

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1. Comment #169059 by shemp333 on April 25, 2008 at 2:29 pm

Kentucky Fried Tyrannosaurus. The legs and breast meat is great, but the wings are pretty small.

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2. Comment #169065 by Quine on April 25, 2008 at 2:33 pm

I hate the way the press messes up the science. Birds did not descend from the T. rex, they descended from an ancestor of the T. rex.

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3. Comment #169114 by Darwin's badger on April 25, 2008 at 2:49 pm

I had a bird who looked like Marc Bolan...does that count?

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4. Comment #169156 by jeremynel on April 25, 2008 at 3:18 pm

Apologies in advance for the ignorance, but from the article I'm not sure whether they are referring to *actual* "soft tissue" and "proteins" still preserved after 68 million years ago, or merely their fossilised replicas.

I'd be really surprised (and enormously encouraged) if the former were true, but is it perhaps too much to ask? Can anyone here advise?

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5. Comment #169162 by jeremynel on April 25, 2008 at 3:23 pm

Apologies - I've just read the other similar article posted here on this topic, and it does seem (if I've read it right) that the *actual* protein was preserved. That's astounding - I had no idea proteins (even tough ones like collagen) could last even a fraction of this length of time. Wow.

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6. Comment #169182 by moderndaythomas on April 25, 2008 at 3:34 pm

Comment#169065 by Quine

I hate the way the press messes up the science. Birds did not descend from the T. rex, they descended from an ancestor of the T. rex.

An all too common media blunder, but still, it's closer to the truth than saying that humans descended from apes. Or rather, Ben Stein.
And then again I'm sure the apes resent that.

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7. Comment #169198 by snoov on April 25, 2008 at 3:47 pm

Ahem, surely an ancestor of T rex is alsoone of its decendents.

Maybe modern birds and T rex share a common ancestor, if not then the only way they can be linked would be if birds were indeed decended from T rex.

It's the first one.

EDIT

I am a dope :(

Got a bit mixed up.

Now I get it, some creature, has loads of decendents, including modern birds and T rex.

Doh

It's a great example of how getting something wrong and realising it helps one (me) understand something better. Off topic rhetorical - still havin trouble with relativity re if i'm moving towards a light source how come the light is still reaching me at the speed of light and not at c my speed? the wavelength changes ...

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8. Comment #169203 by Nova on April 25, 2008 at 3:54 pm

moderndaythomas typed:

An all too common media blunder, it's closer to the truth than saying that humans descended from apes. Or rather, Ben Stein.
And then again I'm sure the apes resent that.

Humans are apes.

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9. Comment #169206 by moderndaythomas on April 25, 2008 at 3:58 pm

Humans are apes

Gotcha, but we didn't descend from them, we share common ancestry.

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10. Comment #169209 by Nentuaby on April 25, 2008 at 4:00 pm

Uhhhmmm... No, Moderndaythomas, we are descended from apes... We aren't descended from any *living* apes, but our common ancestor with the other extant apes was also an ancient, extinct ape.

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11. Comment #169235 by moderndaythomas on April 25, 2008 at 4:28 pm

Uhhhmmm... No, Moderndaythomas, we are descended from apes... We aren't descended from any *living* apes, but our common ancestor with the other extant apes was also an ancient, extinct ape.

In this respect then, did we descent from mould?
Both you and mould have common ancestry and that ancestor will most likely resemble mould more than you or I.
My point is that creationists see this statement differently than you or I, and in fact I believe that we are arguing the same things.

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12. Comment #169261 by Lucas on April 25, 2008 at 4:48 pm

Mould, too. Yes. And lots of other creatures. Apes are just pretty close comparatively.

The creationists problem is not the inability to grasp all this if they were well educated on the subject. It is that their religion codifies an ancient human psychological need: to think of ourselves as above or better than all the other creatures. This may in fact have some evolutionary basis, in that it may have been a psychological necessity so that we could justify killing and eating other creatures (all of this, of course, once we'd developed enough to give a shit.)

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13. Comment #169269 by Border Collie on April 25, 2008 at 4:54 pm

Well, imagine that, we're all related. I'm gonna go walk the dogs.

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14. Comment #169351 by Mr. Grape on April 25, 2008 at 8:01 pm

jeremynel - I remember seeing a report about the discovery a little over a month ago and the Paleontologists who discovered the tissue still retaining its elasticity were just as surprised as anybody else. :)

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15. Comment #169383 by Szkeptik on April 25, 2008 at 11:56 pm

The protein was a collagen fragment that was aquired from the bone. Not a soft tissue.

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16. Comment #169406 by alexmzk on April 26, 2008 at 2:16 am

that's the worst headline ever.

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17. Comment #169437 by IanLowe on April 26, 2008 at 5:02 am

"I hate the way the press messes up the science. Birds did not descend from the T. rex, they descended from an ancestor of the T. rex."

Surely we would need some actual preserved DNA, or some common/lacking physical feature preserved in the fossilised remains that would allow us to confirm whether the path leading to birds split before T-Rex, or descended through it?

I thought the point of this work was that this is the first rock solid (hah!) evidence pinning the T-Rex to a specific part of the tree, in essence confirming the dinosaur -> bird hypothesis?

is there other evidence already out there that gives us an accurate picture of where t-rex and the bird line sit?

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18. Comment #169516 by Rufus08 on April 26, 2008 at 8:17 am

I'm still not convinced it's not a hoax. Soft tissue preservation is all but unheard of.

