Hadrosaur Proteins Sequenced

jd writes "In a follow-up study to the one on proteins found in a T. Rex bone, the team responsible for the T. Rex study sequenced proteins found in an 80-million year old Hadrosaur fossil. According to the article, the proteins found confirm the results of the T. Rex study, proving that what was found in T. Rex was not a result of modern contamination, as had been claimed by skeptics, but was indeed the genuine thing: real dinosaur protein. Furthermore, despite the new fossil being 12 million years older, they claim they got more out — eight collagen peptides and 149 amino acids from four different samples. This, they say, places the Hadrosaur in the same family as T. Rex and Ostriches, but that not enough was recovered to say just how close or distant the relationship was."

Comments

Campaign for Real Semantic

[oldhack]

Respect to fossil biologists for tough work - it's like putting together jigsaw puzzle that's missing majority of its pieces. That being the case, I wish they choose their terminology, like the term "prove", bit more judiciously, lest us plebs gets misled.

Re:Campaign for Real Semantic

[radtea]

That being the case, I wish they choose their terminology, like the term "prove", bit more judiciously, lest us plebs gets misled.

I'm impressed with the work they've done, but based on my own priors I'd like to see the work replicated by a different team before I'm willing to consider claims of proof as being very plausible.

As it stands, this work means, "The same people did the same things with a different sample and got similar results." Well and good, but not nearly so convincing as "Different people did similar things with different samples and got similar results."

Re:The egg is the key.

[mog007]

Every bird is a distant relative of the dinosaurs... not just the ostrich.

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Things decay for a (chemical) reason. Very low temperatures, absence of oxygen, water, etc. can simply stop chemical processes. I have no idea of the circumstances of this find, but it seems entirely plausible that exceptional things can happen in rare situations.

This isn't a defying-the-laws-of-physics thing, it's more "we don't know exactly".

Re:Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh ho ho.

What they left out of the article was *why* the skepticism. Here it is.

These tissue types can only last hundreds of thousands of years, tops. So ... either it's fake, or there's some unknown preservation process at work here, or -

These specimens are not millions of years old.

That would square with the many puzzling astronomical discoveries which indicate "too young" objects (such as active planets and young comets), but cause havoc with the popular concept of how old the solar system is.

Heh heh. I love it!

You seem to have failed to grasp the concept of "proving a negative".

The only way we "know" (to use your quaint term) that "[t]hese tissue types can only last hundreds of thousands of years, tops" is basically because we've never found older ones.

Until we do.

Which it looks like we've done.

Re:The egg is the key.

[DragonWriter]

Yeah, but children's soccer balls can be much smaller than regulation.

Even a Size 3 soccer ball (typical for the youngest age groups) is about 7-1/4 to 7-1/2 inches in diameter, which is substantially larger than a 5-6 inch ostrich egg.