Ancient Fossilized Bone Marrow Found

anthemaniac writes "Last year scientists recovered soft tissue from a T. rex. Now LiveScience is reporting that researchers have found fossilized bone marrow, the first discovery this this type of soft tissue, in frog and salamander fossils dating back 10 million years. Since the bone marrow was discovered 'in an environment vastly different form the one in which the T. rex soft tissue was found,' scientists now hope they'll find soft tissue in other environments and maybe from ancient mammals."

Comments

Re:Missing links

[jd]

mtDNA is shorter and usually more stable than nucleic DNA, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility of finding some. They don't exactly need the whole molecule, just enough to be able to determine where in the mtDNA strand the segment belongs -and- get a good idea of the extent of the changes.

Even if they can just get proteins, provided it's a random sample and statistically significant, they may be able to deduce things about the nucleic DNA. They'd know the proportions of the proteins in dinosaurs, the proportions in likely candidates for nearest living relatives now, and the DNA coding for those proteins in those living relatives. From that, they could deduce, using reverse-engineering techniques, what changes would have been needed to go from the ratios of the past to the ratios of the present.

Re:How young can a fossil be?

[pookemon]

Young fossils? (120 years)

Living fossils

Re:How young can a fossil be? ... a few months :)

[HarmlessScenery]

http://www.mothershiptonscave.com/the_petrifying_w ell.htm

If you read the article, teddy bears are 'fossilised' in a few months :)