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."

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 It's gives pretty interesting explanations (though a bit outdated) on why some species seem to revert to old forms (such as why whales look like fish), and why some useful features stay the same through the ages seemingly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 [librivox.org] or free text [gutenberg.org]

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

[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 [wikipedia.org].
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.

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: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

[skeftomai]

Creationist nonsense...marked interesting???

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: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).