A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug out of a hunk of sandstone has yielded soft tissue, including blood vessels and perhaps even whole cells, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday.
Paleontologists forced to break the creature’s massive thighbone to get it on a helicopter found not a solid piece of fossilized bone, but instead something looking a bit less like a rock.
When they got it into a lab and chemically removed the hard minerals, they found what looked like blood vessels, bone cells and perhaps even blood cells.
“They are transparent, they are flexible,” said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and Montana State University, who conducted the study.
She said the vessels were flexible and in some cases their contents could be squeezed out.
“The microstructures that look like cells are preserved in every way,” added Schweitzer, whose findings were published in the journal Science.
That is so cool. The magnitude of this discovery is staggering. What I really want to know is how in the world soft tissue survived — fully intact! — for 70,000,000 years. It’s amazing.
That is the coolest thing ever.
It would only be cooler if it was a pteranodon.
I guess it’s amazing what can survive apart from air and light.
The question now, is, how long until Jurassic Park opens?
Now if only they could extract some some DNA from Teddy Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln. Then, maybe scientists could clone them and bring back another extinct species – moderate, sane, sensible, progressive Republicans. Boy, I’d pay a lot of money to see a Roman Coliseum-style battle-to-the-death between the “Bull Moose” (Teddy Roosevelt) and the “Pander Bear” (Jerry Kilgore). Hmmmm…wonder who would win THAT one! :)
This story is just so amazing, I have to wonder if it’s true, or if it’s just an elaborate hoax. I’d be very impressed if it were a hoax, though not quite as impressed as if it were real. :)
Biologist PZ Myers has some good discussion of this, with pretty pictures.