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T. Rex Protein Analysis Supports Dinosaur-Bird Link
LanMan04 writes "For the first time, researchers have read the biological signature of a Tyrannosaur — a signature that confirms the increasingly accepted view that modern birds are the descendants of dinosaurs. Analyzing the organic material (collagen protein) found inside the unique fossil linked the collagen to several extant species. The bottom line is that the T. rex's biological signature was most like a bird's, at least based on the first fragmentary data. "It looks like chicken may be the closest among all species that are present in today's databases for proteins and genomes," one of the scientists interviewed said."
Now I know why ... everything tastes like chicken
(Yes, it's mentioned in the article.)
I rewatched it a few months ago, and found it interesting that some of the concepts about dinosaurs that characters in the film considered "out there" -- namely, that dinosaurs evolved into birds, and that they were probably warm-blooded -- are pretty much the mainstream view today.
Does it taste like chicken? MMMmmmm T-Rex Wings.
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Go canucks, habs, and sens!
Interesting resolution to an old debate:
Which came first, the chicken or the egg? T-Rex!
I've always thought roosters had that look in their eye.. you know.... like they'd eat you in a second, if they could.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I'd just like to say "How the mighty have fallen".
How would the machines know what a T-Rex's DNA was like.
If you disagree then it must be overrated, redundant or trolling.
So, the former "top of the food chain" eventually becomes the staple to the successors of mere vermin in his time.
In a few tens of millions of years, tiny little human decedents will be eaten by large intelligent mice.
"Dinosaur fossils? God put those there to test our faith."
"I think God put you here to test my faith, Dude."
The enemies of Democracy are
I, for one, welcome our new edible and delicious overloads (hmmm extra crispy or original recipe ....)
I'm more curious about what methods they used to "isolate the collagen proteins". From my understanding ALL fossils are not the real bone or organic matter that the animal once was, but a mineral deposit in the shape of the once present organic material. So how did you get T.Rex dna out of a non-organic rock formed like a bone?
as giant 40-foot toothed chickens chase them across the countryside. protests in England have already begun to protect the foxes.
breeding farmer Clancy Hogtrough said, "Hail, all I wanted to do was slow down those three-legged chickens of mine. Never found out if they were tasty, cause we could never catch 'em."
we hope to re-establish our satellite link shortly for our live report from Cuddles Fernbreath....
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I would love to know just how similar the proteins were. Here is interesting research showing how the human and chicken genomes are also very similar. http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/chicken_gen ome_041208.html
Not sure what the T-Rex data proves, other than lots of creatures have a similar genetic composition to a chicken. Guess this means that I'm "related" to a T-rex too, since I apparently came from a chicken...could explain my short arms and overbite.
I'm more interested in the fact that T-Rex soft tissue can survive for, supposedly, 65M years...
Yeah, same here. We have an yellow-headed Amazon and I've been convinced that if he's not a direct descendant of a dinosaur, he must be channeling one. It's an interesting coincidence that parrots are one of the earliest of modern birds to show up in fossil records.
This ain't rocket surgery.
It doesn't really matter what your motivation is when you deny the validity of the theory of evolution. You're wrong no matter what cloak you wear.
In order to succeed you'd have to also undermine all science, from physics to biology, via geology, chemistry, mathematics, paleontology, tectonics, astronomy, etc.
So yes, you'd deserve to be branded as a nut. Which type of nut is a trivial detail.
"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." -- Tennyson
"Anyone who expresses such doubts is immediately branded some sort of Christian right wing nut."
No, that only happens when you do it on an internet forum. Allow me to demonstrate:
You're a Christian right wing nut.
Because normal Christian nuts are quite happy to accept that God created Evolution, and the Bible is not a science text book. On account of the incontravertible evidence
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.... was dead and buried around 150 years ago, not by Darwin, but by geologists.
And later on by astronomers, geophysicists, climatologists, geneticists, etc, etc, etc, for crying out loud.
The science of compared anatomy isn't that new either, but by the nonsense you ejaculate one would suspect all the disciplines above are pulling all the millons of years of natural phenomena out of their un-skeptical asses, you would want us to forget they arrived to similar conclussion by different, independent observations.
You would like us believe that the "evolutionists" are a weird group of people that wish to trick us into some beliefs that are completely esoteric. I have got news for you: many different scientific fields are supporting the conslussions of evolutionary theory. The body of evidence is so overwhelming that I can't believe I still have to write rebuttals to put to shame the uninformed, baseless opinions of evolution deniers.
