ALSO SEE HERE:
COULD THESE 10 ANIMALS BE RESURRECTED?
Posted on 04/11/2013 5:19:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A site in China contains 190-million-year old organic remains from non-avian dinosaurs and dinosaur embryos, and some of the world’s oldest known eggshells, according to a new study.
The study, published in the journal Nature, reveals for the first time how dinosaur embryos grew, developed and moved around within their eggs. The organic remains -- collagen discovered in bone -- also fuel hopes that many mysteries about dinosaurs may be resolved in the not-too-distant future.
“Our hope is that we may be able to recover collagen from these tissues in the future and do additional analyses,” project leader Robert Reisz told Discovery News. “This would take the study of early dinosaurs to another level.”
“Finding remnants of complex proteins in a 190-million-year-old fossil provides great promise for finding it in other extinct animals, if our targeted method is used,” added Reisz, a University of Mississauga paleontologist.
Reisz and his team recovered all of the remains at the world’s oldest known dinosaur embryo bone-bed, located near the city of Lufeng in Yunnan, China. The study focused on upper hind limb bones from 20 embryonic individuals of the giant herbivorous long-necked dinosaur Lufengosaurus, which was common to the area during the Jurassic period.
The bones showed very rapid growth, doubling in length within the eggs. This indicates that Lufengosaurus had a very short incubation period. The bones were also reshaped, even as they were in the shell, contracting and pulling on the hard bone tissue.
“This suggests that dinosaurs, like modern birds, moved around inside their eggs,” Reisz said. “It represents the first evidence of such movement in a dinosaur.”
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
Possibly, but you wouln’t want to do it. Other than that, soft tissue doesn’t last for millions of years. A few thousand or a couple of tens of thousands, tops.
The jury is still out on that. They have recovered some soft tissue looking organic material from T. Rex bones.
I would think that some serious re-checking of basic premises would be in order -- but some might find such a basic scientific step to be threatening.
Likely an adaptation that would be of benefit in an extremely hostile and predatory environment.
Sort of like what's been going on within the Global Warming crowd.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger....
I believe that Evolution and Global Warming have a great deal in common. For one thing, the adherents tend to view the opposition in a remarkably similar way — as heretics who need to be burned at the stake.
I read the half-life of DNA is only a bit greater than 500 years.
That's right. It means the tyrannosaur died a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of years ago.
Or we don’t know anywhere near as much about decay and preservation as we thought, or more recent biofilm filled in the spaces in the bone like silicone in a mold, or?
|
|
|
| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
|
|
Thanks SeekAndFind. |
|
|
|
|
RE: I’m not going to try to say anything definitive, but I will say that finding organic material which is 190-million years old is ... surprising.
Interesting that even the writers of this article ignored the most important part of the story, the soft tissue.
The other articles similar to this one simply assumed that soft tissue can last almost 200 million years! Why isn’t anyone seeing the obvious?
Chris Palmer admitted that the eggs were “vulnerable to the corrosive effects of weathering and groundwater,” making it unbelievable that up to 197 million years passed without obliterating the proteins.
I agree with you that this discovery requires serious re-checking of basic premises.
We can start by asking if the hundreds of millions of years premise should in fact be reconsidered...
Jonty30:"I read the half-life of DNA is only a bit greater than 500 years."
varmintman: "That's right.
It means the tyrannosaur died a few thousand or a few tens of thousands of years ago."
clear_case-guy: "I agree with you that this discovery requires serious re-checking of basic premises.
We can start by asking if the hundreds of millions of years premise should in fact be reconsidered..."
The soft-material reportedly found is collagen, same stuff as also found in various dinosaur fossils.
No DNA has yet been recovered from such collagen.
The term used for such materials is "mummified", not "fossilized", and the first scientific question here is not, "do they disprove evolution?", but rather: "under what conditions can organic material be mummified well enough to survive many millions of years?"
There are near complete DNA samples of mastodon and mammoth DNA dating back to the last ice age.
Simple answer to that one: "None". There aren't any such circumstances. Most of the questions in life are complicated so that I have to love it when the occasional question with a legitimately simple answer still turns up.
Your claim here sounds like an article of faith to me.
So what faith does it come from?
Common sense. I've always had a lot of faith in that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.