Somewhat belated in this round of story hyping, but my latest for Wired is out in the July issue. Headlined “Origin of Species: How a T. Rex Femur Sparked a Scientific Smackdown,” it concerns a research dispute that grew out of the discovery of T. Rex protein fragments, announced in Science in 2007. The takeaway from that claim, as it was elegantly put in one headline at the time, summed up as: “Study Tyrannosaurus Rex Basically a Big Chicken.” (Not to be confused with the Big Chicken). Several researchers, however, found fault in the initial study.
I won’t spoil the ending, but I daresay it’s the most exciting mass spectrometry protein detection story you’ll read this month….and maybe even all year. But it’s also about dinosaurs! And more than that, about how science operates and scientific disputes — even entertainingly acrimonious ones — get resolved.
For anyone who has already read it, here’s a response from U. Maryland professor Steven Salzberg–whom I interviewed for the piece–on the story and the latest T. Rex research.
Posted at 7:31 pm | 1 Comment | Filed under Recent stories |
