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68-million-year-old T. rex proteins are oldest ever sequenced Scientists have confirmed the existence of protein in soft tissue recovered from the fossil bones of a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) and a half-million-year-old mastodon. Their results may change the way people think about fossil preservation and present a new method for studying diseases in which identification of proteins is important, such as cancer. When an animal dies, protein immediately begins to degrade and, in the case of fossils, is slowly replaced by mineral. This substitution process was thought to be complete by 1 million years. Researchers at North Carolina...

By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News Protein extracted from 68 million-year-old T. rex bones has shed new light on the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.Researchers compared organic molecules preserved in the T. rex fossils with those of living animals, and found they were similar to chicken protein. The discovery of protein in dinosaur bones is a surprise - organic material was not thought to survive this long. A US team of researchers have published the finding in Science journal. The team says their technique could help reveal evolutionary relationships between other living and extinct organisms. The finding...