Scientist find Tyrannosaurus Rex soft tissue.

[SpeedRacer 1]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/science/25dino.html
Think I should clone one of these up?

Speed Racer
--------------------------------------------------

[JohnRich 4]

Registration required for access to the article. Care to post the gist of it for us?

[airtwardo 7]

Barbecue!

~ If you choke a Smurf, what color does it turn? ~

[SpeedRacer 1]

hmmm, I went right to it without having to register.

Anyway here it is:
Dinosaur Find Takes Scientists Beyond Bones
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

Published: March 25, 2005


live as dinosaurs may seem to children, knowledge of them as living creatures is limited almost entirely to what can be learned from bones that have long since turned to stony fossils. Their soft tissues, when rarely recovered, have lost their original revealing form.

But now a 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex discovered in Montana has apparently yielded the improbable, scientists reported yesterday: soft tissues, including blood vessels and possibly cells lining them, that "retain some of their original flexibility, elasticity and resilience."

Moreover, an examination with a scanning electron microscope showed the dinosaur's blood vessels to be "virtually indistinguishable" from those recovered from ostrich bones. The ostrich is today's largest bird, and many paleontologists think birds are living descendants of some dinosaurs.

In a paper being published today in the journal Science, the discovery team said the remarkable preservation of the tissue might open up "avenues for studying dinosaur physiology and perhaps some aspects of their biochemistry." Speaking at a teleconference, the team leader, Dr. Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State University, said, "Tissue preservation of this extent, where you still have this flexibility and transparency, has never been noted in a dinosaur before."

Dr. Schweitzer, as well as scientists not connected with the research, cautioned that further analysis of the specimens was required before they could be sure the tissues had indeed survived largely unaltered. They said the extraction of DNA for studies of dinosaur genetics and for cloning experiments was only a long shot, though at least reasonably possible.

In a separate article in Science, Dr. Lawrence M. Witmer, an Ohio University paleontologist who had no part in the research, said: "If we have tissues that are not fossilized, then we can potentially extract DNA. It's very exciting."

If the tissues are as well preserved as they seem, the scientists hold out some hope of recovering intact proteins, which are less fragile and more abundant than DNA. Proteins might provide clues to the evolutionary relationship of dinosaurs to other animals and possibly help solve the puzzle of dinosaur physiology: whether, as argued, dinosaurs were unlike other reptiles in being warmblooded.

"If we can isolate certain proteins, then perhaps we can address the issue of the physiology of dinosaurs," said Dr. Schweitzer, a biologist affiliated with Montana State University as well as North Carolina State.

Excavations of dinosaur remains sometimes turn up preserved tissues other than bone, including feathers, embryonic fragments and internal organs. But as Dr. Schweitzer's group noted, while in these cases their shapes may be preserved, their original composition has not survived "as still soft, pliable tissues."

It is usually difficult to determine what such modified tissues were like in life when fossils are more than a few million years old. The last of the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

The T. rex with the soft tissue was found in 2003 by a fossil-hunting team led by John R. Horner, a paleontologist with the Museum of the Rockies at Montana State . Mr. Horner is a co-author of the journal report, along with Jennifer L. Wittmeyer of North Carolina State and Dr. Jan K. Toporski of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The trials of fieldwork led to the discovery of soft tissue inside a thighbone.

Scientists cannot be sure why the tissues survived as they did, though the protection afforded by the bone was almost certainly one factor. Another may have been the possibility that the animal was buried in a virtually oxygen-free environment very soon after death.

Geologically, the T. rex skeleton was excavated from the Hell Creek Formation, in sandstone laid down about 70 million years ago. Geographically, this was deep in a remote corner of the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, in Montana. The only way to get the heavy fossils out was by helicopter.

Tyrannosaurs were famously huge predators. This one, estimated to have been 18 years old at death, was not as large as most. Its femur, or thighbone, was three and a half feet long; some T. rex femurs are at least a foot longer. But the creature was large enough so that some of the rock-encased long bones had to be broken in half to fit a helicopter rig - not something paleontologists like to do.

At a laboratory in Bozeman, scientists inspected the broken thighbone before anyone had a chance to apply preserving chemicals, which would have contaminated the specimen. Dr. Schweitzer and colleagues noticed unusual tissue fragments lining the marrow cavity inside the dense bone. Fossilization had not been complete.

When fossilizing mineral deposits in the tissues were dissolved by a weak acid, the scientists were left with stretchy material threaded with what looked like tiny blood vessels. Further examination revealed reddish-brown dots that the scientists said looked like the nuclei of cells lining the blood vessels.

Speed Racer
--------------------------------------------------

[AggieDave 6]

Ha, that's so 3 days ago.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[SpeedRacer 1]

actually its about 70 million years ago.

