Taste Just Like Chicken

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.

There goes the old joke about calling people a chicken!

The discovery of soft tissue, including blood vessels and cells, in a T. rex bone dug out of sandstone from the fossil-rich Hell Creek Formation in Montana in 2005 by Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University disproves the theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

"It's the first molecular evidence of this link between birds and dinosaurs," said John Asara, a Harvard Medical School researcher, whose results were published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

For his study, Asara used a highly sensitive technology called mass spectrometry to determine the chemical makeup of bone fragments provided by Schweitzer and her team. After several tests, the researchers said the results may change the way that people think about fossil preservation.

"The fact that we are getting proteins is very exciting," said paleontologist Jack Horner, who dug up the T. rex in 2003 and is co-author of the paper with Schweitzer.

Horner said paleontologists will need to dig deeper for specimens that have not been corrupted by ground water and bacteria.

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