"Dinosaurs are all around us today in a very real sense," said Patrick

O'Connor, a paleontologist at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, speaking

from Tanzania, where he had been digging up dinosaur fossils. This
ongoing search for new information on dinosaurs gives us a historical
perspective about how birds came to be who they are, he said.

Such things as a bird's feathers, breathing system and light bones -
thought to have evolved for ight - are also showing up in fossils of
dinosaurs that never took to the sky.

"Feathers are for ight, right?" asked Farish Jenkins, a paleontologist at
Harvard University. "Wrong."

Some small dinosaurs that did not y had feathers - probably to keep
them warm, rather than to y, Jenkins said. "It is another example that
things are not always as they seem," he said.

As evolution progresses, features that arose for a particular purpose in
one species often end up serving a di"erent purpose in another species.

The relationship between birds and theropods, the group of two-legged
ground-walking dinosaurs that preceded them, "really illustrates well how
evolution works," said Chris Organ, a researcher in the department of
organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard. "You have characteristics
that accumulate over a time span that eventually become what we think
of as the animal." He added that there is a "common sense that fossils
are about dead things and biology is about living things, but we really
need more of an integrated sense of where things come from."




Birds feathers and other features
that are designed for ight are
showing up on the fossils.
A paleontologist from Ohio says
the evidence that birds evolved
from dinosaurs lie in the fossils
he's been digging up, those fossils
lead to what birds really are.
Some dinosaurs that didn't
y had feathers, like today
ostriches and penguins
don't y but they have
feathers. Paleotologists
predict that some dinosaurs
are like this.
Features that arose for a particular
purpose in one species often end
up serving a di"erent purpose in
another species.




A new study of ancient proteins retrieved from a Tyranosaurus rex fossil
conrms the long-hypothesized evolutionary connection between
dinosaurs and modern birds, experts say.

The new research follows a breakthrough study last year in which
scientists reported the recovery and partial molecular sequencing of T. rex
and mastodon proteins.

Both dinosaur studies examined samples of collagen, the main protein
component of bone.

In addition to cementing the dino-bird connection, the new study provides
the rst molecular evidence that mastodons and elephants are also
closely related.

"This shows that if we can sequence even tiny pieces of fossil protein, we
can establish evolutionary relationships," said co-author John Asara of
Harvard Medical School, who also led the previous T. rex study.

Chris Organ of Harvard University is the lead author of the new report,
which appears in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.

The T. rex proteins were extracted from soft tissues preserved inside 68-
million-year-old fossil remains rst described in 2005.

The mastodon remains were much younger, dating to between 160,000
and 600,000 years ago.

Using a variety of techniques, the researchers compared the T. rex and
mastodon protein sequences with those of 21 living animals, including
ostriches, chickens, and alligators.



Berg, Eric. "Birds: The Late Evolution of
Dinosaurs | Natural History Museum of Los
Angeles." Birds: The Late Evolution of
Dinosaurs | Natural History Museum of Los
Angeles. Biology Inc, Aug. 2012. Web. 20
May 2014.








Did Birds Evolve from the Dinosaurs?

One of the most intriguing questions of science is whether birds evolved
from the dinosaurs. The dispute is not over whether there are evolutionary
relationships between birds and dinosaurs. On that point, all
paleontologists agree. The birds and the dinosaurs are closely related.
The question is, how are they related? In one scenario, birds are
dinosaurs. The birds represent a branch of the dinosaur lineage that
survived the Cretaceous crisis and radiated into the forms we know today.
In another scenario, birds and dinosaurs had a common ancestor that
gave rise to both groups. Birds were never dinosaurs, but they are the
closest living group to those extinct reptiles.

The evidence for and against these two hypotheses concerns anatomy,
developmental biology, and even physiology.






Scientists recovered collagen
the main protein component
of bone of dinosaur fossils
and they were able to
compare them to di"erent
kinds of bird bones to see that
dinosaurs and birds are
related.
Scientists realize that even
extracting something so simple
like protein from fossil remains
they are able to compare them
to animals like ostriches,
chickens and alligators to be
able to see the close
relationships.
Conks, Benjamin. "T. Rex Protein "Conrms"
Bird-Dinosaur Link." National Geographic.
National Geographic Society, Apr. 2010. Web. 20
May 2014.




Dinosaurs and birds are yes in fact closely related to birds.
Or some would even say birds are dinosaurs. They
represent a branch of what dinosaurs once were. Or
others say that birds only share a common ancestor with
dinosaurs, they're the closest living relative to dinosaurs.