Tyrannosaurus Rex(File Photo)

    BEIJING, April 13 (Xinhuanet) -- In the 1993 Oscar-award-winning movie "Jurassic Park" and again in the 2001 "Jurassic Park III" flick Sam Neill, portraying the character of dinosaur expert Dr. Alan Grant, expounds the theory dinosaurs really never went extinct, they just evolved into birds.

    The two examples he used most often to prove his point were Velociprators and the No. 1 dinosaur villain of all time: Tyrannosaurus rex.

    Once again, science fiction becomes science fact.

    Now a team of scientists from North Carolina State University have extracted collagen tissue from a 68-million-year-old T. rex thigh bone and found protein that is structurally similar to chicken protein, offering further evidence of the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds.

    Collagen is a fibrous, elastic protein that helps keep skin looking young. It also makes up most of the organic material in bone, which consists of both minerals and protein.

    "For centuries it was believed that the process of fossilisation destroyed any original material, consequently no one looked carefully at really old bones," said Dr. Mary Schweitzer, team leader. "The similarity to chicken is definitely what we would expect given the relationship between modern birds and dinosaurs."

    The T.rex tissue tested positively against antibodies known to react with collagen, but doubts remained.

    Final confirmation came from the laboratory of Dr. John Asra, director of a mass spectrometry facility at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

    Mass spectrometry identifies chemicals by their atomic mass. It was able to reveal the T.rex material contained sequences of amino acids -- protein building blocks -- typical of collagen.

    The sequence pattern looked like that of chicken collagen, and there were also similarities with frog and newt protein.

    "From a palaeo standpoint, sequence data really is the nail in the coffin that confirms the preservation of these tissues," said Schweitzer. "This data will help us learn more about dinosaurs' evolutionary relationships, about how preservation happens, and about how molecules degrade over time, which could also have some important medical implications for treating disease."

    (Agencies)