Posted on 11/26/2024 1:00:55 PM PST by Red Badger
The collagen of a 68-million-year-old T. rex painted a curious family portrait.
Image credit: David Shayani Photography / Shutterstock.com
There’s an incredible meme that depicts a chicken looking to the skies Simba style and being met with a Tyrannosaurus rex saying “Remember who you are.” It’s a fantastic visual and one that carries some truth, because the closest living relative to T. rex could well be a chicken, or possibly an ostrich.
This was the big news that followed a 2008 study that used proteins extracted from dinosaur bones to see how closely the molecular data compared to living animals. The idea that dinosaurs might be related to birds wasn’t news at this point, but we didn’t have evidence to prove it beyond anatomical similarities and skeletal data.
So, armed with the bones of a 68-million-year-old T. rex, the team extracted the protein collagen, something that’s found in the bones of animals alive today. This in itself was quite the discovery as it was the first time we realized how long this protein could survive for, so it represented an unprecedented opportunity to analyze dinosaur tissues.
The collagen was detected using mass spectrometry, and the resulting peptide sequences could be used in a molecular analysis to search for similarities between it and the collagen of 21 extant species. The team then used these results to create family trees that could paint a picture of T. rex’s relatedness to the various animal groups. These trees came together in a myriad of ways, creating multiple results that could be compared against one another.
A T. rex footprint (left) compared to that of a chicken (middle), and an ostrich.
Image credit: Topimages / Sriyana / Shutterstock.com / David Bygott via Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 edited by IFLScience
Most of their approaches placed T. rex firmly within the Archosauria, which is a group shared by birds and crocodilians, but it was leaning in favor of the birds. This means the collagen itself most closely resembled that of chickens and ostriches, rather than those very dinosaur’ish-looking crocodilians, though the authors did express that there were gaps in the data that made it hard to create a full picture.
So, it seems we come to the big question: What is the closest living relative to T. rex? From what we know so far, it’s a bird, most likely either a chicken or ostrich.
At last, it seemed the birds are dinosaurs debate had been settled, as the authors concluded that if similar biomolecules for non-avian dinosaurs were processed in the same way, they too would reveal a higher degree of similarity with birds than any other vertebrate.
“Our results at the genetic level basically agree with what has been seen in skeletal data,” study author John M Asara of Harvard University told the New York Times when the news broke. “There is more than a 90 percent probability that the grouping of T. rex with living birds is real.”
The result will no doubt make sense to anyone who's ever lived with chickens and seen the remarkable way they run, whether in an attempt to flee or in pursuit. So, next time you see one, you best give it the respect it deserves.
And in case you’re wondering, “Wait, does that mean birds are dinosaurs?” We’ve got the answer for that, too.
T. Rex tasted like chicken ping................
Joe Biden?
You won’t fool The Children Of The Revolution.
You think the T-Rex ever flapped it’s arms trying to fly?
If T. Rex’s were as loud in real life as they are in the movies, I’d say that their closes relative is my ex-mother-in-law.
Didn’t get very far...................
She’s dead Jim.
Actually makes sense when you review the animal kingdom and you see the most abundant species are small or very small and least abundant are the large and very large. In terms of the survival of a group, more and smaller was better than big and fewer. Downsizing over the ages had an advantage.
I have watched Tom turkey’s antics during mating season. This confirms my suspicions 😜
Good points.
They’re extinct, or granny would need a bigger pot.
After watching my cat play with a chipmunk for an hour, I’m glad I am not the size of a mouse.
That’s great news......if you are Asian...............
“After watching my cat play with a chipmunk for an hour, I’m glad I am not the size of a mouse.”
Ahhh, but in terms of survival of the group, there will be 10,20,- 50 mice to the one cat. So some mice are expendable. But the cat population canot afford the rate of losses the mice population can. It, as a group, will always be a smaller group than the mice.
Survival in terms of the life of a species is suvival of the grouo not survivial of the individual.
What Is The Closest Living Relative To T. Rex?
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is it mike obama ?
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