Modern Birds Linked to Dinosaurs Through T-Rex Protein

The study suggests that birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than modern reptiles, a counterintuitive prospect.

The team started with soft tissue from the now-famous supposedly 68-million-year-old T. rex found by North Carolina State University’s Mary Schweitzer. The find has been given great attention because many—including us!—find it hard to believe that soft tissue could have lasted tens of millions of years. The National Geographic News article reports,

Others have said that protein preservation over tens of millions of years should not be possible. Some scientists have continued to question whether Asara's and Schweitzer's sequences really came from an ancient T. rex.

Proteins from some other biological source could have somehow contaminated the dinosaur remains, the skeptics note.

Many ... find it hard to believe that soft tissue could have lasted tens of millions of years.

Study leader John Asara of Harvard Medical School noted that, “This shows that if we can sequence even tiny pieces of fossil protein, we can establish evolutionary relationships.” The details of the dino–bird connection were not presented in the National Geographic News article. It is described as “a variety of techniques . . . compared the T. rex and mastodon protein sequences with those of 21 living animals, including ostriches, chickens, and alligators.”

Of course, showing the evolutionary basis for such tests, the article adds, “Such comparisons are commonly used by biologists to construct evolutionary ‘family trees,’ since similar protein structure is a sign of shared genetic makeup.”

Interestingly, Harvard’s Chris Organ, lead author of the report, illustrated how such DNA comparison can yield unexpected “relationships.” “To illustrate his point, he noted that the shared ancestry of two present-day groups—elephants and shrew-like tenrecs—is known solely from DNA and protein comparisons.” Tenrecs are small shrew- and hedgehog-like mammals that can weigh as little as a few grams (or up to a few pounds)—totally unlike elephants in morphology, yet supposedly connected to them because of DNA studies.

Evolutionists frequently buttress their theory by pointing to the genomic and morphological similarity between chimpanzee and humans.

For the evolutionist, who presupposes that similarity in genome means two species shared a common ancestor (or shared one more recently, to be more precise, since evolutionists say all life shares a common ancestor), these connections are unchallengeable. But it’s almost as though God designed it so that the least similar creatures would have similar genomes, as if to say, “They didn’t evolve!” Think about it—evolutionists frequently buttress their theory by pointing to the genomic and morphological similarity between chimpanzee and humans. Yet now they claim a close connection between T. rex and chickens, and between giant elephants and tiny tenrecs. Is it just us, or does something sound fishy?

Thus, this story highlights more evolutionary presuppositions that seem to stand in the way of the facts. The dinosaur protein must be 68 million years old (although they didn’t think that was possible—and some still don’t!) because dinosaurs went extinct then, the story goes. And if two animals’ genomes are similar, they must be closely related, even if they look completely different. And they say creationists are stretching the truth?

When it comes to animal similarities, creationists are keen on comparing morphologies and placing animals into clear families that correspond to the created “kinds” of Genesis 1. That’s why when we look at animals today, to a point, we do see commonalities within various groups. But trying to link every life-form to a single ancestor based on commonalities doesn’t work, because there never was a common ancestor!