Scientists Examine Dinosaur Skin

jd writes "Fossilized skin from a dinosaur in China is allowing paleontologists a better understanding of what dinosaur skin was like. A tear, caused by a predator, shows that below the scales of the Psittacosaurus was a thick hide comprised of 25 layers of collagen. Other than the multitude of layers, this is very similar in nature to modern shark skin. The gash caused by a predator allowed the skin and the soft interior to be fossilized along with the bones. This is not the same dinosaur that had been reported previously on Slashdot, which was found in South Dakota, although the process and extent of fossilization is very similar."

Comments

Interesting

[Shadow-isoHunt]

It's interesting to me that over the millions of years of evolution life has gone through, we're still using the same basic outlines for anatomy.

Re:Interesting

[clsours]

Well, evolution isn't really all that good at creating new things, but is very good at retaining good designs.

Re:Interesting

[Tatisimo]

Reading the 'Origin of Species' gives great insight into those ideas. It's gives pretty interesting explanations (though a bit outdated) on why some species seem to revert to old forms (such as why whales look like fish), and why some useful features stay the same through the ages seemingly unchanged. Go on, get it and take it one idea at a time. It's available to everyone as a free audiobook or free text

Re:Interesting

[gnick]

Well put - This is certainly interesting, but it would have been more surprising to learn that they had some completely different and unique skin structure. Sharks and many reptiles have been around a helluva long time because they're very well adapted to their niches.
---
On a side note, I find it pleasantly surprising that Firefox's spell-check happily accepted 'helluva'.

Re:Interesting

[theMerovingian]

A tear, caused by a predator, shows that below the scales of the Psittacosaurus was a thick hide comprised of 25 layers of collagen.

It's like I always say, 25 layers of collagen just isn't enough if you can't outrun your predators.

Re:Interesting

[mrbluze]

Other than the multitude of layers, this is very similar in nature to modern shark skin. A bit like the skin of a Vista versus an Expi, or a Leopard and Tiger, or a Gibbon and a Faun.

Re:Interesting

[aadvancedGIR]

First, life has gone through BILLIONS of years, not just million. Secondly, mammals and reptiles are very closely related. And finaly, (almost ?) all multicellular species that existed in the last 2 billion years use collagen to make their cells stick together.

Re:Interesting

[Yetihehe]

More interesting is a question how much earlier than europeans chinese began fossilizing their dinosaurs

Re:Interesting

[Morty]

It's interesting to me that over the millions of years of evolution life has gone through, we're still using the same basic outlines for anatomy.

100 million years is the recent past, in evolutionary terms. See the Timeline of evolution.
Single-celled life evolved about 4 billion years ago. The even bigger leap to multi-celled life was 1 billion years ago. By 100 million years ago, we already had all the big developments except human brains: plants, fish, insects, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds, and flowers. So 100 million years ago isn't that old, in evolutionary terms.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

A tear, caused by a predator, shows that below the scales of the Psittacosaurus was a thick hide comprised of 25 layers of collagen.

>> It's like I always say, 25 layers of collagen just isn't enough if you can't outrun your predators.

It could hardly move at all with all that extra padding.

I guess you could say it was a Psitting duck for predators...

Re:Interesting

[comradeeroid]

It's interesting to me that over the millions of years of evolution life has gone through, we're still using the same basic outlines for anatomy. Which basically tells us how great those outlines are. Why would evolution mess with something that's so beautifully adaptive to the environment?

Re:Interesting

[WiFiBro]

Additionaly "Climbing Mount Improbable" by Richard Dawkins gives a great overview of the various eye in the animal kingdom. Interesting bits are how the eye apparently developed along several lines, and how a choice made early in evolution can hardly be undone, such as the blood vessels being in front of the retina in the eyes of vertrebrates. (Or wait, God did that to protect the retina.)

Re:Interesting

[amRadioHed]

Not surprising if you've ever been to a market in chinatown. They are very much into preserving animals of all kinds in as many ways as possible.

Re:Interesting

[Ilan Volow]

Duh. Predators tend to prefer the extremely young, the extremely old, or prey with excessive lip enhancement. You should watch more Animal Planet.

Re:Interesting

[Gerzel]

Yes but life is Millions of years old, as well as Billions. Get enough Millions and you start getting billions.

