Comments on: Ruling reptiles taste just like chicken. For a reason.

Ruling reptiles taste just like chicken. For a reason.

jfuller — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:02:59 -0800

Put down that McChicken sandwich, punk, and back away slowly. OK, now run! The chicken is T. Rex's closest known living relative.

By: davy

davy — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:08:24 -0800

I wonder what dinosaur I'm related to.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:15:33 -0800

I'm the closest known living relative to the caveman.

By: quarter waters and a bag of chips

quarter waters and a bag of chips — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:19:11 -0800

My ignorant little creationist bubble is being prodded and poked at more every day.

By: jonmc

jonmc — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:20:54 -0800

Somewhere Fred Flintstone is smiling.

By: jefbla

jefbla — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:25:51 -0800

They should use the bones to make T-Rex stock, you know, for science 'n shit.

By: Heywood Mogroot

Heywood Mogroot — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:26:53 -0800

which is why everything "tastes like chicken" actually.

By: Heywood Mogroot

Heywood Mogroot — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:27:21 -0800

title check; I lose.

By: gubo

gubo — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:28:15 -0800

I'm glad they didn't compare the protein to, say, a sparrow, because chickens are funnier.

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:29:00 -0800

For a year, my parents rented an old farmhouse about an hour north of Omaha. Being int he country, they thought they should have some livestock, so they bought a flock of chickens. I liked to sit out in the yard and read and watch the chickens move around. But periodically, they'd all sort of strut over towards me in unison, beady little eyes fixed, and there was something really, really menacing about them. I guess it was the Rex showing through. there was also a deranged rooster named Rocky who tried to mount everything he saw-- chickens, ducks, cats, golden labs; he met his end when he tried to mount a coyote.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:39:33 -0800

I'd bet that Chickens, as a common food item, probably have a very well sequenced genome already. I think I read somewhere that Humans, Lab Mice, Drosphila (the fruit fly), Chimps, a kind of yeast, and e.coli are the most studied organisms, in some cases just because they are the ones with the greatest body of pre-existing knowlage. I'd bet chickens are pretty high up on the list as well.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:51:42 -0800

Werner Herzog: "Have you ever looked into the eyes of a chicken? They are amazingly stupid creatures."

By: squarehead

squarehead — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 09:56:29 -0800

Just to be clear, chickens aren't any more closely related to T. Rex than any other bird. All birds are presumably descended from some single dinosaur-bird link species. I just wanted to point out the obvious and, you know, kill the joke.

By: porpoise

porpoise — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 10:00:07 -0800

March 1st 2004: Chicken Genome Assembled: First Avian Genome Now Available To Scientists Worldwide

By: nebulawindphone

nebulawindphone — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 10:00:34 -0800

Marc Bolan would be disappointed.

By: Talanvor

Talanvor — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 10:09:06 -0800

For some reason I had a thought that maybe dinosaurs didn't all die out, they just got shrunk somehow. Because if you were a tiny little worm, a chicken would look freaking badass to you.

By: sonofslim

sonofslim — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 10:53:45 -0800

Haven't you seen Jurassic Park? Don't run! If you don't move, they can't see you.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:11:27 -0800

> For some reason I had a thought that maybe dinosaurs didn't all die out, they just got shrunk somehow. That's been Ralph Bakker's talking point for some years: that birds aren't descended from dinosaurs, they are dinosaurs. > I'd bet that Chickens, as a common food item, probably have a very well sequenced genome already. I gather we aren't sequencing DNA here but protein. As someone who had to run and maintain a spinning-cup protein sequencer some years ago this impresses heck out of me. Unless protein sequencers have gotten a lot better in the interval (always possible) I can tell you determining the amino acid sequence of a long protein isn't an add-sample-push-button-go-to-lunch operation, it's a major pain in the butt.

By: CynicalKnight

CynicalKnight — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:13:32 -0800

I imagine this means of you behead a Tyrannosaurus Rex the body will still run around in circles. Gosh, wouldn't that be funny? Maybe not so much when the size differential is reversed...

By: Manjusri

Manjusri — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:15:32 -0800

"The chicken is T. Rex's closest known living relative. I don't see anything like that assertion anywhere in the article. It does say the following: "Some proteins identified in the ferociously fanged Cretaceous-era predator were a close match to protein found in modern-day chickens, which the authors say lends more credence to theories that birds are descended from dinosaurs"

By: LeLiLo

LeLiLo — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:17:06 -0800

I've studied a lot about dinosaur evolution, for various articles I was writing... but not enough, obviously, because it was only a few weeks ago that I learned that of the two biological orders of dinosaur (bird-hipped or lizard-hipped), it was the lizard-hipped that evolved into the chicken and other birds. It never occurred to me that birds, apparently, have lizard hips instead of bird hips. Short explanation. Long-winded explanation.

By: Iron Rat

Iron Rat — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 12:31:43 -0800

I have seen chickens chase down a lizard, grab it by the neck with it's beak and then smash it's head against the ground all the while looking like it knows what it is doing. Yeah, they are dinosaurs all right but they taste like chicken.

By: chuq

chuq — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:47:51 -0800

My partner's mom, who grew up on a farm in Kansas, always did say that poultry was hateful.

By: winks007

winks007 — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 13:54:38 -0800

Once while living in a rural part of Louisiana, I was attacked by a chicken. Could've swore it was a feathered T-Rex. Chickens do have quite a mean-streak. When I tell this to my 10 y/o son, he will start ordering t-rex happy meals. He already calls my home-made grilled burgers...Tyrannosaurus Burgers.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:18:34 -0800

> I don't see anything like that assertion anywhere in the article. One expects that if the researchers knew of a closer match they would have mentioned it. ("It's a pretty tight match for chicken but we found even more identical loci this morning when we ran it against tofu, so the current thinking is that T. rex may gave been a legume.") I infer from that, pretty safely, that they did not.

By: maxwelton

maxwelton — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 14:24:32 -0800

Robot Chicken is very enjoyable.

By: Manjusri

Manjusri — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:09:57 -0800

Jfuller: I guess it is more of a semantic objection, but the post is misleading in that it implies that T-Rex and Chicken are more closely related than, say a Crocodile and T-Rex. That is not a safe inference from the article or the study.

By: pokermonk

pokermonk — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 16:57:26 -0800

As someone who has eaten Tyrannosaur on numerous occasions, I can tell you this could not be further from the truth. Technically, I could be executed for revealing this information, but I have confidence that no one here will believe me. I think my handlers will feel similarly.

By: BostonJake

BostonJake — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 18:36:42 -0800

I drive past Harvard every day on my way to work and I've never seen any T-Rexs. Or any chickens for that matter.

By: ZachsMind

ZachsMind — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 14:02:45 -0800

Jurassic Park came out in 1993. Jack Horner and other paleontologists have been discussing this possibility for decades. This confirms presumptions, which is nice, but not much to write home about. Agreed, Max. Robot Chicken does rock.