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Dinosaur Fossil Found With Preserved Soft Tissue

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the begun-the-clone-wars-have dept.

damn_registrars writes "A fossilized hadrosaur has been uncovered in South Dakota that has preserved soft tissue. This is described as a "mummified" dinosaur, and allows for a look at the skin and musculature of some parts of this animal. The find was reported by a 24 year old Yale graduate student of paleontology."

2 of 248 comments (clear)

  1. No clone wars by oboreruhito · · Score: 5, Informative
    RTFA. There's no DNA; the fossilization process was fast enough to fossilize soft tissue. It's not organic material.

    Although it is described as "mummified," the 65 million-year-old duckbilled dinosaur that scientists have named Dakota bears no similarity to the leather-skinned human mummies retrieved from ancient tombs in Egypt. Time long ago transformed Dakota's soft tissue into mineralized rock, preserving it for the ages.

    "It's a dinosaur that was turned into stone, essentially," said Lyson, 24, now a graduate student in paleontology at Yale University.
  2. Re:Question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dinosaurs can be big. Really big. I mean, you may think ...

    Oh, wait, wrong analogy. Seriously though, the phrase that is most relevant to answering your question is in the article: "10-ton block", plus another 4 tons, which they whittled down to "only" 5 tons in total. This is not your usual fossil extraction task. It can take significant money and time to set up what is needed to excavate a find that big, you have to transport it, and you have to find a spot for it back in the lab after you do extract it. This is back-breaking, painstaking work, and getting together a big enough chain gang^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H I mean group of volunteers to do the job isn't always easy, especially when there may be a dozen other sites in the region where excavations are already under way, and to which the resources you have are already allocated. So, sometimes a site gets marked with its GPS coordinates and hidden until the resources are available. Also, sometimes you have to start the excavation before you really realize the importance of what you have found. That seems to be the case for this specimen, based on the comments in the article. They didn't originally realize how special it was.

    So, yeah, what you describe is common, especially in areas that are both remote and prolific, and especially for large dinosaur specimens. It can take years.