Scientists Find Soft Tissue in T-Rex Fossil 978
douglips writes "Reuters is running a story about a shocking development in paleontology: A T-Rex thigh bone fossil was reluctantly broken to fit in a transport helicopter, and inside soft tissue was found. It appears to include blood vessels and bone cells. Scientists hope to isolate proteins, and perhaps even DNA."
Let the cloning begin! (Score:5, Funny)
When I get my T-Rex... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:When I get my T-Rex... (Score:5, Funny)
-Kelt
(must credit the wife for that one)
Panic over! (Score:5, Funny)
Let the cloning begin! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Let the cloning begin! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Let the cloning begin! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let the cloning begin! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Let the cloning begin! (Score:5, Funny)
Gosh dang it all... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let the cloning begin! (Score:3, Funny)
Great idea! I mean, what could possiblye go wrong? Oops, that's possibly. Heh, that's the first thing that's ever gone wrong...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Let the cloning begin! (Score:5, Funny)
Does he have a mohawk? I pity the fool that messes with Mr. T-Rex.
Re:Let the cloning begin! (Score:5, Funny)
Use OpenBSD Yea it is Unix but it very secure. And runs on smaller computers which can be put on multiple power supplies and power sources, and UPSed. Except for running a hole park off of a single Cray, where once the Cray goes down all hell breaks loose.
If you are going to use electrical cars. Make sure they have enough battery to drive across the island on one charge.
Have 2 fences. running parallel to each other. In the middle dig a very deep hole big enough to prevent any animal to climb out or jump over.
Use the round door knobs with a punch key security. So even if they figured out the code which is unlikely they will need opposable thumbs to open the door.
If Possible use Male Dinosaurs they just dont have the equipment to lay eggs.
Armed Security Guards, who can also double as tour guides.
Safety points filled with tranquilizer darts and a gun.
Steel Reinforced Bathrooms.
All electrical fences have a generator backup.
Helicopter tours.
If they spit acid remove the glands before making them in front of the public.
so who gets to patent T-Rex DNA? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:so who gets to patent T-Rex DNA? (Score:5, Funny)
You can't (Score:4, Interesting)
Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Funny)
Also, do NOT run directly to the shitter.
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Funny)
I would like to point out that for the vast majority of us, if we ever came upon a T-Rex (or many of the other top-predators) the time between spotting the critter and involuntary evacuation is going to be way too short to find a shitter.
I once came upon a stuffed tiger at an outdoor show, and my first reaction was "Oh, crap that's huge, run away". Before I even fully registered what I was seeing my brain was already looking for an exit.
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Funny)
Nah, I'm a WASP. That means that my ancestors grudgingly reproduced and thought of England. =)
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Funny)
Which is why I never, ever discourage someone from eating at McDonalds.
Obseity in others is your best defense mechanism.
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Funny)
Obseity in others is your best defense mechanism.
Certainly from predation, but speaking for fat people at McDonald's everywhere, I'd like to say that we're betting that the global food supply will run out before a T-Rex comes to life and chases us down.
We think that a better defense mechanism is taking two weeks longer to starve to death so we can eat you scrawny arrogant bastards as you drop like flies.
I don't care how thin you are, we'll still get a whole bunch of quarter pounders out of you...
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Interesting)
The detail about T-Rex's having the inability to see moving objects was thrown in by Michael Crichton to support his belief that scientists' filling in the ancient dinosaur DNA gaps with modern-day amphibian DNA would lead to various "features" being transposed across the species. Some amphibians of today truly cannot see inanimate objects.
This was a necessary plot point in the story... Jurassic Park was designed to continue only with Human support (no natural breeding), but "nature found a way" when the abilities of some amphibians to spontaneously change sexes was found in the JP dinosaurs.
To recap, it wasn't a random guess... Just a plot twist by a clever author. There's no evidence to suggest that ancient dinosaurs couldn't see inanimate objects. Predators like T-Rex's probably couldn't survive like that.
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Interesting)
Birds too, I believe, cannot see things that do not move, and birds are believed to be whats left of dinosours as they evolved to today.
I've read that if it were possible for a human to control the natural eye jitteriness and just focus absolutely still, the image you see would fade away to nothing. The eye needs constant movement to be able to keep updating what you are seeing.
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Funny)
It'd be amusing if the T-Rex had the parrot's vocal abilities to mimic human voices.
Of course, the only words they'd be exposed to and thus be able to mimic would be various versions of "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!" and "OH DEAR GOD NORRUUUURRRGGGGLLLE!!!!" and that would just scare other people off.
A sad life, the T-Rex's.
Sigh.
