Slashdot Mirror
Soft Tissue Discovered In T-Rex Bone
kubla2000 writes, "Paleontologists have discovered soft tissue inside the fossilized thigh bone of a T-Rex. The tissue included blood vessels, bone cells, and perhaps even blood cells." From the article: "When paleontologists find fossilized dinosaur bones during a dig, they usually do everything in their power to protect them, using tools like toothbrushes to carefully unearth the bones without inflicting any damage. However, when scientists found a massive Tyrannosaurus rex thigh bone in a remote region of Montana a few months ago, they were forced to break the bone in two in order to fit it into the transport helicopter. This act of necessity revealed a startling surprise: soft tissue that had seemingly resisted fossilization still existed inside the bone. This tissue... was so well preserved that it was still stretchy and flexible."
I for one welcome our...
...anyway...
*sigh*
within 10 years there will be an accident at a small island.....
Does this mean I can have a t-rex as a pet in a few years? Please?
The. Movies. Must. End. Here.
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
Now all we need to do is fill in the missing pieces of the DNA with frog DNA to make them sterile and we can have an amusement park! It worked well in the movies. Wait, how did that end? I suggest we send Bush, Britany Spears, K-Fed and Nancy Grace to open the park ;)
today is spelling optional day.
Perhaps get Dolly the sheep to sign up as a surrogate mother?
www.effectiveelectrons.com "chips that work" Analog, RF, Mixed Signal
Of course, this is nonsense. Even if evolution was wrong, their theory does not then win by default.
god put that bone there to test our faith!
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
Dude, this is a YEAR OLD! And slashdot ran this exact same story last year. Look at the dates on the pictures!
Credit: From Schweitzer et al., Science 307:1952-1955 (2005). Reprinted with permission from AAAS.
Geez!
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
This news over a year and a half old!! Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this found to be sensationalist the first time around?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I wonder if it tastes like chicken. This could finally prove that everything ultimately does actually taste like chicken.
I'm a little confused here. They say they have soft tissue, but dna can't survise the 70 mil years. How can they have soft tissue withOUT dna?
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
chicken.
I don't believe this has much impact on creationism, but young-earth creationists have been pointing to claims of finding blood cells in Dinasaur bones for a while. I remember reading it in 2003 on a site that was pretty old at that point. It is interesting that the finding that was difficult to track down and corroborate then, is now validated in some way with this finding.
When I tracked this on some debate forums, I saw some general debate about how petrification might happen quicker or slower than we currently know. I'm not sure if this will or won't settle the matter, I assume it would only if petrification was the means we have been relying on to date materials.
But if there is one moral of science to take from this, it is that the real world has many suprises in store for what we assume to be pat scientific knowledge.
This is more like the recent bestseller "Tyrannosaur Canyon" by Douglas J Preston than it is like Jurassic Park. That book involves the discovery of a complete T Rex fossil with soft tissue.
Where were you when the voynix came?
Ross came and told us. Then he took Joey and they went to the movies. Monica had gone shopping and she met Racel at the pub. Chandller is out of town at the moment and phebe just left. I'm going to the pub soon.
"I don't believe this has much impact on creationism"
It doesn't. The OP is just trying to start another flame war.
Yeah, I'm sorry. I was referring to what you call "young-earth" creationists. I should probably be more specific.
I wonder if they found any Venus particles... :)
http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/304
This begs the most abvious question. What does T-Rex tast like?
You make soup out of bones? Get it? T-Rex soup? Sigh, evermind...
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
This is a dupe.
Also, who the heck breaks an irreplacable multimillenially old object in two to fit it into a helicopter? It's almost as if they wanted to look inside for soft tissue...
If the tissue in a T-Rex's bone is all soft no wonder they became extinct!
Ba Dum Bum!!
now THIS would be a good reason to look into cloning
portfolio
If the soft tissue really is dino tissue, instead of a post-mortem parasite or something, then I would hope the act of breaking the bone did not disturb it (and why in the world is "not fitting in helo" a good reason to break such a priceless artifact anyway???). That tissue is a great source of biological residue, the goldmine being DNA. But it's very easy to contaminate ancient DNA, so I hope they were *really* *really* careful when they broke that bone (*cringes*) and loaded it for transport.
Give it a rest.
Every time a biology related story is posted the discussion degenerates to Creationism vs. Evolution.
How about actually commenting on the story? Comments like yours only add noise to the discussion.
Quoth Slashdot article,
Have you ever seen a child brush their teeth? If it weren't for fragile bristles, there would be nothing left of the poor soul's mouth. That given, now all those matured (non-aborted) fetuses can get their revenge on this excavation site. It is my determination that the wonderful creationists are brushing history away as we speak. As an environmentalist, I am against this excavation! Someone needs to make these excavators stop pulling ancient ruins and decaying material from the natural environment. Soon, we will have none left for *sing* Future Generations(R) */sing* to excavate.
