Subject: Dinosaur DNA Illuminates Turkey Ancestry (fwd)
Date: Apr 27 10:08:06 2000
From: Deborah Wisti-Peterson - nyneve at u.washington.edu



hello tweets.

food for thought, especially during the holidays ...

regards,

Deborah Wisti-Peterson email:nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://students.washington.edu/~nyneve/
<><><>Graduate School: it's not just a job, it's an indenture!<><><>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 08:21:40 -0700
Subject: [Fwd: Dinosaur DNA Illuminates Turkey Ancestry]

>
> By Michael Milstein,
> Discovery.com News
>
> April 26, 2000 - It might not have walked like a turkey or clucked
> like a turkey, but the horned dinosaur Triceratops may have carried at
> least a tiny snippet of genetic code almost identical to that of
> todays wild turkeys, says a team of scientists from the University of
> Alabama.
>
> Since the matching snippets would make up only a fraction of the
> complete genetic code for either animal, its too incomplete to suggest
> that Triceratops resembled a Thanksgiving bird. But it does hint at a
> fundamental, evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds, said
> William Garstka, a professor at the University of Alabama Huntsville,
> at a conference on bird-dinosaur relationships in Florida last week.
>
> The team extracted an identical fragment of DNA - the genetic
> blueprint of living things - from three different bones of a
> Triceratops unearthed in North Dakota. The fragment matched a
> corresponding length of modern turkey DNA, said William Garstka, a
> professor at the University of Alabama Huntsville.
>
> Garstka extracted from two vertebrae and a rib fragment a sequence of
> mitochondrial DNA, which is handed down, unchanged, from mother to
> child.
>
> He then compared the tiny sequence - composed of 130 base pairs built
> from the letters of the DNA alphabet - against segments of
> mitochondrial DNA from 28 animal species, including 13 birds.
>
> Garstka found the sequence to be nearly identical to that of the
> turkey, which could be further evidence that birds evolved from
> dinosaurs.
>
> "If this is in fact dinosaur DNA, which we dont yet know for sure, it
> could tell us something very important about the link between
> dinosaurs and birds," Garstka said. "Were not saying that Triceratops
> is some damned giant turkey - were not saying that at all. What were
> saying is that there could be an important relationship here."
>
> Despite the fantasy of Jurassic Park, no one has ever retrieved even
> the slightest bit of true dino DNA. Many other paleontologists doubt
> Garstka and his colleagues could have pulled genetic material from a
> 66-million-year-old fossil, and even the Alabama team admits the DNA
> could be contaminated. It could also belong to meat-eating dinosaurs
> that gnawed on the Triceratops bones and left dozens of their broken
> teeth behind, they say.
>
> Montana State University paleontologist Jack Horner, who has tried
> unsuccessfully to extract genetic leftovers from the bones of
> Tyrannosaurus rex and other dinosaurs, said DNA deteriorates too
> quickly to survive the ages since the ancient creatures reigned.
>
> "Right now Im very doubtful because I dont think youre going to be
> able to replicate anything more than 10,000 years old," he said. "By
> the time you get back to 65 million years ago, theres probably not
> much of anything left."
>
>