Comments on: “Tests Confirm T. Rex Kinship With Birds”

By: Troy Britain

Troy Britain — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:35:03 +0000

Sebastian: sorry for the rambling here. But ever since I was 7 years old, “Dinosaurs” was a topic that completely captures me ;-)

No need to apologize at all Sebastian. I'm a bit older than you but I have had the same fascination with dinosaurs since I was a kid.

By: Troy Britain

Troy Britain — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 01:32:07 +0000

Bad: Hmmm, I seem to remember something like this already coming out years ago. But now that I think about it, the previous research was based on the fact that T-rexes had a particular type of tissue layer near the bone or something that is only found in them and modern birds.

I believe you're thinking of the discovery of bird-like medullary tissue found in a T-rex bone a few years ago.

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:34:11 +0000

I was born in 1981, and as such, was completely captured by the “Dino-Hype” that raged in the late 80s and early 90s (culminating, of course, in the movie “Jurassic Park”). I was really into Dinos, and in fact, the kinda related book “World after Man” by Dougal Dixon (It had bats looking like velociraptors, for Effs sake!) was what first introduced me into the fascinating world of evolutionary theory.
And even though I had *very* little understanding of science when I was 10 or 11 years old, for some reason I always doubted the (then) scientific consensus that Dinosaurs were cold-blooded. How could such enormous creatures even stand upright when their blood wasn’t even capable of maintaining a steady body temperature? Now granted, I don’t understand [i]that[/i] more about science thab I did when I was 11. But I still hold the opinion that most Dinosaurs are probably warm-blooded. And this protein-analysis seems to confirm my beliefs. If a T-Rex was more related to birds than it was to reptiles, than it most possibly was really a warm-blooded animal. Oh how I love being right all along! :-D

Uuhhh… sorry for the rambling here. But ever since I was 7 years old, “Dinosaurs” was a topic that completely captures me ;-)

By: Bad

Bad — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:53:59 +0000

Hmmm, I seem to remember something like this already coming out years ago. But now that I think about it, the previous research was based on the fact that T-rexes had a particular type of tissue layer near the bone or something that is only found in them and modern birds.

By: A Lurker

A Lurker — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 19:03:28 +0000

I really can’t see how this evidence resolves any “controversy” at all. The small handful of scientists who still doubt that birds are dinosaurs as a rule don’t deny that birds are closely related and like dinosaurs are archosaurs. Thus they would expect the closest matches to be either the birds or the crocodilians as they are the only living archosaurs. Of course creationism makes no predictions whatsoever and creationists will be silent that this research could have come up very bad for evolution if evolution was actually false. But of course evolution is true.

Now what would be really neat is if they could get good sequencing data from multiple dinosaurs. That really could show beyond any doubt that dinosaurs are birds without reference to any the other voluminous evidence. I expect that sequence of a T. rex will be closer to birds than to a “duck billed” dinosaur based only on the the mainstream phylogeny: Birds are theropods, duck-bills are not.

By: Steven

Steven — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 04:08:09 +0000

Nope not a surprise but yes it is interesting. At least it is to me.

By: Troy Britain

Troy Britain — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 02:29:59 +0000

Hi Jon,

Nah, creationists will leap on this as evidence for a young Earth. “Lookit lookit lookit! DNA recovered from a DINOSAUR BONE! DNA breaks down so fast, this bone MUST be young!

Oh I’m sure they will do that as well. But they will also deny that this in any way supports an evolutionary relationship between dinosaurs and birds. They’ll pop off with some vague nonsense about common design and pretend that it actually meant something.

On a more serious note, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s familiar with the dinosaur/bird question.

No, no surprise at all. It is just adding more evidence to the pile; icing on the cake if you will.

By: Jon W

Jon W — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 12:17:46 +0000

Creationists will probably deny, deny, deny.

Nah, creationists will leap on this as evidence for a young Earth. “Lookit lookit lookit! DNA recovered from a DINOSAUR BONE! DNA breaks down so fast, this bone MUST be young! Are you still loony enough to think dinosaurs are SIXTY-FIVE MILLION YEARS OLD?” Remember, they did the exact same thing with Horner’s earlier find of intact porphyrin fragments in another T-rex fossil.

On a more serious note, this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who’s familiar with the dinosaur/bird question. The article does seem more garbled than I’d expect from John Wilford, though. Maybe I missed something, but I thought most paleontologists already accepted the dinosaur-bird connection and its implications for vertebrate evolution. So I wonder what about this result led them to “redraw the vertebrate family tree.”

– JSW