These said, it's the duty of all environmentalists around the world to plant skeletal remains of modern dead and decaying creations, to deter these creationists from finding the Holiest of relics. For the execution of these matters, I the Father of all that is naked and green due appoint Green Peace and their agents for any of the duties as needed to Cleric or Barrister the matter from causing further tresspass.
The Oath of Office shall acceptable and the office there derive be filled on the first Saturday at noon, and begin processing durring banking hours Monday through Friday nine o'clock in the morning until five o'clock after noon.
I am the nightmare of nightmares.
Every time a biology related story is posted the discussion degenerates to Creationism vs. Evolution.
Which makes me wonder why. I mean, we don't start discussing whether Santa Claus exists every time a Christmas related story pops up, why do we talk about creationism?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
It must've been masturbating....
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
this was posted in March of 2005 on the BBC news page
. stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4379577
Further lab analysis shows that this TRex died by rolling in breadcrumbs and jumping into a pool of boiling oil. Either that or a some one on the excatvation site dropped a chicken McNugget.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Well, I can't tell you why we talk about creationism, but I can tell you that comments like yours helps ensure that any discussion that does arise turns into a flamewar. Which of course is why you and people like you make such comments. Because honestly, they are gratuitous and only morons would be unable to see where such comments can and usually will lead, and I don't think you're a moron. Are you?
I mean, we don't start discussing whether Santa Claus exists every time a Christmas related story pops up, why do we talk about creationism?
Because there's no large group of people out there that actually believe Santa Claus exists, and are trying to force our children to be taught that "Clausology" is a scientific theory?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
you directly threatened the life of the president.
.. . yes.
with fictional reincarnated dinosaurs.
but still. a threat is a threat.
was DNA preserved?
RTFA. They haven't found any DNA and said that scientists don't believe that DNA can last 7 million years so they don't expect to find any.
Heck, so are the evolutionists.
This is T-Rex, I know T-Rex!
This is just more proof that God put those fossils in our 6000 years Young Earth to confuse us. There's no way to preserve anything for millions of years. I mean, it's obvious. This is why Intelligent Design needs to be taught in schools. The truth is staring science in the face, and they refuse to see it!
/., I'm kidding.
Relax,
NORAD does. Check it out.
Dude, I think I can see my house from here.
Does this mean we may expect a reunion album ?
Time to start cloning those babies and burying them.
How many bones sitting around in museums are preserved enough to contain soft tissue? Presumably this isn't incredible of a discovery. Do bones get routinely x-rayed when they're being cleaned up?
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
Oh yeah? Then who are all of those people I line up with every year to see him at the mall? HMM??? You've tried to put us down for years with all of your "facts" and "science," but we all know the truth.
Keep talking like that, mister, and you're going to find a lump of coal in your stocking this year...
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
I think we just laid the foundation for a new joke religion...
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
I don't see any problem with this. The inside area of bones are specifically designed to be impervious to outside biodegrading influences (other than the body's own). By chance, if the bone were sealed well enough in its environment, I could see the remnants of living tissue being well preserved for millions of years. It just takes chance. The fact that this does not happen every time, or very often, when dinosaur skeletons are unearthed points to the fact these large reptilian animals lived on surface of the Earth long, long ago rather than more recently.
Does anyone know why we are here?
How is that a good reason?
http://outcampaign.org/
Its only a matter of time before the MPAA and the RIAA train these badboys to sniff out pirated CDs and DVDs and kill those who oppose them.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
That is a serious answer.
Fossils straight out of the field are really heavy and a T-Rex thigh bone is really big.
You can't just strap that kinda weight to (one of) a helicopter's skids, assuming the helicopter had skids. Worse, most helicopters don't have weight bearing mounts for attaching nets to do a lift operation.
Or maybe that's just standard procedure for paleontologists with really big fossils.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
If scientists specializing in clausology are able to determine the exact mechanism by which the Claus Man is able to deliver all those gifts in a single night, we will have a solution to the world's energy problems.
That is the promise that study of Clausology holds out to all of mankind and people here are scoffing at it? I think they're astroturfers here on behalf of the oil industry...
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
Because there's no large group of people out there that actually believe Santa Claus exists
You don't consider children to be a large group of people?
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
They couldn't have gotten a larger helicopter or sling load it below the chopper? Geez they aren't very bright are they these sciencetist?
How does one break a T-Rex bone in the first place?
Of course it's a year old. I've been brushing up on my Unix skills, just in case. What about you?
What does T-Rex tast[e] like?
Duh.
Chicken.
Boy Slashdot sure is on a role lately. I've been seeing a lot of dupes and now here's one that's over a year old. What the hell are they smoking?
...Slashdot readers cracked open a fosillized story from a year ago and found that there was still a discussion going on.
