Posted on 10/01/2006 8:12:10 AM PDT by Excuse_My_Bellicosity
When paleontologists find fossilized dinosaur bones during a dig, they usually do everything in their power to protect them, using tools like toothbrushes to carefully unearth the bones without inflicting any damage. However, when scientists found a massive Tyrannosaurus rex thigh bone in a remote region of Montana a few months ago, they were forced to break the bone in two in order to fit it into the transport helicopter. This act of necessity revealed a startling surprise: soft tissue that had seemingly resisted fossilization still existed inside the bone. This tissue, including blood vessels, bone cells, and perhaps even blood cells, was so well preserved that it was still stretchy and flexible.
A scanning electron microscope revealed that the dinosaur blood vessels, which are 70 million years old, are virtually identical to those recovered from modern ostrich bones. The ostrich is today’s largest bird, and many paleontologists believe that birds are the living descendants of dinosaurs. Scientists may be able to confirm this evolutionary relationship if they can isolate certain proteins from the recently discovered T. rex tissue. These proteins could also help solve another puzzle: whether dinosaurs were cold-blooded like other reptiles or warm-blooded like mammals.
Does this discovery of soft dinosaur tissue mean that scientists will soon be able to clone a Tyrannosaurus rex? Probably not – most scientists believe that DNA cannot survive for 70 million years. Then again, before this discovery, most scientists believed that soft tissue could not survive for 70 million years either.
Dinosaur fossils are relatively rare, so scientists don’t like the concept of cutting them apart. However, now that that paleontologists have found soft tissue (above) inside a 70 million year old T. rex bone, more scientists may start to drill into their dino fossils.
There's a typo in that site's headline, it should read "Science One and a Half Years Ago." ;-)
ping.
Bump.
There is no "tissue" in the sense of cells that might have DNA. And this is a year old, or more.
The scientist who found this material is on record as calling the "soft tissue" = "meat" crowd liars and morons.
When they dissolved the mineral deposits in the tissues, the authors were left with a flexible, stretchy material threaded with what looked like blood vessels. source
I believe this omission has caused a certain amount of controversy here on FR in the past.
Just a bit.
There are some people who might be interested in this as a scientific discovery and not a springboard to hawk a certain ideology. To my knowledge the poster wasn't trying to misrepresent the findings.
Hmmm, interesting. Good points.
Placemarker
I don't think you can do the jurrasic park thing of blood in amber. But, the dna could leave enough residue that you could possibly interpret the data to reconstruct the base pairs data and then if you had the technical skill, to recreate the base pair sequence, one pair at a time.
I imagine if they cooked it up, it would taste like chicken.
I doubt any DNA remains, it's probably completely shredded. Instead I hope some fragments of protein remain since it's a much tougher molecule. Some tests Dr. Schweitzer did suggest fragments of collagen may remain.
I don't care what controversy this has caused. Until T-rex's start throwing Jeeps around on a tropical island, I won't be satisfied.
The tissue doesn't have DNA? Excuses, excuses. Tsk, Tsk.
I think may I need a little more T-rex DNA to get the full terror effect before I open my dinosaur theme park.
Yes that is true, but there may be residuals that give hints to the base pair sequence. If each cell has 20-40 hints and you have millions of cells to work with, there may be enough to deduce the sequence.
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