Remarkable discovery: B. canadensis osteocytes, or bone cells, remaining after demineralisation of the dinosaur bone.
Credit: Mary H. Schweitzer
SYDNEY: Researchers have found blood vessels and proteins in an 80-million-year-old hadrosaur fossil, strengthening evidence that tissue remains really can be extracted from such ancient fossils.
In 2005 a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex bone was found, which appeared to contain blood vessels and cells. Two years later, researchers led by Mary Schweitzer, from North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, USA, and John Asara, from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre in Boston, claimed to have extracted collagen from the fossil (see, Protein extracted from T. rex fossil).
Structural protein
Collagen is one of the main structural proteins present in body tissues. The team reconstructed the protein sequence for the collagen and compared it the sequence in other species such as frogs and chickens.
Because of the controversial nature of the previous findings, the team set out to replicate them with another fossil. This time they searched for dinosaur fossils buried in deep sandstones, which were likely to be well preserved, and they speeded up the process of getting them from the field to the lab.
As they detail today in the U.S. journal Science, they hit gold in the form of a femur from a duck-billed hadrosaur, Brachylophosaurus canadensis, dug up in Montana's Judith River formation.
"This shows that the T. rex study was not a one-hit wonder and other dinosaur fossils show preserved protein," said Asara, "[Our] study pushes the field of molecular palaeontology… further as it shows that the ability to study fossils at the molecular level is possible."
X marks the spot
Schweitzer said they had learnt from the earlier T. rex study where to look for environments that might be more likely to preserve protein and tissue in fossils. By looking in rocks such as iron-rich sandstones, they were able to find bones from which they could obtain and sequence proteins.
The results show "we don't really understand as much as we thought about how cells and tissues and molecules degrade in the protected environment of bone," said Schweitzer.
The sequences allowed the scientists to construct new family trees comparing dinosaurs with other animals such as humans, mice and alligators. They found that the B. canadensis collagen sequence was similar to the T. rex sequence they'd previously obtained, and both were in the same group as chickens and ostriches, thought to be descended from dinosaurs.
Is it really 80 million years old?
Sceintist have to assume it is that old because if it's not then it blows too many holes in the THEREY of evelution. There is absolutly no evedence in the fossle records of evelution. There are no intermediate spesies in the fossils. Any ape like humans that have been supposedly found have been proven to be either hoxes or a person with a disease. I don't have a science degree or anything, but shouldn't there be a good deal of proof before it is taught to our children as the only logical explination.
REALLY
Not only do you not have a science degree, you don't have much of a vocabulary, either... There are no therey of evelution, there is a theory of evolution, and there are many "transitional" fossils of species, not spesies, within nearly EVERY species of animal alive today. You also have to understand that nearly 98% of ALL life that has lived on this planet is now extinct, that's a LOT of life, and yet we find so few fossils to represent the possible TRILLIONS of life forms that may have evolved in the past four BILLION years.
Those Darned Duck Billed Dinasours Cells!
This is only one of easily 100 such facts which refute the Theory of Evolution. Each time these are pointed out, the challenge is met with aggression by the establishment which is ironically a very unscientific response. This atheistic explanation of origins is really just a religious philosophy but it is truly amazing just how entrenched into politically correct mindset science it has become. It is not the first time such a grand hoax has captured the minds of the scientific community who wish to put themselves in the place of a God. Alchemy was firmly “believed” by many of the most important scientific minds for hundreds of years before modern physics showed turning materials into gold chemically is impossible
I despair for this planet.
The universe is old, Earth is old, life is old. If this does not agree with the book(s) you read, get some new books.