Alas no. back in the dark and mystic days of the series of tubes, when usenet was still useFUL, there was a group called http://alt-news.net/alt.religion.santaism/">alt.re ligion.santaism
Same impact as every other dinosaur bone.
"general debate about how petrification might happen quicker or slower than we currently know"
That debate ended when we figured out carbon dating. The bones are old as their radioactivity says they are.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
children are not people in the legal sense of the word, they're property with some rights
You get a velociraptor to bite it.
Which makes me wonder why. I mean, we don't start discussing whether Santa Claus exists every time a Christmas related story pops up, why do we talk about creationism?
Because if you cast doubt on the existence of Santa, he won't bring you an iPod.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
If you read of Fortian, as in Charles Fort stuff, you will recall the case of some coal miners in the 19th century who cracked open a seam and out hops a millions years old frog. That seems like pretty soft, survivng soft tissue there.. Fort refered to sch cases as "Damned Things' as in anomolies that went against all known and accepted knowledge. Ask honest paleontologists about the various fossils and artifacts that are in the basement and back warehouses of most major collections; weirder then Piltdown and one might think hidden to avoid similar results...and red faces...
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
You slide so good with bones so fair
You've got the universe reclining in your hair
'Cos you're my baby, yes you're my love
Oh girl I'm just a jeepster for your love
Well, son, when a man and a sledgehammer love each other very much...
RTFA. They haven't found any DNA and said that scientists don't believe that DNA can last 7 million years so they don't expect to find any.
How about this, RTFParagraph.
Does this discovery of soft dinosaur tissue mean that scientists will soon be able to clone a Tyrannosaurus rex? Probably not most scientists believe that DNA cannot survive for 70 million years. Then again, before this discovery, most scientists believed that soft tissue could not survive for 70 million years either.
This discovery has shown that "most scientists" can be wrong. So it's quite possible that they're wrong about how long DNA can last.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
7 out of 10 doctors are quacks What does that mean ?
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
I read an article about soft tissue's being found in a T-Rex bone a year or so ago, is this the same article or did they find another bone with soft tissue??
Time to see if a few vegisauruss can be tasty. While I am not too wild about bringing back small dinosaurs, large ones may make sense. Far easier to find large ones as opposed to small ones.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If every other dinosaur bone had soft tissue, this wouldn't be news.
That debate ended when we figured out carbon dating. The bones are old as their radioactivity says they are.
If this were a matter of carbon dating, then the fossils really are truely very young.
Nearly 6 years ago this was discovered. Wow is this ever late. Btw, didn't anyone think of the T. Rex? Think of the children, the T. Rex was pregnant!
But what about the discoverer of this? How is she doing with this controversy?
From Schweitzer's Dangerous Discovery article in Discover Magazine published in April of 2006 you get some new information.
What is intresting is that the discoverer of this, Mary Higby Schweitzer, is an evangelical Christian in addition to being a paleontologist. That has got to do a number on you mentally.
I find it amusing that this was all discovered because someone thought the place smelled of cadavers and not stone. Add to that the name of the place, Hell Creek.
The program isn't debugged until the last user is dead.
Why is that a concern?
If the religion of evolution were so scientific then there would no concern of how this would be interpreted by any group contray to the dogmas of evolution, be they creationist or otherwise.
Uh, it looks to me like a piece of Chicken Tika that you can buy from Tescos or something...
Maybe thats why it looks so much like bird vessels - because its a chicken!
The way they described the soft tissue, it sounds like beef jerky.
Mmmm, T-Rex Jerky. I wonder if I can get it Hickory Smoked.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Oh, do please tell us all about it. We've all been curious for sooooooo long. We would really appreciate it if someone like you who has been there and back to tell us all about what to expect. Gee, thanks.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
The article doesn't say HOW IT SMELLED!
:)
This is the key point - surely? If it were rotten, then it would smell bloody awful (pun intended), and there'd by no chance of any DNA surviving. But what if it DID NOT smell awful? Surely that's an immediate indication of preservation?
And if it did NOT smell, you'd only have a TINY window of opportunity to perform tests on it - before oxygen started to do its oxidising thing.
Personally, I'd start placing bets with reputable gambling houses in the U.K. that a dinosaur will re re-constituted from ancestral DNA before 2050.
I'm reminded of the line by Dr. Malcolm;
"Oh, yeah. Oooh, ahhh, that's how it always starts. Then later there's running and screaming." See Signature.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
That debate ended when we figured out carbon dating. The bones are old as their radioactivity says they are.
T he_need_for_calibration)
assuming the bones started with a certain amount of c14, and assuming nothing interfered with the rate of change during the interval (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating#
Carbon dating is not reliable at all. It was a mistake for it to be used and trusted so much. Now all these assumptions of age are base on flawed data. http://www.drdino.com/articles.php?spec=79
I mean, we don't start discussing whether Santa Claus exists every time a Christmas related story pops up
Oh come on, nobody seriously questions the existence of Santa Claus. All of us gentile children receive very real, tangible evidence of his existence. This sets Santa Claus head and shoulders above characters like God, Jesus, the Invisible Pink Unicorn and the FSM (pasta be upon him!). We could debate whether or not there really is a Santa Clause, but it's really a moot question. The debate would serve no purpose in the face of overwhelming evidence of Santa's continued existence.