Speed Racer
--------------------------------------------------

[AggieDave 6]

Yup, that it is. And if some of the speculation holds true that I've seen floating around the 'net for the past few days (after the article originally hit)...it'll be so right now again possibly in the future.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[SkiD_PL8 0]

Jurrasic Park here we come!

Greenie in training.

[skydiver30960 0]

mmm... dino-burgers! Yummy!


Elvisio "it'd make a shitload of cowboy boots and briefcases" Rodriguez

[happythoughts 0]

This raises the "just be cause we can" debate.
As technology outpaces the ability of humans to deal with it, we may be able to reproduce a dinosaur. On a general basis, I don't think we should.

However, I know that buffalo and cattle were cross-bred to produce beefalo. Someone who watched the Flintstones as a child will be thinking of the possibilities.

If they could nourish one by feeding it noisy children and cats, then it would be a win-win situation.

[ryoder 1,590]

Quote

This raises the "just be cause we can" debate.
As technology outpaces the ability of humans to deal with it, we may be able to reproduce a dinosaur.

Reproduce them???
AAAGGGHHH!!!!
It's bad enough that we keep re-electing them!

"There are only three things of value: younger women, faster airplanes, and bigger crocodiles" - Arthur Jones.

[AggieDave 6]

Quote

Reproduce them???
AAAGGGHHH!!!!
It's bad enough that we keep re-electing them!

Bwahahahahahaha!

If this was SC I'd reference some sort of Ted Kennedy joke, but its not so I'll be good.

--"When I die, may I be surrounded by scattered chrome and burning gasoline."

[Shotgun 1]

I had a total blonde moment the other day when I saw a headline saying something about scientists finding soft tissue from T. Rex. I thought, "T. Rex died??? And why are they taking samples of his soft tissue?" (and then I realized they were talking about dinosaurs.)

But then it turned out to be even more of a blonde moment when I decided to look up more info on T. Rex, only to discover that was the name of the band, not of a single guy.

[pds 0]

Quote

Registration required for access to the article. Care to post the gist of it for us?

you can log in with id podcasting password podcasting. is an anonymous account set up for just this purpose...

namaste, motherfucker.

[KevinMcGuire 0]

Quote

I had a total blonde moment the other day when I saw a headline saying something about scientists finding soft tissue from T. Rex. I thought, "T. Rex died??? And why are they taking samples of his soft tissue?" (and then I realized they were talking about dinosaurs.)

But then it turned out to be even more of a blonde moment when I decided to look up more info on T. Rex, only to discover that was the name of the band, not of a single guy.

All I can say is wow.

[Shotgun 1]

Quote

All I can say is wow.

Yeah, that's one I probably should have just kept to myself....

But hey, I never really listened to T. Rex... And I was half asleep while reading the news.

I'm really not that dumb all the time, I swear.

[jakee 1,600]

Also, uh, you know Marc Bolan (T. Rex guy) died nearly 30 years ago, right?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[Nightingale 0]

on the last excavation I worked on, we found dinosaur skin from a duckbill. It was really cool looking...you could see the scale pattern.

[Shotgun 1]

Quote

Also, uh, you know Marc Bolan (T. Rex guy) died nearly 30 years ago, right?

I do now (after looking it up the other day). I know a few of their songs, but I had never paid any attention to them (obviously), so for some reason I thought it was a guy who called himself T. Rex. (Yes, feel free to laugh at me. )

Ok the discussion on the "Real World Jurassic Park" can continue now...

[Kris 0]

Good goddess.... Why did it have to be a T-rex?! Why couldn't it have been a cuddly brontosaurus, or a triceratops, or any other plant eater.

You know some whacko is gonna want to clone this thing.

Just remember, nobody go to the bathroom while it's out!

Sky, Muff Bro, Rodriguez Bro, and
Bastion of Purity and Innocence!™

[Ron 10]

Quote

You know some whacko is gonna want to clone this thing

I say clone it.

"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334

[mnealtx 0]

Too late!

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[Guest]

Can you say "Brontosaurus Steaks"? Yum!

mh

.

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."

[freethefly 6]

Actually you cannot say "Brontosaurus Steak" as rumour has it MacDonalds has bought all marketing rights and will be test marketing "MacBronto Burgers" sometime in the near future. They also are hard at work developing a line of real cool toys to use as a tool geared to attract the hungry masses.

"...And once you're gone, you can't come back
When you're out of the blue and into the black."
Neil Young

[Kris 0]

Quote

Quote

You know some whacko is gonna want to clone this thing

I say clone it.

The irony is astounding.

Sky, Muff Bro, Rodriguez Bro, and
Bastion of Purity and Innocence!™