Re:Interesting

[dissy]

Yes but life is Millions of years old, as well as Billions. Get enough Millions and you start getting billions. But isnt that like saying you are only a year old. Get enough years and you start getting to your real age?

Re:Interesting

[LordMidge]

Nope due to the judicious use of a 's'.

What it would be like saying is.

'But isn't that like saying you are only years old. Get enough years and you start getting to your real age?'

And that finished this quite pointless post.

Re:Interesting

[genner]

No it's like saying I'm only days old.
10,585 days to be exact.

Re:Interesting

[pnewhook]

First, life has gone through BILLIONS of years, not just million. Secondly, mammals and reptiles are very closely related. And finaly, (almost ?) all multicellular species that existed in the last 2 billion years use collagen to make their cells stick together.

That's a little misleading. Yes life has been around for billions of years but only primitive celled organisms and bacteria. Thefirst complex life including the first fishes, corals, trilobites and shellfish only appeared in the Cabrian period which started about 570 million years ago. Mammals and dinosaurs came much later.

Re:Interesting

[mofag]

Its interesting to me that they can't just go take a shower after masturbating, like normal people. Why do they have to "examine" their "dinosaur skin"?

Re:Interesting

[Empiric]

Alternately, both premises are true concurrently.

Just thought I'd mention it, because I know how Dawkins loves his false dichotomy fallacies.

Re:Interesting

[aadvancedGIR]

Yes, but the OP seemed to generalize from the common points between dinausors that existed roughly 100 million years ago and modern mammals to some kind of universality. Repiles and mammals share a lot of things (in particular general anatomy) because they have a not so distant common ancestor (and the differences beside milk production are not that absolute: the platypus lays eggs while some reptiles are warm-blooded or take care of their offspring.

Re:Interesting

[skeftomai]

Creationist nonsense...marked interesting???

Re:Interesting

[dashslotter]

Actually, the millions of years between the dinosaurs and now aren't really that much in terms of our entire evolutionary history.

Re:Interesting

[ChrisA90278]

It's interesting to me that over the millions of years of evolution life has gone through, we're still using the same basic outlines for anatomy.

The reason we think this is because of our perspective. Stand back and look and then it's different. Live has existed on earth for maybe 4 billion years. Dinosaurs lived 160 million years ago. 160 million yeas is only four percent of the total time life has existed on Earth.

Re:Interesting

[MightyMartian]

This is incorrect. The first complex multicellular life (excluding various colonial bacteria and the like, which have been around a lot longer) appear in the Ediacaran period about 600-610 million years ago. It's an all-too-common myth that the Cambrian Explosion represents the origins of such life.

Re:Interesting

[pnewhook]

The point was that complex life has NOT been around for billions of years...

Re:Interesting

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

And Boas give live berth.

Re:Interesting

[Airline_Sickness_Bag]

Not surprising if you've ever been to a market in chinatown. They are very much into preserving animals of all kinds in as many ways as possible.

Shouldn't that be "serving" and not "preserving"?

Re:Interesting

[pnewhook]

Yes and some fish lay eggs while others have live birth. And these fish aren't completely different either - they are similar size and live in similar conditions.

Re:Interesting

[fireforadrymouth]

The first complex life including the first fishes, corals, trilobites and shellfishes only appeared in the Cambrian period which started about 542 (±1) Ma There, fixed that for you.

Re:Interesting

[whereiswaldo]

You might find this page intriguing:

  http://www.bible.ca/tracks/taylor-trail.htm

Sample:

"Here is a photo of the Paluxy River in Glen Rose Texas. This rapidly flowing river runs through the middle of Dinosaur Valley State Park, famous for its dinosaur tracks. Not as well known is the fact that human tracks have also been found, not only in the same formation, but on the same bedding plane and in some cases overlapping the dinosaur tracks."

Re:Interesting

[Raenex]

You might find this page interesting:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy/tsite.html

Sample:

"Since the above article was published in early 1986 most creationists have largely abandoned the "man track" claims regarding the Taylor Site and most other Paluxy sites. However, in 1987 Carl Baugh and Don Patton began making claims that the Taylor Tracks were dinosaur tracks with human tracks within them. Such claims have been found to be as unsupported by the evidence as the original "man track" claims, and are reviewed in my article 'Retracking Those Incredible Man Tracks.'"