The more interesting argument, I think, is why Santa continues to hold to medieval beliefs about the inherent superiority of the children of the aristocracy. He continues to this day to give the children of wealthy parents higher value gifts and a higher overall average number of presents. Clearly he missed the bourgeois revolution.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
Glad somone remembers alt.religion.santaism.dyslexic. We'll put doG in iHs place some day. aiHl Santa!
Yeah, I am about 150 pages into that book and it's sitting on the coffee table right in front of me, waiting for me to take it into the throne room ....
Doesn't matter if it's soft inside..it's still scary as shit.
Oh? And for what reason would the Creationsists have a field day? If anyone would have a field day it's evolutionists because if any DNA can be extracted and it is shown that even 1% of it is similar to human DNA then the scientists will jump to the conclusion that the T-Rex must be my distant grandfather.
This weekend I had the opportunity to attend a brief lecture by the world renowned paleontologist Jack Horner. It was his team that made the discovery of this T-Rex which was actually discovered by a guy named Bob and thus he named it B-Rex! They did have a problem lifting the thigh bone from the sight so they did have to cut it and they did discover soft tissue; they also discovered that the dinosaur bones actually were more similar to the structure found in avains (birds, chickens, etc) after decalsifying the soft tissue they found blood vessels and inside the blood vessels they did find red blood cells.
From their discovery they were able to determine the sex of the dinosaur whose remains they had found (something to do with the build up of the bone and the soft tissue) - it was female. They also found that the bone structure had concentric circles much like a tree and thus they were able to tell the age of the dinosaur at the time of it's death (which was 18yrs old).
In the end he concluded that we would not be able to re-construct a dinosaur solely from the DNA found in the red blood cells since only a few of the DNA strands were intact enough to do a proper analysis and since chicken DNA has about a million different DNA strands that we'd be a long way from making a real dinosaur... not to mention that we do not currently have the know how on how to convert DNA into a living organism!
Unfortunately for the world, he hate them for breakfast.
But hey... he sprinkles diamonds on everything he eats cause it makes his doo doo twinkle!
It's kind of funny you blame the Christians for forcing children to believe something that you think doesn't exist because the way I see it is that the non-Christians feel they have a right to take away religion from the Christians whether it affects the non-Christians or not. The non-Christians are the ones doing the forcing. No Christian forces a child to believe a certain something (if the child doesn't want to pray in school they aren't put in detention for it; as an aside the gov't, contrary to what you might think, has never made a law favoring the establishment of a religion) however the non-Christians are removing any sign of religion from every aspect of life and therefore forcing Christians to not be allowed to believe in anything in public. Now, which group of people do you think are actually making the situation worse?
thats kinda amazing that tissue soft can survive for that long
GI
It's a myth that any petrification has to happen at all in order to form a fossil. Bone and shells are obvious examples, because they are *already* mineral when they are made in the living organism (consisting of calcium phosphate and calcium carbonate, respectively). Nothing has to change in order for them to preserve for the long term, other than ending up in an environment where the groundwater chemistry isn't going to dissolve those minerals after burial.
Most of the "young Earth" creationist claims about supposedly "young" fossils are founded on the misconception that petrification can't happen fast, that conventional geologists think mineralization always happens slowly, or that it must occur at all in order for something to become a fossil, none of which are true.
As you imply, none of this matters to age unless petrification is the only method used to determine the age of fossils. Given that petrification isn't used by geologists at all for age dating, and it would be unreliable if it was used (because the rates of the process or even its occurrence at all is so variable), the whole issue is irrelevant when it comes to the age of fossils.
But that's par for the course. "Young Earth" creationists waste an awful lot of time attacking popular misconceptions and other straw man arguments. Fortunately for them, unfortunately for the rest of us, the accuracy of the science doesn't really matter, as long as it sounds good.
They and other theocrats might get the upper hand someday though, now that they've just this week fooled the U.S. congress into passing a law that will discourage constitutional legal challenges based on the establishment of religion clause. If I understand the bill, the next time anti-science creationists try to pass off some of their religious claims as science in the classroom, it looks like it will take someone with deep pockets to legally challenge them, unlike challenges for any other constitutional issue.
I guess compromising the ability to protect the constitution is okay as long as it is for a good cause.
I'm glad he did not do anything so stupid as to say "impossible".
The topic of "cloning from ancestral DNA" may be very difficult, and not possible with today's technology, or today's samples, but I think it is safe to say that people who label things "impossible" with no view to the future, are fools, and are proven wrong in time.
