Two years after the preserved proteins of a 68-million-year-old
Tyrannosaurus rex were published by NCSU paleontologist, Mary
Schweitzer, and her team, they’ve come back to describe the
discovery of some 80-million-year-old femur bone proteins
belonging to the duckbilled hadrosaur, Brachylophosaurus
canadensis. The specimen’s deep burial within a block of
sandstone gave it optimal protection, so even though it was
twelve million years older than the Tyrannosaurus rex femur,
they were still able to find double the amino acids in the
hadrosaur protein sequence. By using these protein sequences to
reconstruct ancient evolutonary trees, Schweitzer’s team have
become the pioneers of a new area in palaeontology known as
palaeomicrobiology. Comparing the dinosaur proteins with living
bird and reptile samples, they were able to demonstrate the
close relationship between dinosaurs and modern birds, their
sequences far more similar to those of chickens and ostriches
than they were to those of modern alligators and liza