And We Have Dino Soft Tissues And DNA!!!!!

[Tuckerfan]

From a T. Rex, no less!!!

U.S. scientists have recovered soft tissue from the bones of a nearly 70-million-year-old dinosaur. If it proves to be original tissue not replaced by some other substance, it would be the first to show such material can last more than a few million years and could provide biological insights into the extinct animals.

When North Carolina State University biologist Mary Higby Schweitzer looked inside a thigh bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex excavated in the northern state of Montana recently, she was surprised by an unexpected find. Typically, only the hard parts of an animal, like the bones or shell, are preserved. But this dinosaur contained what appears to be some well preserved soft tissue inside the bone where the marrow once was.

As Ms. Schweitzer reports in the journal Science, she isolated the tissue by dissolving the surrounding bone minerals in a weak acid. What remained appeares to be blood vessels and cells still elastic after 68 million years.

LET THE CLONING BEGIN!!!

[Celyn]

And on other breaking news…

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=308571&highlight=Dino

btw - the idea seems to be that getting actual DNA is unlikely, but it is still damned amazing.

[Tuckerfan]

I looked! I can’t help it if the danged thing fell off the front page of MPSIMS, dagnabbit!