How many escape pods are there? "NONE,SIR!" You counted them? "TWICE, SIR!"
"If the theory of gravity were so scientific, there would be no concern of how this would be interpreted by people which believed they could flap their arms and fly."
It doesn't matter how well proven a fact of science is, there will always be those who deny it due to their willful ignorance or fanaticism. If the only people they harm in the process are themselves, no great loss. If, however, they have access to children or other innocents -- picture a doctor who doesn't believe in the germ theory of disease -- they become dangerous.
Creationists teach lies to children, lies which make them, as adults, less capable of understanding the universe as it is. The universe is dangerous enough when we do understand it -- it is infinitely more so when we don't.
The Christians. Don't ask me why, I just have faith that it's them.
T-Rex BBQ Grill
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
The Christians, they force their kids to believe in Christianity.
Let santa know this heathen does not believe... his blog has links to report unbelievers and bad children.
WE must fight to resist the scourage of anti-santaism in this country. It's a war and if we do not fight back we will all become slaves in the end.
Santa LIVES!
This news is old. See here for more details.
As someone who has worked with vertebrate fossils in the field before, it is generally far better to take a specimen and slice it in two for easier transport than it is to attempt to transport one ungainly specimen at far greater expense. In addition to getting a nice cross-section of the bone for study, you also avoid the very real possibility of pulverizing the bone in an accident. Remember this: cut fossils can always be glued back together, but grinded or crushed fossils are pretty much screwed.
...just don't let it drive a mini!
... but is from a March, 2005 article in Science magazine. Interesting, but still kind of old news here...
LOL!
How old is it then? 6000 years or so?
Stop drinking the koolaid!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Are we talking like triple-ply soft tissue?
"Just because you're eloquent doesn't mean you aren't a fucking crackpot." -Wavebreak
Don't feed teh trolllllss!!2211
Olds for nerds, stuff that matters. I for one remember reading this about a year ago. WTF.
Really! Then explain to me why a can of corn can last for *years* and still be fine. I mean, everyone knows it should rot just like in a garbage can, right?
Idiot...
Are you kidding? That article says that Carbon dating is inaccurate because it doesn't take into account the massive cloud of water vapor used by some theologians to explain the Great Flood as depicted in the Bible. The author goes on to say that no carbon-14 would remain after 10 half lives, which indicates that he has no idea what a half-life is.
Scientists never said C-14 dating was 100% accurate. Carbon-14 is formed in the atmosphere when cosmic radiation reacts with Nitrogen. The accuracy if carbon dating depends on how constant the amount of nitrogen in the air is, and how much cosmic radiation hits the atmosphere. Neither of those things are likely to have changed very much in the last 60,000 years.
Well... it seemed a reasonable thing to ask. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
"they were forced to break the bone in two in order to fit it into the transport helicopter"
If they worked for me they would be long gone.
who would break a bone to fit into a helicopter?
There are different size helicopters.
Surely this bone is simply from an overfed chicken!
:P
Dinosaurs Do Not Exist. They would not have fit on Noah's Ark.
USA schools should no longer teach the infidels' blasphemy of 'Evil-ouu-sin'.
Creationism is proven by sooo many scientific discoveries.
These so called scientists should stop playing in dirt, and get back
to reading the One True Word!
Claiming both atheists and Christians indoctrinate their kids to the same degree is as ludicrous as claiming the same thing about, say, mainstream Christians and the Muslim parents who send their kids to madras schools. One doesn't have to have any particular religious persuasion to see that teaching kids a relatively complex narrative (the old and new testaments) requires more time and effort on the parts of parents than not teaching them the narrative.
a must have in any discussion.
i'll start:
http://blogs.cjb.net/votemania
Ok, work with me here...
Instead of filling in the holes with frog DNA, what would happen if we used the late Liberace's DNA? I can imagine immediate benefits to both zoological research and Vegas. Would we get, for instance:
(Thought experiment segues into dream sequence. Location: Mr. Newton's agent's office. We only hear the agent's end of the phone conversation in progress.)
"...but Wayne, baby...you know this is killing me as much as it's killing you! All I'm saying is that ya just can't get a paying gig in this town anymore unless you weight 6,000 pounds, are greenish-brown and can belt out show tunes on a Steinway. This Liberzilla fellow has just got the entire place by the short hairs! Listen--Wayne, sweetheart...I got an idea! I know this plastic surgeon, see, who also dabbles around with Human Growth Hormone...what's that? You know it, Kiddo, the stuff's illegal...but this is your career we're talking about! So hear me out here..."
(Dream sequence fast forwards 10 years ahead)
Slashdot headline:
Apple Calls It Quits on the iPod and iTunes
brontobassist writes,
(End Dream Sequence. End thought experiment.)
* * * * *
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their money.
—Ed Bluestone
Yes, in Jurassic Park they used frog DNA. I never did figure out why.
