Article: Preserved T. rex soft tissue recovered

From: Robert Karl Stonjek (rstonjek_at_bigpond.net.au)
Date: 03/24/05 

Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 18:00:50 -0500 (EST)

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 analyzed 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 accumulated 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

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