Chick-O-Saurus Rex

I stumbled upon this book the other day while visiting the local library with my daughter. 

Chick-o-Saurus Rex by Lenore & Daniel Jennewin

Cute right?!

My daughter and I got a comfy seat in the kids room and read it right away. This adorably illustrated and cute little story is about Little Chick who wants nothing more than to play in the tree house with Little Donkey, Little Pig and Little Sheep. "This is a club for the brave and mighty." they said. "What mighty things can chickens do?" they demanded. Back at home, Father Rooster pulled out the family photo album to show Little Chick some of the great things accomplished by their ancestors. "Our family won prizes (for the largest egg), invented the chicken dance craze, and even crossed the road!" Little Chick was not impressed. But then they found a clue in one of the photos that lead to the discovery of an ancestor who was brave and mighty, a T-Rex!

The story continues when Little Chick goes back to the tree house to share his new knowledge of his brave and mighty ancestors and finds himself in a situation where he will need to prove his bravery but I'll leave that for you to read yourself. 

I've often thought that chickens resembled mini dinosaurs.  I mean, look at them!

Years ago a group of researches compared trace amounts of collagen protein extracted from a very well preserved T. Rex fossil with collagen protein from an ordinary chicken bone and found the protein sequences to be very similar.

Here is a link to one article from 2008 I found on the subject: T.Rex kinship with chickens confirmed

But on deeper investigation I found that out that many scientists have been skeptical about the quality of the data used in the protein findings. 

Everyone suspected dinosaurs were giant birds; then one researcher produced 68 million-year-old protein to prove it. Critics rejected those findings as statistical junk. How a femur sparked a new field of biology—and a scientific smackdown. 
Photo: Christopher Griffith, T. rex photographed at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County

Here is a link to one of the articles I found disputing the findings of the initial protein analysis: Origin of Species: How a T. Rex Femur Sparked a Scientific Smackdown

After spending more time than I care to admit searching through many web pages and scientific journal articles looking for new research and/or solid evidence either for or against these claims I came up empty handed. 

Either way, the book is adorable and my official 'scientific' opinion is that chickens do, in fact look like tiny tyrannosaurus rex's and we will leave it at that.

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