Common backyard dinosaurs have been appearing in the news lately as genetic studies have led to the revision of the bird family tree. The January issue of SN (Science News) features an article that discusses current research into avian evolution; we can now say that birds are dinosaurs (rather than birds evolved from dinosaurs) based on the findings!
Patrick, on Paleocave blog, sums it up nicely, " Birds are dinosaurs not just because they evolved from dinosaurs, but because they are more closely related to some of the extinct dinosaurs than those dinosaurs are to each other! So next time that someone tells you that dinosaurs are extinct, you can tell them that, actually, there are probably more species of dinosaur alive today than there were in the Mesozoic!"
Another interesting tidbit from Kent University's BioScience department: chickens and turkeys have the most similar overall chromosome pattern to its avian dinosaur ancestor (a great conversation-starter next Thanksgiving). This, of course, leads me to Jack Horner, renowned paleontologist, and his TED talk Building a Dinosaur from a Chicken.
Patrick, on Paleocave blog, sums it up nicely, " Birds are dinosaurs not just because they evolved from dinosaurs, but because they are more closely related to some of the extinct dinosaurs than those dinosaurs are to each other! So next time that someone tells you that dinosaurs are extinct, you can tell them that, actually, there are probably more species of dinosaur alive today than there were in the Mesozoic!"
Another interesting tidbit from Kent University's BioScience department: chickens and turkeys have the most similar overall chromosome pattern to its avian dinosaur ancestor (a great conversation-starter next Thanksgiving). This, of course, leads me to Jack Horner, renowned paleontologist, and his TED talk Building a Dinosaur from a Chicken.
 | It appears that reverse-engineering a chicken could result in a dinosaur. Sean Carroll, author of Endless Forms Most Beautiful, and molecular biologist at the UW-Madison, states in a WIRED article (2011), "Every cell of a turkey carries the blueprints for making a tyrannosaurus, but the way the plans get read changes over time as the species evolves". This leads to the question: why would you want a chicken with teeth? |
The revised Avian Family Tree
Avian Family Tree by Erich Jarvis et al. "Whole-genome analyses resolve early branches in the tree of life of modern birds"; Science, Dec 2014
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