2008/04/24 by Chris L. Organ, Mary H. Schweitzer, Wenxia Zheng +3 · 7 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Mathematics · #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology #Morphological variations and asymmetry
paper · doi:10.1126/science.1154284
openalex publication_date 2008/04/24 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We report a molecular phylogeny for a nonavian dinosaur, extending our knowledge of trait evolution within nonavian dinosaurs into the macromolecular level of biological organization. Fragments of collagen alpha1(I) and alpha2(I) proteins extracted from fossil bones of Tyrannosaurus rex and Mammut americanum (mastodon) were analyzed with a variety of phylogenetic methods. Despite missing sequence data, the mastodon groups with elephant and the T. rex groups with birds, consistent with predictions based on genetic and morphological data for mastodon and on morphological data for T. rex. Our findings suggest that molecular data from long-extinct organisms may have the potential for resolving relationships at critical areas in the vertebrate evolutionary tree that have, so far, been phylogenetically intractable.