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Insightful)
T-Rex survived for millions of years through asteroid impacts, earthquakes, global climate change, flood, drought, disease, and competition for food. By comparison, our H. Sapiens species has been around for only 50,000 years or so and our numbers and technology have expanded during only the last 2,000. Extrapolating our most recent 100 years of history into the future doesn't make our prospects look very good either. Disease, war, and environmental destruction are likely to thin us out quite a bit or even lead to our extinction. At this very moment, millions of scientists and engineers all over the globe are hard at work thinking of new, more effective, ways to kill large numbers of us. Whose life is sadder, T-rex or H-Sapiens?
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:3, Insightful)
False. How else would birds find their water bowl, or their perch? Snakes cannot see things that move, birds obviously can.
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:4, Informative)
False. How else would birds find their water bowl, or their perch? Snakes cannot see things that move, birds obviously can.
At the level of the first layers in the retina, the firing rate of neurons is proportional to the rate of change in either direction, colour, intensity or time.
As an example, stare at this flag [softwaresolutions4u.net] for 30 seconds or so, then look at a blank area of space. This optical illusion works because the neurons that respond to yellow, green and black become inactive, leaving blue, red and white.
I am sure birds can see things that do not move, it is only that they do not consider something that moves slowly as "dangerous". It is a great party trick when we were kids to go out in the garden, place some grain in our hands, stand absolutely still and have wild birds eat of our hands. Obviously the birds could see our hands and the grain.
From some various articles on bird vision, birds may have up to 120,000 cones per square inch of retina (humans only have 10,000), and may have four or more different types of colour-sensitve cones (thereby being able to have a higher colour range than humans).
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Interesting)
Take when you're driving, for instance. A car driving at the same speed as you in your blind spot is going to be hard to see when you turn your head before changing lanes. This is especially true of dark grey cars that can look similar to the road. If that car is moving either quicker or slower than you, then you can easily see it.
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:5, Insightful)
Years and years of evolution. With humans, movement attracts the immediate attention of the brain and an immediate risk assessment is done. It is a survival tool.
It is also allows a predator (which humans are, also) to isolate moving prey from the static landscape.
I have never heard of the "eye is constantly moving so we can see" theory/idea. Sounds like BS to me. In fact when the eye moves (either in the socket or when the head moves), we are temporarily blind for about 200ms. This is why what we see does not blur when we shift our focus on something else (try it!)
I recommend the O'Reiley book called "Mind Hacks". The authors go into this in much more detail.
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Thank god for Jurassic Park... (Score:3, Funny)
I for one.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I for one.... (Score:3, Funny)
News! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Young earth? (Score:3, Informative)
Lessons (Score:5, Funny)
Modern helicopters are just too small!
Precedent (Score:5, Informative)
Of course getting actual DNA from these tissues will be a long shot due to its fragile nature, but protein sequence may prove very informative in letting us define exactly where genetic lineages have gone over evolution.
Re:Precedent (Score:5, Informative)
This T-Rex tissue is apparently a bigger deal than the fossilized egg contents she found previously though. From TFA:
"Preservation of this extent, where you still have this flexibility and transparency, has never been seen in a dinosaur before." Feathers, hair and fossilized egg contents yes, but not truly soft tissue.
Re:Precedent (Score:5, Funny)
"Oh darn, I have yet again rented the small helicopter, what a klutz I am. It seems that will have to cut up this precious fossil that is too large to get on board. Woe is me, had we brought the large helicopter, this here fossile would have been taken to museum without having been chopped up... oh, look at that..."
Clever lass.
Re:Precedent (Score:4, Interesting)
Usually paleontologists put preservatives on fossils right away, but Schweitzer has been trying to find soft tissue in dinosaur fossils, so this one was left alone.
Re:Precedent (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Precedent (Score:5, Funny)
Of course getting actual DNA from these tissues will be a long shot due to its fragile nature, but protein sequence may prove very informative in letting us define exactly where genetic lineages have gone over evolution.
Thanks for spoiling our fun. Can we get back to the Jurassic Park jokes please?
Re:Precedent (Score:5, Insightful)
I won't deny that this finding is exciting for creationists, but that's irrelevant to the existence of the tissue itself. The existence of the tissue is a matter of hard science. It will be peer reviewed (if it hasn't already been), and if it's faulty, those faults will be exposed. I expect that it will be scrutinized especially closely because unfossilized tissue does seem unlikely from the prevailing viewpoint. The reviewers will want to be meticulous in their examination of the finding, which is of course only proper.
Dinosaurs are a myth (Score:3, Funny)
after all, earth is only 6000 years old and was created in 40 days, unless my sources are wrong
Re:Dinosaurs are a myth (Score:5, Funny)
Re:So... (Score:4, Insightful)
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics only applies to *closed* systems. This creationist "argument" was torn apart as soon as it was uttered.