Food Nerd Alert

[Misanthrope]

Imagine the amount of gelatin dinosaur stock would contain, it'd put veal shanks to shame.

Re:Food Nerd Alert

[Anonymous Coward]

Tastes like chicken.

Well, what do you expect. Dinosaurs and chickens are close relatives.

Re:Food Nerd Alert

[Codifex Maximus]

I expect Bronto-burgers by friday.

Re:Food Nerd Alert

[kaizokuace]

I can finally marinate my bronto burgers and stego steaks in their own stock!

Re:Food Nerd Alert

[iainl]

Apato-burgers, you insensitive clod!

Re:Food Nerd Alert

[bondjamesbond]

Enough of this! I'm starving and it's near lunch time, you insensitive clod.

Found in China?

[Solra Bizna]

When I read the summary my first thought was "it could be a fake".

-:sigma.SB

Re:Found in China?

[nacturation]

Then clearly this is proof of Intelligent Deception.

Re:Found in China?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'd better hide it because dinosaur skin is a well known remedy for bladder infections.

Re:Found in China?

[rve]

Exactly my thought.

A remarkable fossil fetches the finder many times the average annual income of that region, while a 'common' fossil isn't worth all that much. The temptation is just too great for an artist to resist 'improving' a common fossil.

It's an ancient tradition too, in the colonial age, traders sometimes brought back stuffed unicorns and mermaids bought in China. For this reason, when the first stuffed Platypus was sent back to Europe, the sample was first assumed to be a Chinese fake.

Suddenly?

[shmackie]

How was the flesh preserved, and not eaten by microbes?
Suddenly covered by sediment seems like odd explanation.

Like there was all of a sudden a large amount of water full of particulates put on top of this land dwelling animal. Then allowed to settle.
Weird

Re:Suddenly?

[Tablizer]

How was the flesh preserved, and not eaten by microbes? Suddenly covered by sediment seems like odd explanation.

If this was Trek, I would propose interference from tachyon particles as the culprit.

Re:Suddenly?

[RuBLed]

How was the flesh preserved, and not eaten by microbes? Suddenly covered by sediment seems like odd explanation.

The dinosaur was probably buried by his kin after his death. I'm sure the culprit was arrested afterwards and brought to justice...

Re:Suddenly?

[Anonymous Coward]

Like there was all of a sudden a large amount of water full of particulates put on top of this land dwelling animal. Then allowed to settle. Weird
It happens all the time in Japanese porn. (so I hear)

Re:Suddenly?

[amRadioHed]

It may seem like an odd explanation, but keep in mind that fossils are ridiculously rare. If it weren't for freak accidents we wouldn't have any fossils at all.

Re:Suddenly?

[hhas]

"Like there was all of a sudden a large amount of water full of particulates put on top of this land dwelling animal."

Must've missed that memo from Noah.

Re:Suddenly?

[camperdave]

Fossil finds do seem a little suspicious lately. Someone points out that the display at a museum is actually the bones from several species, then *poof*, someone digs up an intact skeleton. Someone starts a debate about dinosaurs having feathers, and then *poof*, someone finds fossil feathers. Someone makes a movie about dinosaur DNA, and then a year or two later, *poof*, soft tissue remains. And what's up with dinosaur footprints? Mountain ranges came and eroded away, oceans have wandered around, yet there wasn't enough activity to fill in a footprint? A hundred years of plant growth would probably be enough. But, NO. These footprints are on a riverbank, which in the millions of years since the dinosaur stepped in the mud, has not flooded, or eroded, or been overgrown. It seems suspicious to me. (Not that I'm a young earther/intelligent design kook. I'm just sceptical.)

Re:Suddenly?