Dinosaurs (Greek for "monstrous lizards") were reptiles. Frogs are amphibians. Isn't a modern reptile, like an alligator, more closely related to dinosaurs, and thus its DNA is better suited for filling the gaps, than a frog's DNA?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I'm glad to see Slashdot's on the cutting edge of science with this ~18-month-old dupe.
That about sums it up for me, too.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
... even allowing very limited numbers of faithful Clausian children and very limited stop-times, the trip has to be made far faster than the speed of light to cover the many houses involved.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
10 bucks says it has feathers when it's cloned.
Anything can, could, and will happen.
...and actually quite a messy one, when you get down to the details.
For example, the presents under the tree and the balls dangling from it are echoes of sacrifices to pagan tree-gods, bodies & heads of enemies draped around their trees to propitiate them.
In fact, given the number of messy parts available, I'm actually amazed that we don't get into it in discussion.
The tree itself is associated with the pagan god Nimrod; traditionally it sprang from the dead stump of his father, Tammuz. In Rome, it was decorated with berries during the time of Saturnalia... & so on. Likewise for wreaths & we have pagan Yuletide etc for the Yule log. Oh, yes, the drunken festivities which attended the kissing of the mistletoe... & a few other things.
The history of some of these ceremonies is so messy that I can't see how SlashDotters avoid being tempted into discussing them.
Creation, on the other hand, is a grand, sweeping & even messier tale. Oceans & later whole classes of plants & animals founded in a day apiece & the whole world died (except for one Ark-full) at one step, to make a kind of re-creation for Noah with his crew. Very little paganism in comparison, but broader & more glamorous themes overall.
Plus the descriptions are kind of summary, leaving lots of room for speculation.
And you get to upset far more people discussing it than merely following the assorted paganisms.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
If you could get a copy of that lecture and put it on line it would be _great_.
Please to _not_ jump to the conclusion that DNA analysis will be futile. IMHO, quite the opposite.
In all liklihood, if we have ANY DNA available it will be a miracle. However if there is some, then the "some" will vary from cell to cell.
Thus if we map a large enough number of cells we can eventually build up the genome.
In seismic its called "stacking". You take a noisy blurry picture that you sample many times over and you "stack" it. The noise cancels. You are left with the picture.
Similarly, if you find any DNA at all, then if this is a fragment of what was in the cell to start with, and you have part of the picture.
These fragments will overlap and from these overlaps you will eventually be able to make perhaps even a complete picture. An example of this process is "diff" which most here will recognise as a programmers tool.
DNA is programming. Its molecular programming, but it is still programming.
What makes me quiver is the idea that we might be able to build up the DNA patterns by painstakingly replicating the DNA in each isolated cell and then stitching these DNA fragments together by matching the common parts of fragments found in different cells. It would be worse than putting together a jigsaw puzzle with the picture face down on the table... but it should be doable.
I suspect we will be able to tell that Dinos and Birds are, if not close cousins, then perhaps close 2nd cousins. In fact the birds by even be decendants. If decendants, then one would expect large amounts of dino DNA may still be found in bird DNA... and that it is just inactive or that its function is modified. The cell is a rather promiscous DNA xerox machine.
To go way out on a limb... if we can sequence the DNA and stitch it together, then we may be able to find living cells with a biochemistry close enough to Dino DNA that we can in fact make a working cell. Clearly we would be inserting artificial DNA into a cell. But it doesn't matter where the DNA comes from and how it came about - what matters is the proper sequence of DNA bases.
This is clearly along the idea that if you put enough monkeys in front of typewriters that they would create Shakespear's sonnets.
Well - the DNA stitching won't be random. The question is how much of the original picture is still preserved.
Every cell is a copy of every other cell in a given individual. As cells specialize they turn off some of the DNA. The DNA is still there.
Maybe some day we will actually be able to create a working Dino cell. Creataceous park... HERE WE GO!
Its an old story. I read the previous slashdot story last year. Probably our editors were bored on a Sunday morning and wanted to see if we would remember. Criticisms aside... your update is interesting.
So.. what progress has been made in the DNA studies?
Good point. Still, there are other sorts of radioactive dating which can be used on the rock in which dino bones are embedded.
Still soft tissue, while surprising, still doesn't affect the debate in a significant manner; given the size of a T-Rex bone, it's not hard to believe that moisture would be sealed in proper by outer layers of fossilized bone.
110100 1101000 1101000 1100110 0 1101111 1101000 1100011 1
...forcing their children to believe in nothing.
Naturally.
It's hard work. You have no idea how thin "Things just happen" gets as an explanation.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
> This is clearly along the idea that if you put enough monkeys in front of typewriters that they would create Shakespear's sonnets.
:)
Um, I think the Internet has clearly debunked that hypothesis about the monkeys and Shakespeare...
Where did you get the idea that school is all and only about scientific theories?
unfinished: (adj.)
