Sunday, April 15, 2007

Dinosaur RBT -- Birds and T. Rex

Looks like there was some soft tissue (collagen) in a T. Rex bone viable enough to be tested for it's DNA sequencing. The Article I first found this out from is scant, and I don't have time to get deeper into it right now, but this is a big deal. It was thought impossible to have soft tissue survive and be testable over such great stretches of time.

One of the major revelations was a distinct genetic similarity to modern-day birds, which formerly was attributed only to physiological traits that could be seen in fossils. Big news, because DNA similarity takes the hypothesis that birds evolved from dinosaurs to a whole new level of veracity.

I almost didn't check out the story, because as a biologist, you get tired of stories on T. Rex, and Great Whites, etc. The show-stopper, TV-crowd type of subjects. Glad I did though.

If more interesting info is revealed I'll revisit this, but I have a Chem assignment due at midnight which I haven't started yet, and I still sport a Tubercular cough bad enough to scare grandmothers at 200 paces, so I expect it's going to take me a while to finish.

5 comments:

Shocho said...

Of course dinosaurs are evolved from birds. That's why they drop feathers in WoW,

Anonymous said...

LOL...

by the way i saw a special on either discovery or opb very similar to this article

Dani said...

When's Jurassic Park opening? Huh huh?

Iciyapi Tate said...

hte way that was me Tate that talked about the show and for some reason my name came up as anonymous

Bpaul said...

You're just sneaky that way Tate LOL.

Shocho, why hadn't I thought of that. Wonder how the necklaces they wear work into the whole theory. That's kind of tool-making in my book eh? LOL.