[omris]

it's not QUITE that bad, but archaeology has always been more in the eye of the beholder than some science branches. the things they are looking at are so easy to miss, that you'd never see them if you weren't thinking to look. very carefully. whereas before we assumed that funky swirl pattern was nothing , once the idea of it being the imprint of a feather is proposed, it becomes easier to notice the things that were probably there all along and missed.

it's important to remember that fossils are RARE. there are lots of them, but the percentage of things that are fossilized rather than decaying completely is incredably small. it isn't as if we have loads of footprints from lots of dinosaurs that pop up everywhere. it's more like, everyonce in a while, in one spot, the conditions will be right to make that happen. so the dinosaur stepped in mud on a riverbank that was mostly clay. they there was a dry spell and it dried out fairly well. then there was a flash flood, and murky plant matter was dumped en masse on top of the clay. now you have a sediment layer with a clear border between the upper and lower layers. and since it got covered quickly, the upper surface of the lower layer is a relatively clear snapshot of that riverbank right before the second silt deposit. this is also why a specific type of fossil (like footprints) will be found profusely in one area. you rarely find one isolated print. you get a large area (say the size of a riverbank) covered in that type of fossil. once they have a few million years to actually become rock, the archaeologist gets to try to carefully pry apart the two layers, and interpret the image in between.

since the difference between the two types of rock are subtle at best, they are open to misinterpretation. knowing this, they will try to use what knowledge they have to help determine where the actual border is based on what they can see. when that knowledge base is discovered to be flawed, changes have to be made in everything that came after that.

i'd like to think that it isn't so much that the scientists are just making stuff up. more that they are trying to honestly use a very mutable system to interpret their data. as in any field, there are people who will abuse it to serve their own purpose. i just like to think that they are in the small minority.

Re:Suddenly?

[micromuncher]

There are lots of environmental conditions that can discourage decomposition. Cold, pressure, alkalinity, acidity, salinity, [lack of] humidity, etc. Think of bogs and bitumen (tar pits).

Duplisaurus Paranoidus

[Tablizer]

This is not the same dinosaur that had been reported previously on Slashdot

Somebody's a bit sensitive about dupes ;-)

Re:Duplisaurus Paranoidus

[entrigant]

Haha, better sensitive than ignoring the issue completely :)

Re:Duplisaurus Paranoidus

[Mishra100]

It stops 25 comments of "omg this is a dupe" so I'm good with that!

I was about to make that joke

[427_ci_505]

You insensitive clod.

Re:I was about to make that joke

[4D6963]

Great, thanks! Cause every time someone jokes about creationism, God goes back to the Jurassic and kills a dinosaur!

Re:I was about to make that joke

[CodyRazor]

Quick! make all the jokes you can, then we'll have more fossils to study and mabye even clone!

That's right, I just outsmarted god.

Re:I was about to make that joke

[RuBLed]

What do you think God was doing when dinosaurs are joking about creationism?

Right... and we're clever indeed...

Re:I was about to make that joke

[Conanymous Award]

"Great, thanks! Cause every time someone jokes about creationism, God goes back to the Jurassic and kills a dinosaur!"

Creationism being the joke that it is, I think you have now truly found out the reason why dinosaurs died out!

As for this being a fake, well, as far as I know faked fossils are not that common, even from China. With this I mean fossils (or items considered to be such) that are the subject of serious research - "normal" fake fossils are sold to gullible tourists everywhere. (For a great piece on this, read S. J. Gould's The Lying Stones of Marrakech.)

Of course, the other reason scientists are fooled by fake fossils so rarely could be that the fakes are so meticulously created that they haven't been found out to be fakes. But to forge something like the microscopic structure of dinosaur skin would be foolishly laborous ie. not profitable. I don't think a Professionally Forged Fossil FactoryTM would be a great business idea...

Re:I was about to make that joke

[Mishra100]

Isn't "In Soviet Russia" supposed to be tagged somewhere on that comment?

Re:I was about to make that joke

[Empiric]

Probably contentedly realizing that it's psychologically impossible for humans to indefinitely continue to define "creationism" as "the straw-man combination of whatever the worst theistic argument I can find is, along with the idea God exists, by which I non-sequitur the supposed refutation of the second part, by the supposed refutation of the non-determinative first part". Sure, it's all packaged in one convenient word, but the irrationality of irrational usage of the term becomes clear as soon as its used in that way.

If Aristotle didn't make it clear how to form a valid concept, one's own sense of one's inability to evade what they themselves know (by reference to their own clear motivation) will... eventually.

I for one...

[Anonymous Coward]

welcome our younger-looking, collagen infused overlords.

Oh, the fools!

[mad-seumas]

If only they'd built them with 26 layers!

Re:Oh, the fools!

