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Close Topic OptionsScientists Find Soft Tissue In T-rex Bone
Scientists Find Soft Tissue T-rex Bone - Sciences, Education, Art, Writing, UFO - Posted: 25th Mar, 2005 - 8:39am
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Scientists Find Soft Tissue In T-rex Bone
New story from Reuters:
| QUOTE |
| A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug out of a hunk of sandstone has yielded soft tissue, including blood vessels and perhaps even whole cells, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday. Paleontologists forced to break the creature's massive thighbone to get it on a helicopter found not a solid piece of fossilized bone, but instead something looking a bit less like a rock. When they got it into a lab and chemically removed the hard minerals, they found what looked like blood vessels, bone cells and perhaps even blood cells. "They are transparent, they are flexible," said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and Montana State University, who conducted the study. She said the vessels were flexible and in some cases their contents could be squeezed out. "The microstructures that look like cells are preserved in every way," added Schweitzer, whose findings were published in the journal Science. "Preservation of this extent, where you still have this flexibility and transparency, has never been seen in a dinosaur before." Feathers, hair and fossilized egg contents yes, but not truly soft tissue. Studying the soft tissues may help answer many questions about dinosaurs. Were they cold-blooded like reptiles, warm-blooded like mammals, or somewhere in-between? How are they related to living animals? JURASSIC PARK? [...] Of course, the big question is whether it will be possible to see dinosaur DNA. "We don't know yet. We are doing a lot in the lab now that looks promising," Schweitzer said. [...] The finding certainly shows fossilization does not proceed as science had assumed, Schweitzer said. Since the discovery, she has found similar samples of soft tissue in two other Tyrannosaur fossils and a hadrosaur. [...] |
Pretty amazing. What I really find amazing is that this hadn't been discovered before, as the article makes it sound as though it probably isn't all that rare.
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Post Date: 25th Mar, 2005 - 8:39am / Post ID: #
Bone T-rex Tissue Soft Find Scientists
We are so going to have a real Jurassic Park in someones lifetime! Well, maybe not, but this is some really cool stuff. This discovery might change the information we learn about dinosaurs in school. This could very well change the face of Paleontology forever!
TOPIC: Scientists Find Soft Tissue In T-rex Bone