• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

What Is The Closest Living Relative To T. Rex? You Might Be Surprised

November 26, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

There’s an incredible meme that depicts a chicken looking to the skies Simba style and being met with a Tyrannosaurus rex saying “Remember who you are.” It’s a fantastic visual and one that carries some truth, because the closest living relative to T. rex could well be a chicken, or possibly an ostrich.

This was the big news that followed a 2008 study that used proteins extracted from dinosaur bones to see how closely the molecular data compared to living animals. The idea that dinosaurs might be related to birds wasn’t news at this point, but we didn’t have evidence to prove it beyond anatomical similarities and skeletal data.

Advertisement

So, armed with the bones of a 68-million-year-old T. rex, the team extracted the protein collagen, something that’s found in the bones of animals alive today. This in itself was quite the discovery as it was the first time we realized how long this protein could survive for, so it represented an unprecedented opportunity to analyze dinosaur tissues.

The collagen was detected using mass spectrometry, and the resulting peptide sequences could be used in a molecular analysis to search for similarities between it and the collagen of 21 extant species. The team then used these results to create family trees that could paint a picture of T. rex’s relatedness to the various animal groups. These trees came together in a myriad of ways, creating multiple results that could be compared against one another.

A T. rex footprint (left) compared to that of a chicken (middle), and an ostrich.

A T. rex footprint (left) compared to that of a chicken (middle), and an ostrich.

Image credit: Topimages / Sriyana / Shutterstock.com / David Bygott via Flickr, CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 edited by IFLScience

Most of their approaches placed T. rex firmly within the Archosauria, which is a group shared by birds and crocodilians, but it was leaning in favor of the birds. This means the collagen itself most closely resembled that of chickens and ostriches, rather than those very dinosaur’ish-looking crocodilians, though the authors did express that there were gaps in the data that made it hard to create a full picture.

So, it seems we come to the big question: What is the closest living relative to T. rex? From what we know so far, it’s a bird, most likely either a chicken or ostrich.

Advertisement

At last, it seemed the birds are dinosaurs debate had been settled, as the authors concluded that if similar biomolecules for non-avian dinosaurs were processed in the same way, they too would reveal a higher degree of similarity with birds than any other vertebrate.

“Our results at the genetic level basically agree with what has been seen in skeletal data,” study author John M Asara of Harvard University told the New York Times when the news broke. “There is more than a 90 percent probability that the grouping of T. rex with living birds is real.”

ⓘ IFLScience is not responsible for content shared from external sites.

The result will no doubt make sense to anyone who’s ever lived with chickens and seen the remarkable way they run, whether in an attempt to flee or in pursuit. So, next time you see one, you best give it the respect it deserves.

Advertisement

And in case you’re wondering, “Wait, does that mean birds are dinosaurs?” We’ve got the answer for that, too.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Audi launches its newest EV, the 2022 Q4 e-tron SUV
  2. How Can Cryoconservation Save Earth’s Species From Extinction?
  3. Linguists Decipher An Enigmatic Language Not Used For Centuries
  4. How Long Is A Lunar Day And Night?

Source Link: What Is The Closest Living Relative To T. Rex? You Might Be Surprised

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Martian Mudstone Has Features That Might Be Biosignatures, New Brain Implant Can Decode Your Internal Monologue, And Much More This Week
  • Crocodiles Weren’t All Blood-Thirsty Killers, Some Evolved To Be Plant-Eating Vegetarians
  • Stratospheric Warming Event May Be Unfolding In The Southern Polar Vortex, Shaking Up Global Weather Systems
  • 15 Years Ago, Bees In Brooklyn Appeared Red After Snacking Where They Shouldn’t
  • Carnian Pluvial Event: It Rained For 2 Million Years — And It Changed Planet Earth Forever
  • There’s Volcanic Unrest At The Campi Flegrei Caldera – Here’s What We Know
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version