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Article from http://edition.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/0...e.ap/index.html
Soft tissue found in T-rex fossil
Find may reveal details about cells and blood vessels of dinosaurs
Thursday, March 24, 2005 Posted: 2014 GMT (0414 HKT)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- For more than a century, the study of dinosaurs has been limited to fossilized bones. Now, researchers have recovered 70-million-year-old soft tissue, including what may be blood vessels and cells, from a Tyrannosaurus rex.
If scientists can isolate proteins from the material, they may be able to learn new details of how dinosaurs lived, said lead researcher Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University.
"We're doing a lot of stuff in the lab right now that looks promising," she said in a telephone interview.
It was recovered dinosaur DNA -- the blueprint for life -- that was featured in the fictional recreation of the ancient animals in the book and film "Jurassic Park." Although that was science fiction, Schweitzer said she was not sure if scientists would be able to isolate dinosaur DNA fragments from the fossilized materials.
The soft tissues were recovered from the thighbone of a T. rex, known as MOR 1125, that was found in a sandstone formation in Montana. The dinosaur was about 18 years old when it died.
The bone was broken when it was removed from the site. Schweitzer and her colleagues then analyzed the material inside the bone.
"The vessels and contents are similar in all respects to blood vessels recovered from ... ostrich bone," they reported in a paper bring published Friday in the journal Science.
Because evidence has accumulated in recent years that modern birds descended from dinosaurs, Schweitzer said she chose to compare the dinosaur remains with those of an ostrich, the largest bird available.
Brooks Hanson, a deputy editor of Science, noted that there are few examples of soft tissues, except for leaves or petrified wood, that are preserved as fossils, just as there are few discoveries of insects in amber or humans and mammoths in peat or ice.
Soft tissues are rare in older finds. "That's why in a 70-million-year-old fossil it is so interesting," he said.
Matthew Carrano, curator of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, said the discovery was "pretty exciting stuff."
"You are actually getting into the small-scale biology of the animal, which is something we rarely get the opportunity to look at," said Carrano, who was not part of the research team.
In addition, he said, it is a huge opportunity to learn more about how fossils are made, a process that is not fully understood.
Richard A. Hengst of Purdue University said the finding "opens the door for research into the protein structure of ancient organisms, if nothing else. While we think that nature is conservative in how things are built, this gives scientists an opportunity to observe this at the chemical and cellular level." Hengst was not part of the research team.
John R. Horner of the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University, said the discovery is "a fantastic specimen," but probably is not unique. Other researchers might find similarly preserved soft tissues if they split open the bones in their collections, said Horner, a co-author of the paper.
Most museums, he said, prefer to keep their specimens intact.
Schweitzer said that after removing the minerals from the specimen, the remaining tissues were soft and transparent and could be manipulated with instruments.
The bone matrix was stretchy and flexible and there were long structures like blood vessels. She added that what appeared to be individual cells were visible, but could not say if they were blood cells.
She likened the process to placing a chicken bone in vinegar. The minerals will dissolve, leaving the soft tissues.
The research was funded by North Carolina State University and grants from N. Myhrvold and the National Science Foundation. |
They make it sound like it is still fleshy... ???
Mmmmmmmm......get the A-1 ready! :P
Is this anything like the alleged Thescelesaurus heart that was found a few years ago?
This is a repost of one of my thoughts on the DML.
What will actually be found? Fragments of DNA are not out of the question but I think indirectly. DNA directs protein synthesis so at a minimum, some DNA structure may be inferred. Any cellular structures preserved would be a bonus in the study. Since none of us has seen the material, it would be impossible to speculate on what can be learned. Many secondary cellular mechanisms of the creature such as what amino acids (in affiliation with those proteins) are present from the breakdown of those proteins. That being said.
There are common proteins produced by many mechanisms and there are those more rarely expressed by unique metabolic processes. Based on antibody reaction to protein presence, one can infer (based on what occurs of course) what processes were involved in the production of the particular protein. Metabolic pathways often produce specific proteins. (I suspect that even most of these proteins will be fragmentary as well.) Presence or absence of a particular molecule may denote these processes and thusly an analogue can be made to modern equivalent metabolic activity. Perhaps even rare exotic protein occurrences may show even phylogenetic affinities and relationships. Anything might come out of the study.
Regarding thermophysiological affinities, certainly a basis for such conclusions could be reached if the proteins identified have modern relationships to temperature regulatory mechanisms. Most reporters I have met would have to ask how to spell thermophysiological let alone make conjecture about it. Things we may not expect like thermally regulatory related thyroid hormones such as thyroxine et al may be present or even catacholamines which may shed light on thermo balance. Sugars may be found as well which may shed light on many cellular processes. How about some complete mitochondria just for good measure. Heck, someone might be able to figure out the entire cellular metabolism with the right preservation. I don't think anyone can accurately speculate what WILL be found until the proteins (and other metabolites) are identified specifically if at all. Remember your biochemistry, it is not just proteins, there are lipids, esters, anhydrides, sugars, enzymes and a host of others that could pop out of the soup. A little molecular biology will go a long way here. Even some old viruses, bacteria and fungi might reanimate.
A good cell biology team needs to be assembled to work the specimen and perhaps more of the same creature should be sacrificed to acquire more material. Most of the bones that I have collected from Hell Creek have been penetrated by modern groundwater/roots/bacteria etc.
ANY modern contamination would throw off the spectrometers and the tissue cultures. Sealed bone might provide a time capsule for the organics inside but I would bet big money that very little else would. Porous bone fragments would certainly be contaminated by any impurities traveling through the bedrock. However, I bet that this kind of time capsule is not unique by any means. I imagine that there is a combination of events that could lead to more of this type of bone preservation being found by looking for more bones that were recovered deep, of a certain size and type, surrounded by lots of impermeable rock and that were removed from oxygen very soon after burial. OK granted, I suppose by chance situation, any bone fragment could preserve organic remains if there was a sealed cavity within. A significant portion of petrified wood often has partially replaced material on board. Why not bone. Wood is pretty tough to break down though.
There is nothing contradictory to conventional geologic process here. Just a sealed time capsule from the distant past. Without oxygen and bacterial action, there is nothing to break down the tissues period. Presumably the sealed bone was biologically sterile (except for virus' possibly) upon burial. My only problem with the perfect sealed container idea is that blood supply vessels got into the bone marrow through holes in the bone which must have been sealed immediately by euxinic mud or similar biologically sterile, non oxygen permeable muck. All bone has a blood supply pathway built in I think. Does anyone know of non-vascular bone?
You can see pictures related to this find at the bottom of this Wikipedia article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur.
Quite interesting and suprising, IMHO. When I first heard about this not a year ago I though we're talking about mineralized structures, not actual dessecated tissue :crazy: