Soft tissue found in T-rex fossil

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/03/24/rex.tissue.ap/index.html

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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.

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 research was funded by North Carolina State University and grants from N. Myhrvold and the National Science Foundation.

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See, yall? North Carolina ain't just pickin' and grinnin' for nuthin'! :)

but exceptions make the rule.
bring him back!
that would be soooo cool.

A Great Blue Whale???

:-) "Life will find a way", or something like that from Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park.

:)

aren't still living and thundering around in our time. There'd be whole hoards of us like the dinosaur "food" in the Jurassic Park films. YIKES! It's bad enough that we have dick cheney and tom delay.

At any rate, I love it every time there's evidence that throws the "earth is only 6,000 years old - says so in the BYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY-bul" crap. Explain THAT one away, fundies.

Theres no winning with the fundies.Any evidence that contradicts the Byybul is the work of Satan.

;)

sort of.

or alligator

There are some alligators right across the road from me. I'll go round 'em up and inform them they could become mamas and papas if they play their cards right. (I'm in FL right now in case you're wondering where in VA there are gators. They are there, too, but in Tidewater; not in the mountains where I live.)

Don't many paleontologists believe the birds evolved from the dinosaurs?

tons of Jurassic Park references now...

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.

It is interesting though huh?

said, "I see Jurassic Park coming."

prime condition! Just wait til the fundies tell us that.

It would be immoral and ungodly to use his stem cells.

(said the anonymous fundie)

eat its pray? I shudder to think of something that does not have an emotional bone in its body when it comes to food, big enough to eat me, walking around anywhere. Ever tried to train or domesticate a reptile?

then? ;)

j/k, i don't want any dinosaurs chasing me around in the subway either, the NYPD is bad enough. :hi:

to raise him in a good, nourishing Christian environment, and he'll turn out to be a good boy.

...70 million years without being frozen?

Thoughts?

an argument for dinosaurs living "not that long ago." Surely the whackos at the Creationism Museum will weigh in on this soon...

This is just hype, pure and simple.

The only interesting part would be looking at the MACROSCOPIC STRUCTURE of these tissues. Do they parallel those of birds, as expected for such a close relative? That would be interesting.

The biochemical/molecular biological stuff is pure bull.

In fact, there IS protein present. That's a fact. I've seen it. I know Mary Schweitzer personally. I know Jack Horner personally. They are not liars, nor are they scam artists.

You are correct that there is no usable DNA, but collagen IS present. The preservational environment for this particular dinosaur specimen is somewhat unique, but most of the credit goes to the very shallow burial of the Hell Creek Formation as a whole.

I met Jack Horner when he gave an evening lecture at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge about a year ago, and it was GREAT. What a thrill! I even got to meet him briefly afterwards. He was wonderful with the questions asked by the young people in the audience, who in fact asked some very good ones.

I've loved dinosaurs all my life and expect to continue to do so. I'm one of those people who never outgrew their childhood love of the beasts. They are irresistable! And the people who study them have also included some of the most interesting and vivid people in science. Dinosaurs certainly stimulate a lot of passion, considering that no human being ever saw one alive. (I'm arbitrarily excluding birds here, of course.)

I didn't mean to imply any hype was on the part of the paleontologists themselves. I'm familiar with Jack Horner's history and he has always been extremely cautious and also very ready to come forward with corrections when necessary. I don't know Dr. (or Ms. if she is still working on her degree) Schweitzer, but I surely have no reason to consider her someone who would hype either. Jack could be said to be allergic to hype; he really hates it. Surely the truth is even more exciting, as is the process of uncovering it. The hype does a lot of damage to credibility, and even worse, it boosts the stakes for the illegal excavators who raid sites for precious fossils and then sell them to collectors. This is a particularly sore subject for Jack Horner, as well it should be.

No, I meant the media when I mentioned hyping. They often blow up stories like this to make them more "relevant" to modern people and sensationalize them. The jurassic Park connection often comes in. Talking about usable DNA and the possibility of cloning would come from the reporters, not the scientists. If asked, the scientists would deny it.

Collagen is amazingly stable, as I'm sure you realize. I'm hoping that these soft tissues will yield insignts on not only a macroscopic level but also on a microscopic level. Very exciting, and I can't wait to hear more about it.

If you have any links to more info on this find, I'd love to see them. I'm a biochemist and cell biologist, so I'm not intimidated by technological jargon.

You are correct though: DNA is really really unstable, the media hypes everything remotely cool (although this really IS cool), and collagen lasts a long long time.

Jack is a pretty nice guy, and he both loves and hates publicity. Mary was a grad student under Jack at MSU, and for a few years worked in the biology dept here. In 2003 I think, she moved on to NCSU. And she is a doctor to answer your question.

I left it vague as to who I thought was doing it.

I think one of the reasons the idea of getting some clonable dino DNA is so irresistable is that on some level EVERYONE wants to see a real dinosaur, whether they admit it or not!

I love dinosaurs. Like many others, I fell in love with them when I was a child.

We have two daughters and we've fostered in them, quite an appreciation for dinosaurs. They're 3 and 5--and they can recognize 20 dinosaurs and pronounce the names.

We have more than 30 books on dinosaurs and I'm always tripping over their plastic pachycephalosauruses. They love the Maisaurs because they were good mommies and they're fascinated that the "Compies" were no bigger than our cat.

They only know the names of two "dinosaur guys" (as they call them), Jack Horner and Sir Richard Owen.

It's fabulous to see this conversation on DU.

Thanks for sharing!

I was at the press conference at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. They have not been able to do DNA tests yet, and are not sure if it is original soft tissue or something produced in the fossilization process that merely resembles soft tissue, but it was definitely found inside the fossilized bone, and is itself soft and flexible in, I understand, microscopic amounts. They only found it when using new, high resolution microscopes and realized that what they were looking at shouldn't exist.

They did explain that the chances of recreating the DNA are slim to the point of vanishing for many, many reasons, not the least of which is that if original DNA does exist it would be in little bits of 200 links, out of the hundreds of thousands, and there is no way of determining how the bits would fit together. Be like assembling a 747 from pieces all under 2" long, with no blueprint.

But it should have some effect on firming up the bird/dinosaur connection.

...couldn't soft tissue be preserved by being buried in an oxygen-free environment immediately after the T-Rex died? Even in a kind of mud or sediment (say the T-Rex was drinking when attack by another T-Rex and was killed in the shallow waters of a river) high in a preservative-like substance (salt?), creating a kind of "canning process?"

Food companies have been using radiation lately to kill bacteria and preserve food products recently, maybe the T-Rex got blasted with gamma rays at some point in time during or before fossilization began.

And after burial was not available to bacteria for full decomposition. Keep in mind, this was found in the marrow cavity of the bone, and that most of the soft tissue is gone. The Hell Creek Formation (which is where this is from) was never buried very deeply, 2000m at most, so the soft tissue wasn't baked out of it to become petroleum. Most fossils are found in rocks that get buried very deeply, and because of the geothermal gradient, any soft tissues that might be present, are literally baked out of them.

...dinosaur never became fossilized after 70 million years? And that some part of the marrow of this bone survived for the same length of time under the same circumstances? If true, why is it that no other dinosaur bone has ever been recovered in any other condition but completely fossilized, and completely lacking any soft tissue and/or bone marrow?

Let us find out, if they are 6000 years old, or 60 million years old (approximately). But, if this were possible and the result was 60 million, fanatics would say God aged the blood to test our faith.

C¹⁴ dating is not useful for anything older than a few thousand years.

Anything over 7000 disproves a certain 'theory'. I thought Carbon 14 was good up to about 50,000 years.

it does seem like they want us to become more reptilian..

:evilgrin: Notice how it's arms are held?

sad.

Digging him up and waving him about is just uncalled for.

A fossilized heart was found a few years ago. Not a T Rex, though I forget what it was.

It was an odd mineralized concretion very, very high in iron that retained the shape of a heart (they cat scanned it, and appears to have four chambers and an aorta), and is in the proper position in the chest. It was found in a specimen of Thescelosaurus neglectus found in the Hell Creek of North Dakota. Oddly enough, this specimen is also at NCSU (but got there before Mary).

Now I understand your username!

There might still be some original proteins and etc in the mineralized matrix, and that would be fascinating, but I very much doubt that any useful amounts of DNA will ever be recovered from it. Especially since the fossilization process for soft tissue typically seems to involve bacterial replacement of actual tissue.

This PROOVES dinosaurs existed recenly <6000 years ago.

Certainly not 65,000,000 years ago!

The fundies are right!!!!!!

not

Let me just say, that this is, in my opinion, one of the coolest and most important find in paleontology.

Ever.

Period.

And that Mary is probably going to be one of my grad school advisors next fall :-)

I respect you DinoBoy and I'm glad to see you find this so important!

Lucky you to get to study with her after such an interesting find!

I had the misfortune of writing a paper in an Anthro class (years ago) that was a book review of "The Mismeasure of Man." My archaeology teacher (Richard Yerkes) was the nephew of one of the subjects of derision in the book. Yow. I didn't get a good grade on that paper.

But I know there is at least one more major part of this story that's embargoed. It's pretty amazing stuff. Unfortunately I probably won't be studying this stuff directly, but hopefully doing something with the bones of Willo (the dinosaur with the heart).

And sorry about your anthro class LOL.

As soon as I saw this post I knew I'd spot some stuff from DinoBoy! Not to puff you up too much, but I'd wager you are a better geologist than I ever was.

But this is thunderously good news--keep us posted if you please.

:hi:

I'm sure it's an understatement to say that you all in the field must be extremely excited about this!

I'm pretty amazed how lucky they were to find something like this. Not to take anything away from the hard work that was also involved, but what are the odds that A. soft tissue would survive after 70 million years and B. someone would find it? Incredible.

Test of faith, you know.

One big reptile in a cluster of little annoying ones.

But poor old Zell, looking like a tasty meal for a big old dino, didn't get et up at all.

soft tissue yet? You know they are just dying to make a new nuisance weapon.

http://www.godandscience.org/youngearth/dinoblood.html

and the refutation (some of which has been invalidated by the recent news update):

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC371.html

Wait - there will indeed be an assault on evolution on the basis of this find. I have still yet to understand exactly what caused them to announce this now, almost 6 years after finding the specimen.

So, whar they found are not the actual proteins themselves, but microfossils of the proteins.

Isn't it still possible to reconstruct the genome from the fossils, provided enough of the genome was "readable"? The fossils would be used to generate a template or "blueprint", which would then be used to accurately sequence the four amino acids in the DNA molecules.

How far off am I about this?

--p!

Wouldn't that be sumthin!!!

Clone the Dodo!

--p!
Proof of Principle

lol

All creatures need a mate, and a community of others. They also have instincts which need to be fulfilled.

Why condemn one creature to a solitary life, or maybe several in captivity, which consists of being gawked at by bipeds? JMHO.

FWIW, I have a big plastic T-rex on my dashboard. It's a kid's toy, I found it while hiking, adopted it, and for some reason I can't bring myself to give it up. He looks pretty cool, or she.

This is so outstandingly neat! My daughter at age 2 already loves dinosaurs and I've never stopped loving them. If anyone has little ones, the book 10 Little Dinosaurs is great fun for them - 8 little tyrannosaurs munching on a mooth, one bit down and chipped his tooth.