The article in Science has more details pretty much in accord with the already quoted sources, although a bit more circumspect on the DNA question, and more forthcoming on the extent of preservation. There is definite morphological information, and probable biochemical inference available, but actual biological samples are most likely limited to mineralized protein analogues. The real breakthrough is in establishing that the find may not be unique.
and
So, the prejudice, mentioned above in this thread against breaking open selected bones of fossil dinosaurs may be about to undergo a systematic assault.
Still way cool, even if the Jurassic Park aspects were mostly in the minds of lay reporters.
So, Trisk, to translate that into layspeak: this is not the only sample of flexible meaty stuff that’s been found. There may be even more, and it might have been found years ago it only we hadn’t been so careful not to break open fossils. There may now be more researchers breaking open fossils to find this flexible meaty stuff which may be actual dinosaur jerky, or may be a different, not-rocky type of fossil. Examining more of these things may help us to better understand not just dinosaurs, but the process of fossilization itself - which we thought we knew, but were apparantly a little undereducated on. Yes?
Or maybe you’d be a were-rex, and you’d only turn into a dinosaur at night when the light of a star that is precisely 70 million light-years away touches you.
IANAP but I have read plenty of books, and cutting bones in two to get them loaded is not that uncommon. The bone is still encased in rock, and those mothers are heavy!
The article I read didn’t say that they have confirmed finding others, but said it was possible. After all, one doesn’t crack open bones just for fun.
I suspect there might be patches of DNA, but I’m sure it would be very degraded. Still, it would help them match with birds. The article said the flesh was just like ostrich.
I’m confused. I’ve read the Reuters article but not the Science excerpts. The soft tissue they found was preserved, so are they fossilized? ie, are the soft tissue mineralized? From the looks of the microscope pics on the NY times, they don’t look mineralized. But what does Brooks Hanson mean by this statement:
Doesn’t that mean the soft tissue’s as hard as a rock? If so wouldn’t any DNA, if found, be totally useless at any possibility of cloning?
Taco Bell, nothing! “You should have bought the insurance back when the gecko was selling it! Now you will pay for your cheapness!”
Seriously, what are normally petrified are those hard parts that last long enough to undergo petrifaction. Take any normal recently-dead animal, and you will find that insects, bacteria, fungi, mold, and miscellaneous yuck-don’t-touch-its will have stripped the vertebrate corpse down to bones, teeth, and perhaps a few tendons, the invertebrate down to its carapace or shell, etc. Only under unusual circumstances are “soft parts” preserved long enough to be petrified. There is in the North Carolina Museum of Science a skeleton of a heterodontosaur with a concretion in the proper place, size, and shape to be its heart, which it is disputed whether it is actually the petrified heart of the dinosaur or is a rather amazing coincidence. Part of the reason the Burgess Shale is so famous is that it resulted from the subsidence of a shallow-water Cambrian eco-community into a deep-water anoxic environment that preserved the entire community, including soft parts and animals with no hard parts.
The soft tissue is not mineralized in the same way that the bone tissue is. The investigators demineralized the bone tissue, and found the remaining material had very similar morphology (Shape, texture, and such physical parameters) as modern Ostrich bones demineralized in the same way.
The question still not answered is whether the residual soft tissue is itself the remaining real tissue of a dinosaur, or a mineralized replacement, having the same morphology. Either way, there is a wealth of new information available, since the structure of bone tissue in T-rex seems very similar to Ostrich bone. However, it is not considered likely that the actual chemical make up of the tissue is unchanged over the very long time. The structures may have been mineralized in other ways, replacing the chemicals of life with “analog” structures. There seems to be some optimism about possible protein recovery, or protein analogs which might be “modeled and mapped” to give a good indication of the original proteins in a T-rex. DNA would be a lot less likely, since it is much more complex, and therefor more fragile.
Schweitzer is trying to obtain funding for the chemical studies, and for permission to examine other fossils for similar preservation.
Thanks for the info, Trisk. I’ll be picking up the issue as soon as it arrives at my fave bookstand. I hope for some deep and detailed follow ups to this exciting news, and I’m very happy we weren’t all getting a major whoosh.
I’m guessing it’s because the traditional sources of funding (the government and universities) move … verrrryyyyy … slllllllloooooooooowwwwwwwwlllllllyyyyyyyy …
It will be very expensive. We’re talking about finding, and shipping very expensive fossil pieces you have to “borrow” from institutions, and using forensic science that can be very profitably applied to modern commercial work, and employing science resources from half a dozen different disciplines. A big project, rather than a test you order from “the lab.” And permission from the institutions that own all the various elements you need to include.
I’m confident that funding will be forthcomming, but it is a tight economy, just now, if you can’t produce weapons. (Hmmmmm, rethink that Jurassic Park, thing, ya think?)
