Per aspera

Researchers Decode T Rex Genetic Material

Researchers have decoded genetic material from a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex, an unprecedented step once thought impossible.

“The door just opens up to a whole avenue of research that involves anything extinct,” said Matthew T. Carrano, curator of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.

There are those of contrarian inclination who like to argue that humans aren’t as dominant a member of the animal kingdom as we’d flatter ourselves into thinking; there are waaaaaaay more bacteria than there are animals like us,with our blood and organs, they were here long before the ancestors of the ancestors of humanity existed, and they will be here long after we’ve wiped ourselves out.  Beetles, too.

Surely no other species has yet become so successful a predator that they’ve figured out a way to eat prey that’s actually extinct, though.  We’d have to get points for that, if we pulled it off.

I really hope we pull it off.  I want to eat dinosaur meat.  Not as much as I want to visit Jurassic Park, but I’ll settle for vat-grown Tyrannosaurus steaks.

(via Shakesville)