Subject: [Tweeters] US researchers have recovered microscopic traces of soft
Date: Apr 12 13:33:18 2007
From: Suzanne Krom - szkrom at drizzle.com


This is a remarkable advance in the research -- http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21549465-1702,00.html: "The startling discovery is yielding clues to evolutionary links between dinosaurs and birds, according to two papers released overnight.

The tiny protein fragments were extracted from the leg bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex that was discovered in the western state of Montana in 2003, but it wasn't until recently that scientists were able to definitively identify them as traces of dinosaur collagen.
The studies, published in the journal Science, said the paleontologists who examined the powdered protein remnants had to call on biochemists for help analysing the molecular structure of the material.

The biochemists were eventually able to crack the protein code, allowing them to compare the material to similar proteins in several contemporary animals. The results showed a close match to chickens, and to a lesser extent frogs and newts.

That finding bolsters a recent and controversial proposal that birds and dinosaurs are evolutionarily related, and change that hypothesis to a theory, the researchers said.

"Most people believe that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but that's all based on the architecture of the bones," ...

Suzanne Krom
Seattle