Soft Tissue in Tyrannosaurus rex

[otseng]

Scientists Discover T-Rex Dinosaur's Soft Tissue

In a paper published in the March 25 edition of the journal Science, Schweitzer describes the process by which she and her technician, Jennifer Wittmeyer, isolated soft organic tissue from the leg bone of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex.

But the team was surprised by what actually happened when they removed the minerals from the T. rex femur fragment. The removal process left behind stretchy bone matrix material that, when examined microscopically, seemed to show blood vessels, osteocytes, or bone building cells, and other recognizable organic features.

Scientists Find Soft Tissue in T. rex Fossil

Dinosaur fossils are rare finds. But the 70-million-year-old bones of a Tyrannosauraus rex recovered from Montana are proving to be even more exceptional than the usual dino remains. Researchers report today in the journal Science that they have recovered soft tissue, including blood vessels, from the ancient creature.

Scientists recover T. rex soft tissue

When they got it into a lab and chemically removed the hard minerals, they found what looked like blood vessels, bone cells and perhaps even blood cells.

"They are transparent, they are flexible," said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and Montana State University, who conducted the study.

She said the vessels were flexible and in some cases their contents could be squeezed out.

Tissue fragments from a Tyrannosaurus rex femur are shown at left, when it is flexible and resilient and when stretched (arrow) returns to its original shape. The middle photo shows the bone after it is air dried. The photo at right shows regions of bone showing fibrous character, not normally seen in fossil bone.

"Current theories about fossil preservation hold that organic molecules should not preserve beyond 100,000 years." If organic molecules cannot be preserved for more than 100,000 years, how can we have soft tissue from a dinosaur fossil that is 68 million years old?

[Lotan]

Hi kids!

Has anyone seen THIS?
There's nothing like evidence to ruin a good fantasy, is there?

[nikolayevich]

Has anyone seen THIS?
There's nothing like evidence to ruin a good fantasy, is there?

I assume you are speaking of a dino-bird link? This is something fairly tangential to the current topic. I would say that--"The tissue -- the first ever discovered inside a dinosaur fossil -- is very similar to medullar tissue found inside the bones of female ratite birds, such as ostriches and emus, that are about to lay eggs"--does not prove that the T.Rex bones are 68 million years old. It suggests, well, what it says- a similarity to medullar tissue found in ratite birds. Nothing more.

Reading this thread has actually been fairly amusing. Every possible reason for the find not having anything to do with an actual date of the T.Rex is put forth, in true fashion. However the possibility remains.

[juliod]

Every possible reason for the find not having anything to do with an actual date of the T.Rex is put forth, in true fashion. However the possibility remains.

There is no evidence that this T Rex is 6000 years old or less. All the evidence (100% of it) is that the fossil is millions of years old.

All we have here is the false assertion that since this fossil has something never before seen that all science must be completely wrong.

DanZ

[nikolayevich]

Every possible reason for the find not having anything to do with an actual date of the T.Rex is put forth, in true fashion. However the possibility remains.

There is no evidence that this T Rex is 6000 years old or less. All the evidence (100% of it) is that the fossil is millions of years old.

No one has said that the T Rex must be 6000 years or less, whether possible or not. The point is simply that either the dating methods are incorrect, or the understanding that fleshy tissue cannot survive beyond 100K years. Both cannot be true. Saying that 100% of the evidence supports that it is millions of years presumes that our understanding that fleshy tissue cannot survive for that time period is wrong. But you have only done so without investigation, as there has not been time to prove that. The only way to do so without investigation is to first assume the creature is old, then to rule out that which could detract from that. ToE requires millions of years, so age trumps.

All we have here is the false assertion that since this fossil has something never before seen that all science must be completely wrong.

Another statement which nobody here is making.

[Lotan]

This is something fairly tangential to the current topic.

I never said it wasn't. I just thought it was nice, the way that this new evidence supports the idea that birds evolved from dino ancestors.

I would say that--"The tissue -- the first ever discovered inside a dinosaur fossil -- is very similar to medullar tissue found inside the bones of female ratite birds, such as ostriches and emus, that are about to lay eggs"--does not prove that the T.Rex bones are 68 million years old. It suggests, well, what it says- a similarity to medullar tissue found in ratite birds. Nothing more.

I never said anything about the age of the bones either.

[Nyril]

Take a bottle of milk, and pour it out onto the floor. How long is it until the milk is spoiled?

Take another bottle, and leave it sealed, but on the counter. How long until the milk is spoiled?

Place a bottle in the fridge at the same time you're doing the other two. How long in relation to the other two will it last?

The point is that you can have the same substance, and have it last different lengths of times based on its environment. The first is exposed to air and heat. The second is just exposed to heat. And the third is neatly tucked away. The third lasts the longests, but is in no way special.

I once poured myself a glass of milk from a container that was 2 weeks
past the date it should expire. The milk was fine. This is not evidence that I had magic milk, this is simply evidence that the use by date was incorrect.

In this situation, we learned something about preservation, not the age of the Earth.

[juliod]

or the understanding that fleshy tissue cannot survive beyond 100K years.

This is the non sequitor. No one actually makes this claim, and it forms no part of science. All we have is the statement that fossils over 100K years old do not usually contain soft organic matter. Or, to put is another way: some fossils over 100K years old do contain soft organic matter. So where is the conflict between that statement and the age of the dinosaur fossils?

DanZ

[The Happy Humanist]

I apologize if this is somewhat off-topic, and probably an ignorant question, but does the presence of organic material from this T Rex imply that DNA can be extracted therefrom? If so, can it be cloned? And has anyone passed a law against dinosaur cloning? (which sounds a hell of a lot scarier to me than stem cell research).

[juliod]

but does the presence of organic material from this T Rex imply that DNA can be extracted therefrom?

No. By "organic" they mean only that the material has not mineralized (i.e. been replaced by some form of rock that takes the shape of the original object). The organic material is very likely to be significantly changed from it's original form.

That's not to say it is impossible for genetic material to survive.

I think some people are working on such cloning projects for other extinct animals.

DanZ

[The Happy Humanist]

but does the presence of organic material from this T Rex imply that DNA can be extracted therefrom?

No. By "organic" they mean only that the material has not mineralized (i.e. been replaced by some form of rock that takes the shape of the original object). The organic material is very likely to be significantly changed from it's original form.

That's not to say it is impossible for genetic material to survive.

I think some people are working on such cloning projects for other extinct animals.

DanZ

Yes, I think the Woolly Mammoth is an example. <shudder> What a story that will be!

Thanks for the info.