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."

Comments

Makes you wonder

[Lord_Dweomer]

You know, it really makes you wonder what sort of discoveries we miss out on because we take so much care to preserve the past. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T do that...I'm just saying that this is a perfect example of the sorts of spectacular discoveries we make when we break things a little. I know we have scanners that are getting pretty powerful these days...do we have any that can detect this sort of soft tissue beneath the bone? If so I think they should be standard equipment on any paleontological dig.

d'oh! don't touch it!

[posterlogo]

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.

Re:Oh Boy...

[freeweed]

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?

Re:DNA

[Lord Kano]

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

Re:Oh Boy...

[koreth]

No atheist I know takes their kids to atheist Sunday school at the local atheist anti-church, or enrolls their kids in There-Is-No-Jesus Camp, or forces their kids to close their eyes and say "lack of grace" before a meal, or reads from illustrated children's books of tales from "The Blind Watchmaker" at bedtime, or sends their kids to atheist school where they have to spend time in non-catechism class.

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.