Tyrannosaurus DNA probably not sequenced

[Andrew Taylor <>]

There was a great deal of news coverage last year when recovery
was reported of 68 million year old DNA sequences  from T. rex fossil
collagen proteins. The sequences showed strong similarities to birds as
you'd expect from supporting current phylogenies.

It'll get much less news coverage - but there is now a great deal of
doubt that the researchers really did accomplish this incredible feat.
A recent Science paper is scathing about the computational analysis
involved, other have suggested that the proteins came from bacterial
slime and yet others have pointed to inconsistencies in the results.
Links below.

But it still seems likely the same researchers successfully sequenced
Mastodon collagen (a mere 600,000 years old).

Andrew

http://www-nmr.cabm.rutgers.edu/academics/biochem694/reading/Asara_etal_2007.pdf
http://www.simonho.org/papers/science08_buckley.pdf
http://www.plos.org/cms/node/388
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/321/5892/1040b