http://news.aol.com/topnews/articles/_a/genes-show-t-rex-related-to-chickens/20070412165109990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001This is pretty interesting. The God of the gaps just shrunk. Big surprise

(April 12) – An adolescent female Tyrannosaurus rex died 68 million years ago, but its bones still contain intact soft tissue, including the oldest preserved proteins ever found, scientists say. And a comparison of the protein?s chemical structure to a slew of other species showed an evolutionary link between T. rex and chickens, bolstering the idea that birds evolved from dinosaurs. The collagen proteins were found hidden inside the leg bone of the T. rex fossil, according to two studies published in the April 13 issue of the journal Science. Collagen is the main ingredient of connective tissue in animals and is found in cartilage, ligaments, tendons, hooves, bones and teeth. It yields gelatin and glue when boiled in water. ?I mean can you imagine pulling a bone out the ground after 68 million years and then getting intact protein sequences?? said John Asara of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, lead author of one of the studies. ?That?s just mind boggling how much preservation there is in these bones.? The previous record holder for the oldest protein tissue belonged to collagen found in a 100,000- to 300,000-year-old mammoth bone. The new finding will be viewed skeptically, admitted one of the researchers involved in the two studies. ?It?s very, very, very controversial because most people have gone on record saying there?s an absolute time limit to anything that?s protein or DNA,? said Mary Schweitzer, a molecular paleontologist at North Carolina State University.Matthew Carrano, a dinosaur curator at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in either study, said the protein findings are robust. ?Here are the pieces of the protein. If you?re going to refute this you have to explain how these pieces got in there,? Carrano said in a telephone interview. ?It?s not another molecule mimicking the protein and giving off a similar signal. This is the actual sequence.? (snip)?I?m grateful that he was able to get the [amino acid] sequences out. That?s the Holy Grail,? Schweitzer told LiveScience. This finding supports the idea that chickens and T. rex share an evolutionary link and bolsters previous research showing that birds evolved from dinosaurs and that birds are living dinosaurs. ?Here we have a real molecule from a real dinosaur, and it?s much more similar to a bird than it is to anything else,? Carrano said.

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