The Schwietzer saga has drug on for years now. Her most recent discovery promotes a lot of creationist nonsense that I refuted in Dino Blood Redux.
One doesn't have to have any particular religious persuasion to see that teaching kids a relatively complex narrative (the old and new testaments) requires more time and effort on the parts of parents than not teaching them the narrative.
What you describe sounds less like atheism and more like apathy or ignorance. Atheism is a belief system, not a 'non-belief' system. In order to have any basis, at least some type of study of competing belief systems needs to have been conducted. Otherwise you've got yourself a faith based system that is neither capable of being critically analyzed nor intelligently defended.
Although, I would argue that atheism requires a far greater leap of faith than deism...
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
.. like chicken ?
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
A can of corn has had the bacteria removed. And it will only last about 30 years.
The government can't save you.
I'm a bit skeptical about this report. It just doesn't add up to me. This is the report: "This tissue, including blood vessels, bone cells, and perhaps even blood cells, was so well preserved that it was still stretchy and flexible." I don't really think tissue of that type could survive 70,000,000 years. Also, since when are bone cells soft tissue? Would there be blood vessels inside a bone?
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
Even if this report is good science, how is it news? It was reported in March, 2005, a year and a half ago. See, e.g., Reuters and National Geographic reports from March, 2005.
Ray Beckerman +5 Insightful
At the risk of being modded to death... it's funny that the fossilization was just on the outside. How's THIS for a "crackpot theory"? Say the bone isn't as old as we are all presuming. Say, instead of being 65 million years old, it's only 30 million, or any appreciable amount of time AFTER what is accepted as the "dinosaur killer" asteroid that hit about 65 million years ago? That would automatically mean that at least SOME of them survived for MILLIONS of years after the impact. This would also lend some more creedence to the stray stories coming out of South America of creatures that match descriptions of long dead dinosaurs. How's this for something else to think on... the Coleanth? Supposedly extinct for over 300 million years (granted, being a fish, it would have a higher chance of survival after the impact than a land creature) and they catch one on a fishing boat in 1935. Just some things to think about...
Stone
The article will lead us to believe that a bone was cracked, and fresh dino blood spilled out. Nothing could be further from the truth.
m l and http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur/blood.htm l
Please read this http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur/flesh.ht
HAH HAH
WHAT
IMPEACH XENU
I like this article on this matter: Ancient Dinosaur Depictions (Basic claim of this article is that there is a lot of evidence that dinosaurs and man co-existed.)
ps. I havn't read other articles on that site, only this one, so I don't know of their quality.
...the dinosaur barbecues you.
that's how we do it in germany: http://www.ochsenbraterei.de/de/galerie/id/002/ :)
well, bavaria, actually. yes, that's a whole bull on there. takes about 5 hours to finish
Lol...
Stop the religious delirium and come and chat with us over at www.infidels.org, but you have to bring more than preaching...
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
Wasn't this the same group of scientists that discovered a B52 bomber on the dark side of the moon?
42.
Don't you read?
And a dinosaur's bone probably doesn't have any bacteria in it either (given the function of antibodies is to, you know... destroy bacteria). As for your "30 year" claim, this site indicates that canned meats have an indefinite shelf life.
Laughable: I laugh now and I will laugh at you on that day.
Quite a sickly red herring you have there, by the way.TASTES LIKE CHICKEN!
Well, older cans that didn't have plastic liners didn't last as long. But a dino bone isn't sealed like a can.
The government can't save you.
But even then it would depend on how the concept of a "genetic clone" is seen by Talmudic lore.
... when you, after identifying a story as a dupe on /., you go through all the OLD posts again to compare them to the new ones ;-)
Really? I have found the complete works of Shakespear on the internet. So therefore it has been proven and not disproven.
Since we're on the OT thread of taste...
So two cannibals are eating a clown when one says to the other, "Does this taste funny to you?"
Care to back that up? Both Merriam-Webster and Wikipedia state that Atheism CAN be a strong belief that no god exists, but it certainly doesn't have to be, it can simply be non-belief in any deity. Your personnal definition isn't the only correct one so you shouldn't pass it off as such. And those that subscribe to the non-belief aspect certainly don't feel that it amounts to apathy or ignorance...
Why would it be apathy to not force any preconceived beliefs down your child's throat? You can still giude them in choosing their own path. Anyway, everybody thinks that belief in something other than their own personnal belief is ignorance. It's humain nature.
Delay is preferable to error. (Thomas Jefferson)
We've got the computing power and biotechnology, I wanna go to Jurassic Park!!!
Seriously, I had enough of "Get it on" and "Jeepster"! We don't need more of that!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Rex_(band)
The term you might be seeking is agnostic. Yes! Agnostic apathy or Apathetic Agnosticism. They harbor no belief one way or the other and do not particulary care which is the "TRUTH". They spend less time wondering if their socks color co-ordinate with their shirt, it's THAT unimportant, no leaps required.