[TuringTest]

this is very similar in nature to modern shark skin If only they'd built them with 25 friggin lasers! (on their heads).

Re:Oh, the fools!

[martin-boundary]

After the liposuction, he only had money for 25 layers.

same as shark skin?

[DreamerFi]

You mean we can mount a frikking laser on them?

Re:same as shark skin?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Dinosaurs (Tyrannosaurs in particular) are better equipped for flying fighter jets.

Re:same as shark skin?

[Explodicle]

An artist's conception.

Re:same as shark skin?

[Petaris]

Can you imagine Vilociraptors with lasers on their heads? Scarry Sorry, couldn't help myself. ;)

Re:Please

[Anonymous Coward]

you do realize that by asking /.ers not to joke about it they're now going to pelt this thread with exactly those kind of jokes right?

Saddle?

[aaronfaby]

Did they find the saddle that Jesus used to ride the dinosaur?

Re:Saddle?

[RockDoctor]

When Jesus used to ride dinosaurs, he used a Trojan.

(I was trying to figure out why the condom machine in the restaurant we used this evening bore the slogan "Trojan - America's #1 condoms". I get that it's a trademark, but what associations were the marketing people trying to get between sex and the Trojans?
"Have sex like people who've been dead for about 3000 years"?
"Fuck like the losers"?
"Fuck like an adulterer who died for his squeeze"?
"These condoms are as comfortable as a brass helmet on the end of your dick"?
Something about that advertising campaign didn't cross the Atlantic successfully.)

And to think...

[hyades1]

How wonderful to consider that this animal's descendants walk among us to this very day. Chubby, piggish little creatures. Omnivorous. Voracious. Almost invulnerable due to their incredibly tough skin. Scavenging when they must, picking off a vulnerable or unwary victim when they can.

We call them "lawyers".

Not the dinosaur

[Anonymous Coward]

"This is not the dinosaur you're looking for."

heh.

[apodyopsis]

I don't know which is more appropriate.... "thats a mighty fine and intelligent piece of design there god" "well done, marvelously detailed and cunningly hidden fossil, we almost fell for that one"

Yummy

[El Yanqui]

Mmm.. spicy Psittacosaurus rinds.

Thats Cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm it wll take a bit more time to read it and understand.

The Fools!

[Ginger Unicorn]

If only they'd built them with 26 layers!

Dakota

[Cemu]

...which was found in South Dakota. North Dakota. The article previously covered was found in North Dakota. For those of you who have never been there before, there is a difference - not just geographically either.

Re:Dakota

[ColdWetDog]

North Dakota. The article previously covered was found in North Dakota. For those of you who have never been there before, there is a difference - not just geographically either.

For a country whose inhabitants can't largely identify Canada and Mexico on a map, this small distinction seems pretty irrelevant, eh?

Re:Dakota

[Cemu]

Yeah, I unfortunately hear your argument. But for those of us from North Dakota we take pride in our state, even if what comes from it is millions of years old.

Re:Dakota

[jd]

My mother is from North Dakota, so naturally I deny it exists. :)

Re:Dakota

[Cemu]

Dude, so am I! I probably know her...

Re:Dakota

[jd]

Very likely, if you're in the areas of Bismarck or Jamestown - doubly so if you know families that moved over from Norway or Poland in the 1800s. If your last name is Wyngarden or Woychick, you probably don't just know my mother but are probably a long-lost cousin.

Wrong Dakota

[ari_j]

Just a correction: The dinosaur mummy that was previously reported on Slashdot a couple weeks ago was found in North Dakota. I repeat my assurances that these two states are separate and that every article and TV program about that dinosaur that I was aware of got it right, except Slashdot.

So what was this gash caused by?

[Mikya]

I'm under the impression it was caused by a predator of some sort but I could use another confirmation just to be sure.

Re:So what was this gash caused by?

[Anonymous Coward]

Interestingly, reports indicate that the gashes were caused by Chuck Norris' fists.

Good news everyone!

[graveyhead]

"Great jerky professor!"

"Damnit Fry I was going to eat that!"

Dinosaur for Dinner? Two Words:

[pragma_x]

Allez Cuisine!

Re:Please

[Anonymous Coward]

But what would the thirteen year olds post about without 6000 year jokes? They'd actually have to write something (gulp) new and original.