Even John Paul II, Pope of the Catholic Church (the biggest and most important Christian denomination in the world) stated that Evolution is more than a theory,
As for anybody expressing doubts about the process of evolution by means of natural selection I would class them as nuts plain and simple, their religion or political affilitaion is of no interest to me. If they tend to be religious fundamentalists with fascist tendencies (they would love to impose into all of us their world view) it is purely incidental.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Perhaps Evolutionary Algorithms might also need to be undermined, since while they are part of mathematics, they were created in response to our understanding of evolution and nature.
I'm not sure whether pure mathematicians would consider the EA to be a proper member of their field. The outcome of an algorithm is rarely predictable, with randomness and approximation being the cornerstones of the art. They do borrow from, and are therefore related to, other fields, like physics (simulated annealing), and economics (Multi-Objective Optimisation).
Still, they are, in my opinion, something that would have to be abandoned/rejected if one were to adopt a short sighted creationist view.
Here's a funny thing. If fundamentalists got their way and we rejected evolution and other sciences in favour of religious explanations, the doctrine of creationism would probably lead into the inevitability of extinction.
Here is it:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/316/58
Protein Sequences from Mastodon and Tyrannosaurus Rex Revealed by Mass Spectrometry
Here is a choice quote: A BLAST alignment and similarity search (23) of the five T. rex peptides from collagen {alpha}1t1 as a group against the all-taxa protein database showed 58% sequence identity to chicken, followed by frog (51% identity) and newt (51% identity). The small group of peptide sequence data reported here support phylogenetic hypotheses suggesting that T. rex is most closely related to birds among living organisms whose collagen sequence is present in protein databases (24-26). This article documents previous research:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/31
Analyses of Soft Tissue from Tyrannosaurus rex Suggest the Presence of Protein
>The whole idea of theorizing that similarity in structure implies descent or ancestry sounds fishy. We don't do such things for human made things or devices.
Perhaps because human made devices have no way of reproducing themselves with a chance of modification.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
Horse drawn carriages and modern automobiles have wheels and axles. Does that mean that the latter descended from the former or that similar designs and structures work for similar functions and were implemented by the builders?
Actually, we can trace the descent of modern automobiles from horse-drawn carriages by an elaborative process that in some respects resembles evolution, although because there was an intelligence behind the process it was far less wasteful than evolution by unintelligent variation and natural selection. The evolution of designed things is so efficient that companies had to introduce artificial extinctions in the form of model years to keep the number of new species high enough that people could be induced to buy cars more often than once a decade or so.
That said, yes, convergent evolution does occur--there is an example of an extra vertebra in some tropical species of newts that DNA sequencing has shown to have evolved at least twice quite recently in species that are more-or-less unrelated. But I was not aware that the basic body plan of dinosaurs and mammals had evolved more than once, although an AC replied to my original post saying that in fact it had, and the splayed legs of modern reptiles is in some cases a relatively recent feature.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
And why does that unevidenced designer use the same solution to similar problems sometimes, but very different solutions to similar problems at other times? Answer: "that's what he wanted to do". Any observation is compatible with the claim that an all-powerful Creator did it on a whim. Thus the claim is utterly useless as a way of understanding the nature of the universe. To prove that one truly descended from the other, I think you need to see a descendency path will all the intermediate species. Science isn't in the business of providing proofs; it's in the business of providing explanations.
And experience shows that no amount of accumulated evidence will convince someone who is unwilling to give up on their ancient religious mythology. After all, you can say Mars and the Earth are very similar, and indeed they are, but one didn't come from the other. And planets don't arise by descent with modification, so there's not any particular reason to suppose they did.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Now are you going to tell me I haven't "really" considered it?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In that article there is this:
"When Schweitzer demineralized the T. rex bone, she was surprised to find such a matrix, because current theories of fossilization held that no original organic material could survive that long."
The thought of course that the original material isn't all that old goes against the "old age" dogma of evolutionists and isn't even brought up as a possibility. If the creationists are right, who assert that the long ages of millions of years in reality are only thousands, then Dr. Mary Schweitzer would not need be surprised. It is well established that living matter can be preserved for thousands of years, but not millions.
This fossil is literally the ONLY FOSSIL EVER FOUND from millions of years ago that contains intact protein structures.
MILLIONS of other fossils of similar age found around the world have never shown any such thing. But the geology and chemistry of the location where this fossil was found explain why it was exceptionally well-preserved.
If it's really only thousands of years old, then you have to explain why no other dinosaur fossils ever found, anywhere, have shown protein preservation.