... "juicy!"
-- Jim Crigler In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return. -- Whittaker Chambers
I am working on a screenplay of this very same topic. It is called "Billy and the Cloneasaurus."
I seem to remember this information coming to light about a year or more ago. In fact, here is a MSNBC article on it from March '05.
Did I miss something?
Bueller... Bueller?
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
I am not religious, so please don't take this the wrong way. But why must we assume that our theories of soft-tissue preservation are incorrect, rather than our theories of radio carbon-dating fossils?
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
Unless I'm mistaken, this story was already featured on /. well over a year ago.
But thanks for the reminder. I sure hope at least one copy of the thing's DNA survived. I wanna ride a T-Rex!! (inside joke--ask my D&D buds, or don't)
No. Diff is used for comparing different versions of at text-file. If you want to reconstruct a file from overlapping individual pieces, you need a different tool.
Well, it might be, and it might not be. Before the digital computers, people speculated that the function of the brain might be emulated by a giant switchboard (or gears and pulleys) (linky). While a switchboard is somewhat like a digital computer, it is not the same thing. And while a computer is somewhat like a brain, they may not be the same. Similarly, DNA has some aspects that look like programming (which we are used to), but it isn't therefore necessarily the same. It's just that it's a human tendency to look for similarities in operation, when we do not understand it.
This isn't exactly a very surprising prediction. According to modern evolutionary classification, birds are dinosaurs. Just like apes are mammals. I fail to see why you would expect "inactive dino-DNA" in birds. Why must it be inactive? After all, birds are dinosaurs. It would be like expecting to find "inactive mammal-DNA" in apes. We don't, apes are mammals!
Furthermore, in evolutionary theory, we don't speak about "cousins". Either one species is a descendant from some other species, or it is not. For convenience, we group animals that are descendants from the same species, together in groups; such as mammals, insects, etc... We do not call them siblings (you are a sibling of tuna-fish), since it conveys little meaning. In that case, it would be better to say explicitly which animal you both descend from, or lacking that information, to postulize that it exists, and come up with a name for the group (e.g. Chordata, although there are probably closer groups). In view of this, calling evolutionary groups "cousins" conveys no meaning at all.
No, it is not analogous. Stitching DNA together is analogous to solving a jigsaw puzzle (as you yourself suggested). Getting monkeys to write Shakespeare is analogous to throwing a dice and coming up with the right answer. The two ideas are clearly distinct.
No. Every cell is a copy of exactly one cell (with the exception of the fusion of an egg and sperm cell). That is why it is called cell division
Every parent that raises a child instills a "belief" system in the child. No exceptions.
"The inside area of bones are specifically designed to be impervious to outside biodegrading influences".
Designed by who?
Great Windows SFTP Server!
It is interesting to me that the thought that will occur to most non-creationist scientists will be "Wow, I guess soft tissue CAN last 70 million years" rather than "Maybe the fossil isn't as old as we thought..." There's dogmaticism on both sides.
My source was the American Heritage Dictionary (Google's definition default), which I looked up prior to my original post just to make sure I wasn't coming totally out of left field on this. Had I not had support for my statement, I wouldn't have made it.
atheism ('th-z'm)
n.
1. Disbelief in or denial of the existence of God or gods.
2. The doctrine that there is no God or gods.
You might want to cut back on the caffeine intake [or at least get yourself a "Jump To Conclusions" mat]. I made no statement that belief in something other than someone else's system is ignorance. That appears to be your conjecture. And I certainly never meant to imply it. I'm just saying that a well educated conclusion should be backed by evidence and research. So you almost have to know something about religions in order to state that they're wrong.
And, as a replier to my previous pointed out, not caring one way or another is much closer to being agnostic. I was somewhat hoping it was fairly obvious from my post that I was attempting to correct what I perceive as a misuse of the term 'atheism'. Apparently it wasn't.
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
In response to some requests: the lecture was "How to Make a Dinosaur"
n g/index.htm
:)
I happen to look it up and found this: http://www.unmuseum.org/dnadino.htm
Here is yet another interesting link: http://www.cem.msu.edu/~cem181h/projects/97/cloni
---
I wonder what dyno-burgers taste like
The lecture was conducted in a very informal fashion; there were no hand outs or slide shows to download but I did manage to find this for you: http://www.unmuseum.org/dnadino.htm
I read the above article at unmuseum and it represents the meat of the lecture...
Couldn't tell ya who, but they obviously must be really intelligent.
So where are the t-rex clones? Soft tissue == DNA available.
Hah Hah Hah. "Dr" Dino!. Now there is a reliable source of information! Carbon Dating and Dinosaurs don't belong in the same sentence.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
Darwinists routinely ignore evidence that modern humans have existed for longer than they choose to believe.
Modern day Darwinists, are less objective than they like to pretend.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano