T. Rex Soft Tissue Found Preserved

POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 30, 2005 02:15
VIEWED: 4990
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John R. Horner of the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State University, said the discovery is "a fantastic specimen," but probably is not unique. Other researchers might find similarly preserved soft tissues if they split open the bones in their collections, said Horner, a co-author of the paper.

Most museums, he said, prefer to keep their specimens intact.

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These undated photos provided by the journal Science show demineralized fragments of tissues lining the marrow cavity of a Tyrannosaurus Rex femur. Photograph A shows the demineralized fragment is flexible and resilient and when stretched (arrow) returns to its original shape. Photograph B shows the demineralized bone in (A) after air drying. The overall structure and functional characteristics remain after dehydration. Photograph C shows regions of demineralized bone showing fibrous character (arrows). These characteristics are not normally seen in fossil bone. Scientists who had to break a dinosaur bone to remove it from its sandstone location say they have recovered 70-million-year-old soft tissues from inside the bone. The find included what appear to be blood vessels, and possibly even cells, from a Tyrannosaurus Rex. (AP Photo/Science)





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Thanks for the pictures! This is so great; I'm stoked. Jack always wanted to get DNA from the bones... thinking it might come from ice-core samples, but this... is terrific.
Singing to self "I want to go back in the field, I want to go back in the field."

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Ah yes, a product of viewing the Flintstones as something based in reality ? No, T.Rex didn't die out all that recently. Man has never seen a living T.Rex,if that's what you're hinting at.

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I wasn't hinting at dinosaurs mingling with people (though ancient stories of dragons are common in almost every culture), I was just speculating that if 65 million year old tissue is so unheard of, perhaps it isn't exactly that old. I know, I know, scientific heresy. Maybe most dinosaurs did die when scientists say they did, but perhaps some escaped the mass extinction and died out at a later date?

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I don’t believe in scientific heresy. What you are suggesting is not impossible, though probably unlikely. We have found animals thought to have been extinct in the Cretaceous living today. The idea of some small din of Tyrannosaurs living in isolation as late as a few million (or a few tens of thousands) years ago is a romantic notion, but not one for which there is much evidence, that I’ve seen. This point may be moot however. I haven’t read the article yet, but I’m guessing they have already dated the fossil. Either through stratigraphic means, which were probably done in the field, and/or radioisotope dating. Some of the things I’ve read claim the fossil is 70 million years old, but that number may just be a stick-in value. Someone may have just referenced the end of the Cretaceous as a 'latest possible' date.

It would be interesting to read the paper if I could just remember my AAAS password.

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Originally posted by Barry:

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Ah yes, a product of viewing the Flintstones as something based in reality ? No, T.Rex didn't die out all that recently. Man has never seen a living T.Rex,if that's what you're hinting at.

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I wasn't hinting at dinosaurs mingling with people (though ancient stories of dragons are common in almost every culture), I was just speculating that if 65 million year old tissue is so unheard of, perhaps it isn't exactly that old. I know, I know, scientific heresy. Maybe most dinosaurs did die when scientists say they did, but perhaps some escaped the mass extinction and died out at a later date?

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Maybe it's unheard of b/c no one recognized or knew what to do with those parts of the samples until recently - or more recent techniques and technologies made analyzing them possible. Or as Dr. Horner suggested that folks just don't like to break open their samples all that often.





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Originally posted by AURaptor:

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So, when does biding start on the first bowl of T-Rex soup?

-Ratboy

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As soon as you can track down a live T-Rex.

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Why would you want a live T-Rex in your soup.

You don't put live chickens in Chicken Noodle soup...

Does you Turkey Chili gobble? No.

What about clam chowder? What does a live clam do that a dead clam can't...at least in chowder as opposed to the ocean?

As for Mr. Rex, I wonder what it tastes like. The obvious answer is chicken, a giant carvivorous chicken capable of swallowing a grown man whole and do equally nasty things to the ladies, so T-Rex soup would have noodles, although I used to live in Pennsylvania and the PA Dutch do marvels with T-Rex/Chicken and corn in a soup setting.

H

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Thanks for posting the article, AURaptor!

Fascinating! Awesome! Spectacular! I could go on and on.

And thanks JasonZZZ for the pictures. And Finn for the scientific details. And Indigo for some first person color commentary (Is it too much to hope for a paragraph after vacation with some inside details?).

I don't have anything substantive to add. Just thought this was way cool. I don't know what it is about dinosaurs, but I've always been fascinated about the topic.

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For three years scientists from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, excavated the T. rex from sandstone at the base of the nearby Hell Creek formation.

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Just to clarify because this confused me when I first read it since I thought it implied the fossil was found near the Museum. Hell Creek is nowhere near Bozeman. All of the fossils are in north-central and eastern Montana. This one was found north of Jordan up near the Fort Peck Lake.

PS. Indigo, how cool is it that you've actually worked with Jack Horner. I'm totally jealous.

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Originally posted by Barry:

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I wasn't hinting at dinosaurs mingling with people (though ancient stories of dragons are common in almost every culture), I was just speculating that if 65 million year old tissue is so unheard of, perhaps it isn't exactly that old. I know, I know, scientific heresy. Maybe most dinosaurs did die when scientists say they did, but perhaps some escaped the mass extinction and died out at a later date?

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It's not necessarily heresey, but they probably have a good idea on the fossil's age based on the age of the rock formation where it was found. BTW "The Dinosaur Heresies" by Richard Bakker is a good read.

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