robert karl stonjek

Preserved T. rex soft tissue recovered

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. But, she said, she does not know yet
if scientists will be able to isolate dinosaur DNA from the materials.

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.''

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 ****yzed 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 ac***ulated 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.

Full Text at the Star Tribune

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1556/5310952.html

Posted by
Robert Karl Stonjek

kate

I was wondering if you knew yet exactly what type of dinosaur that
tissue this was from. I have also read this article I read it on march
25. I do not know what species this was from, I also was wondering if
you knew anything else about the fossilization process involved to
allow for soft tissues to be preserved, such as did it get buried in
snow, or did something happen to keep the tissue away from scavengers.?

I am just a person who enjoys evolutionary biology and science in
general, but in truth I love dinosaurs and have entire shelves of my
bookshelves devoted to all things ancient. I would love to discuss this
more in depth, and shall continue to post on this group. It seems like
an active group and definitely full of interesting people.

robert karl stonjek

Kate

RKS:
The 'meat' was found inside a leg bone of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Have a look
at this news story from Science News:

Old Softy: Tyrannosaurus fossil yields flexible tissue
Sid Perkins

Scientists ****yzing fragments of a Tyrannosaurus rex's leg bone have
recovered pliable material containing structures that appear to be cells and
blood vessels.

Paleontologists usually find only a creature's hard body parts, such as
bones, teeth, or shells, preserved as fossils. In the rare instances when
internal organs, muscles, skin, and other soft body parts turn up, the
original tissue has been replaced by minerals that create hard replicas,
says Mary H. Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University
in Raleigh. Sometimes, a soft tissue's shape is recorded by sediments that
surround it.

Now, the first report of flexible material from a fossil describes an
extraction from the femur, or upper leg bone, of a T. rex that lived about
68 million years ago in what is now Montana.

The researchers dissolved minerals from the fossil by soaking it in a series
of slightly alkaline solutions. After a week, much of the remaining material
was surprisingly soft and pliable, say the researchers. Many parts of the
remains were translucent and fibrous, and they retained their elasticity
after repeated cycles of dehydration and rehydration. Schweitzer and her
colleagues report their findings in the March 25 Science.

Full Text at Science News
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050326/fob1.asp

Kind Regards
Robert Karl Stonjek