Sixty-eight million years ago, Tyrannosaurus rex ruled the roost. It was the largest and most fearsome predator ever to thunder across the ancient Earth. Even today in the safety of a museum, coming face-to-kneecap with T. rex inspires awe — and perhaps a tiny dagger of fear.

Its descendants inspire dinner.

A remarkable new genetic study published last week has demonstrated that the closest living relative of the giant T. rex are birds — specifically, chickens and ostriches — rather than reptiles like alligators and lizards.

The most amazing thing about last week's report isn't that relationship, which had been fairly well established based on the similarity of dinosaur and bird bones. Rather, it's that scientists were able to find and remove genetic material from an animal that has been dead for at least 68 millennia. No one believed that soft tissue could be naturally preserved for so long a time.