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19. Comment #169527 by Chris Jackson on April 26, 2008 at 8:37 am

I love the way this is touted as a startling new discovery... From what I'd gathered, the evolutionary line of descent from Dinosaurs to Birds was pretty much a certainty. Whilst this specific find (If indeed not a hoax) is quite interesting, I don't see that it's all that newsworthy.

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20. Comment #169559 by moderndaythomas on April 26, 2008 at 9:53 am

I love the way this is touted as a startling new discovery... From what I'd gathered, the evolutionary line of descent from Dinosaurs to Birds was pretty much a certainty. Whilst this specific find (If indeed not a hoax) is quite interesting, I don't see that it's all that newsworthy.

This brings to mind somethong that I've read in one of Gould's books. "Dinosaur in a Haystack", I think.
It may be that this is of no surprise to the pelaeontology community, or rather that it was only a matter of time.

And as for my earlier comment, allow me to insert monkey for ape, just to satisfy all you taxanomical purists out there... I admit defeat.

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21. Comment #169579 by Koreman on April 26, 2008 at 10:38 am

This explains why T Rex ate grain.

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22. Comment #169584 by movingshadow on April 26, 2008 at 11:05 am

I've always been int he birds-as-extant-therapods camp, it awesome to have genetic proof!

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23. Comment #169588 by Sleep of Reason on April 26, 2008 at 11:07 am

This is not about soft tissue.

Suggest you click on the link and read the full article on CBS.

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24. Comment #169653 by Oppomystic on April 26, 2008 at 1:31 pm

Yet another article to add to the bulging file...

This article is merely for the paleontologists that are still in denial that birds descended from dinosaurs. Kind of a "wake up" smack to their heads to make them stop embarrassing themselves.

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25. Comment #169882 by Christopher Davis on April 27, 2008 at 3:29 am

"An all too common media blunder, but still, it's closer to the truth than saying that humans descended from apes. Or rather, Ben Stein.
And then again I'm sure the apes resent that."---moderndaythomas

Actually, I think people like Ben Stein are the reason that apes often throw shit at us.

On a(slightly)related note, I had a guy ask me the other day..."If we are descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"

Now he didn't ask this in a sarcastic manner, he was generally curious. I was amazed at how unprepared I was to answer that question.

Fortunately the guy is actually rather bright, and with the help of a dry-erase board, I believe I was able to make him understand why this is a question based on the faulty assumption that evolution is a process of linear progression that culminates in the glorious creature that is man.

However, if he had been seriously religious I don't think I would have made a convincing argument.

Does anyone have a good, simple answer to this question?

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26. Comment #169975 by BananaOfDoom on April 27, 2008 at 7:45 am

RE: Comment #169882 by Christopher Davis

Unfortunately, that IS the good, simple answer. It doesn't get much simpler than, "We evolved from a common ancestor." To any logical person, that is a convincing argument (especially when you point out the error of linear evolution).

The problem is that the creationists are willing to dismiss logic in favour of faith. They would much rather cling to a faulty definition of evolution in order to "falsify" it than admit their error and be forced to change their views.

So essentially, if they aren't convinced by your argument, there is no argument that is convincing enough, regardless of how bright they are.

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27. Comment #170365 by cstute on April 27, 2008 at 5:28 pm

Chris,

I found myself in the same situation and was also unprepared to respond. I forget that people who aren't in "the field" also aren't as intimately familiar with the process of evolution (and extinction) as we might be.

However, I just watched a great documentary, available on Netflix, by the History Channel called "From Ape to Man." I recommend it, if you haven't seen it already.

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28. Comment #170499 by moderndaythomas on April 27, 2008 at 7:47 pm

I found myself in the same situation and was also unprepared to respond. I forget that people who aren't in "the field" also aren't as intimately familiar with the process of evolution (and extinction) as we might be

Every now and again I run into people that tell me with amazement that the Sun is a star.
Then I have to decide on the spot if I want to embarrass them or play along and act surprised.

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29. Comment #170960 by Shaden on April 28, 2008 at 7:26 am

I'm sure that the creationists are going to cry fowl on this finding.

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30. Comment #170968 by Steve Zara on April 28, 2008 at 7:38 am

Comment #169882 by Christopher Davis

Does anyone have a good, simple answer to this question?

Population growth. As organisms grow in number, they spread over an ever wider range in order to acquire resources (food, space etc.). This can leads to a lack of full mixing of genes, and if part of the range experiences environmental change, organisms in that part of the range may adapt. However, part of the range over which the organisms are spread may not change, and so there is no pressure to adapt.

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31. Comment #171998 by Christopher Davis on April 29, 2008 at 5:20 am

Thanks for the responses. I've got a feeling that the spear-fishing orangutan is going to give me a chance to answer questions similar to the one posed last week.

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32. Comment #172226 by snoov on April 29, 2008 at 11:08 am

Maybe a simple analogy could be about dogs being decended from wolves. The assuption I am making, possibly in error, is that all pet dogs are decended from wolves. If that is the case then there are many breeds of dogs (like apes), but there are still wolves.

If all dogs are not decended (through human selection which seems to me to be almost the same as natural selection) from wolves, then a great number of them are.

We all have a grandmother or grandfather way back in our family tree that may not be like any extant ape but it is also the grandparent of all apes, monkeys and if you went far back enough every living organism so far found in the universe.

It's awesome.

Recently I saw a feature about a new breed of pig, bred for friendlyness, which is evolution to my mind. The environmental factors being natural agents who decide which individuals are to be reproductively successful.

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