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Posted on 04/14/2007 10:18:48 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - Researchers have decoded proteins from a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, the oldest such material ever found. The unprecedented step, once thought impossible, adds new weight to the idea that today's birds are descendants of the mighty dinosaurs.
"The door just opens up to a whole avenue of research that involves anything extinct," said Matthew T. Carrano, curator of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian's National 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.
It had been thought that some proteins could last a million years or more, but not to the age of the dinosaurs, she said.
So, when she was able to recover soft tissue from a T. rex bone found in Montana in 2003 she was surprised, Schweitzer said.
And now, researchers led by John M. Asara of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston have been able to analyze proteins from that bone.
The genetic code that directs the development of living things is the DNA, but that is more fragile and they didn't find that.
"But proteins are coded from the DNA, they're kind of like first cousins," Schweitzer said
What Asara's team found was collagen, a type of fibrous connective tissue that is a major component of bone. And the closest match in creatures alive today was collagen from chicken bones.
Schweitzer and Asara report their findings in Friday'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 fact that we are getting proteins is very, very exciting," said John Horner of Montana State University and the Museum of the Rockies.
And, he added, it "changes the idea that birds and dinosaurs are related from a hypothesis to a theory."
To scientists that's a big deal.
In science, a hypothesis is an idea about something that seems probable, while a theory has been tested and is supported by evidence. Previously, the bird-dinosaur relationship was based on similarities in the shape of bones, now there is solid evidence of a relationship at the molecular level.
Horner, who found the bones studied by Schweitzer and Asara, said this is going to change the way paleontologists go about collecting specimens — they will now be looking for the best preserved items, often buried in sand or sandstone sediments.
This summer, he said, his museum is organizing nine different field crews involving more than 100 people to search for fossils in Montana and Mongolia.
Asara explained that he was working on a very refined form of mass spectrometry to help detect peptides — fragments of proteins — in tumors as part of cancer research.
In refining the technique, he had previously studied proteins from a mastodon, and when he heard of Schweitzer's finding soft tissues in a T. rex bone he decided to see if he could detect proteins there also.
He was able to identify seven different dinosaur proteins from the bone 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.
Co-author Lewis Cantley of Harvard Medical School noted that this work is in its infancy, and when it is improved he expects to be able to isolate more proteins and seek more matches.
"Knowing how evolution occurred and how species evolved is a central question," Cantley said.
The Smithsonian's Carrano, who was not part of the research teams, said the report is an important confirmation of Schweitzer's techniques and shows that "the possibility of preservation is more than we had expected, and we can expect to see more in the future."
Matt Lamanna, a curator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, called the finding "another piece in the puzzle that shows beyond the shadow of a doubt that dinosaurs are related to birds." Lamanna was not part of the research team.
So, does all this mean that a T. rex would have tasted like chicken? The researchers admit, they don't know.
Both research teams were supported by the National Science Foundation and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation. Schweitzer had additional support from NASA and Asara had added support from the Paul F. Glenn Foundation.
You have a source?
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LOL! I needed that!!!!!
Friday's issue of the journal Science
Protein Sequences from Mastodon and Tyrannosaurus Rex Revealed by Mass Spectrometry
(You'll have to pay to read it)
It’s a newt from Pakistan.
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Well, they did have the same Creator...
Ah yes, Areopterix, the Piltdown Bird, or better-than-Piltdown Bird. Discovered by enthusiasts in the back yard as soon as the ink was dry on Origin of the Species and then ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The pieces were of other unknown bird-like feathered dinosaurs. The tail turned out to be from a Microraptor.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1248079.stm
You have a source?
A book by Hal Linsay.
the results are accurate to within anywhere from thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years.
That’s what I’m talking about.
[Birds,...have mastered the air. That’s evolving.]
Tell it to a mosquito.
[T. Rexes and other raptors were the forerunners of birds. That means two things:]
Only two? Shouldn’t it also mean they had hollow bones? Or, if that doesn’t have to follow, then why should the other assumptions?
[If this quote is representative of your overall ability to understand scientific text, I thank God you’ll never be piloting any plane I’m gonna be in....]
If you find that skepticism involving the science of 68 million year old connective tissue proteins means the skeptic must be a drooling idiot, then you have some pretty unusual standards for measuring intelligence. Maybe you’re just offended by someone insulting your faith?
He's done some very elegant embryology to show that birds didn't evolve from dinosaurs. Although I think he's wrong, I like to think I saw a tiny dinosaur at my birdbath yesterday afternoon!
:^)
A book by Hal Linsay.
LOL! Good one. I missed the sarcasm in your original post
"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."
However, what was most notable, was the way Reuters kicked it up a notch:
"A Tyrannosaurus rex femur bone is shown in this undated photograph. Tiny bits of protein extracted from a 68-million-year-old dinosaur bone have given scientists the first genetic proof that the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex is a distant cousin to the modern chicken. The study results were published in the April 13, 2007 edition of the journal 'Science.' (- c Science/Handout/Reuters)
PROOF!
The newt and frog stuff probably should have given them pause, until they could get a little more 'proof'. It sort of scrambles things. Suppose the next set of samples yield.....mammalian sequences? Tuna! They'll look kinda foolish. [oh...no they won't: no one will ever know....'flush'.]
This "scientist" statement is the kind of statenment I expect from an honest scientist wanting this research to prove a certain theory. (Non-scientific theory.)
So when you couple this with the Reuters statement no wonder laymen get these crazy ideas that scientist no longer rely on proof, but conjecture.
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