T-rex may have tasted like chicken

By Stan Beer
Monday, 16 April 2007 05:25

Science - Biology

The most feared predator in history is actually related to a Sunday roast, according to a new US academic study. The study conducted by Dr Mary Schweitzer assistant professor of paleontology at North Carolina State University and researchers at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center analyzed protein from a 68 million year old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil.

Soft tissue taken from the T-rex leg bone uncovered in the US Montana region in 2003 revealed protein resembling that of modern day chickens.

The finding, presented in the current issue (April 13) of the journal Science, is more than a mere scientific curiosity and may lead to new methods for study diseases including cancer, according to the scientists.

Dr Schweitzer, who also holds an appointment at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, and colleagues Dr John Asara and Dr Lewis Cantley ascertained the amino acid sequence for collagen, the protein found in bone.

Previously it had been thought that fossilized bones tens of millions of years old were composed solely of minerals with no surviving organic material such  as collagen.

However, examination with an electron microsocope and testing with antibodies that react to collagen revealed that collagen was present.

"We looked for collagen because it's plentiful, it's durable, and it has been recovered from other fossil materials, although none as old as this T-rex," Dr  Schweitzer says.

When the researchers compared the collagen amino acid sequence from the T-rex bone to a database of existing sequences from modern species, they found that the T-rex sequence had similarities to those of chicken, frog and newt.

"The similarity to chicken is definitely what we would expect given the relationship between modern birds and dinosaurs," Schweitzer says.

For many years, paleontologists had believed that dinosaurs such T-rex were simply ancient reptiles. However, more recent research has suggested that their  bone structure had similarities with today's birds.