Finally (Score:5, Funny)
But how? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:But how? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:But how? (Score:5, Insightful)
A theory (Score:5, Interesting)
Peat Bogs (Score:5, Informative)
In this case, the acidity is unlikely to be a factor, but the totally anaerobic conditions may be. It is possible that any bacteria in the soft tissue simply didn't have what they needed in order to consume the organic material, and therefore didn't. A slight variant on the situation with peat, but essentially the same idea.
A second option - less likely, but possible - would be a variant on the way fresh produce is kept fresh today. Modern food isn't always kept with preservatives. Rather, the packaging company uses a medium blast from a radioactive caesium isotope. This kills off all of the bacteria present.
Radioactive materials certainly occur naturally, and there are indeed cases of naturally-occuring nuclear reactors. It is entirely within the realms of possibility that natural radioactivity kept the inside of the bones sterilized, so that organic decay could not take place.
The odds of that being the case are slim, but not quite none. However, it raises questions on what may be found in areas where such preservation techniques may actually have occured.
Re:But how? (Score:3, Interesting)
They'll likely clone cockroaches instead.
I think humans and mammoths will be cloned before any dinos. I'm looking forward to wild mammoths though, Canada has plenty of space for that.
I'll tell you how - Jesus is the answer (Score:5, Funny)
Ahh. This just proves that Evolution is BS, and that the earth is not hundreds of millions of years old. It is just a couple of thousand years old. Soft tissue could have lasted that long. In your FACE scientists. The dinosaurs were obviously killed in the crusades because they were dumb animals that didn't believe in Jesus. Duh.
Promising for archaeology (Score:5, Interesting)
Fuck (Score:5, Funny)
Alternatively do any of you know anything about UNIX systems?
Re:Fuck (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Fuck (Score:5, Funny)
Alternatively do any of you know anything about UNIX systems?
No problem. When the T-Rexes start attacking, we can simply get our handy chaos theorist to upload a virus into the mother T-Rex and just pray that the T-Rex is Mac compatible.
Re:Fuck (Score:5, Funny)
Alternatively do any of you know anything about UNIX systems?
I watched Jurassic Park in my early teens, and that movie ruined my knowledge of UNIX. For years I thought all UNIX systems had cool graphical UIs like that, and then I tried a real one and was disappointed by these crazy things called "characters". Now I'm a Windows user :(
This may prove Homer Simpson wrong.. (Score:5, Funny)
Marge: Like what?
Homer: . . . A Dinosaur!
I want to be the first 35 year old kid on my block with a T-Rex. Leash laws be damned!
What I want to knkow is.. (Score:5, Funny)
Hello?... Is this thing on?
Metabolism (Score:4, Interesting)
MSNBC has pictures of the meat (Score:5, Informative)
in my professional paleontological opinion (not), it needs a nice marinade
fre up the BBQ, lets see what T Rex tastes like
why? Why? WHY? (Score:5, Funny)
Now there's going to be running and screaming, and it's all going to be a big huge mess.
Possible viruses? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Possible viruses? (Score:5, Insightful)
nytimes too (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, yeah! (Score:4, Funny)
Now if I can just find a 10,000 year-old White Zin to go with it...
Re:Oh, yeah! (Score:5, Funny)
Forced? (Score:5, Funny)
Who was heading this team, Homer Simpson?
I can just see him now:
Homer: "Grrr..."
Lisa: "Dad, it's just too big to fit in there."
Homer: "Nonsense Lisa, daddy will just shove it in....Grrr....here it goes...." *snap* "...DOH!"
See the MSNBC write-up (Score:5, Informative)
Crazy sounding 'but hear me out' prediction (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, researchers will pioneer the basic technology, but the people who do the large scale cloning won't be theme park owners, scientists, or preservationists.
They'll be food producers.
We're at the top of the foodchain, and foods like Fugu (deadly blowfish), sushi, and... well, many asian dishes, prove that we're running out of new stuff to eat. There are amazing strides being made by cooks, and there are only so many things people can try before they die of old age, but more and more people are getting adventuresome and want to eat things that nobody else has.
Enter: The brontoburger.
Who here hasn't salivated at the thought of carving into a big old dinosaur steak? Who here can forget the longing eyes they cast on Fred Flintstone's car as it tipped over under the weight of the massive dino-ribs he had just ordered?
Predictions:
1. Herbivores of various types will be bred in captivity for their meat and leather.
2. The rich will beat a path to their doorstep for the exclusivity of eating prehistoric food.
3. In an almost defiant gesture of the universe, the meat will undoubtedly taste like chicken. Dinosaurs are, after all, big ol' birds by most reckoning.
You may laugh now, but when you're cleaning the last bit of Tony Romas Olde Fashioned Allosaurus (like grandpa used to make 'em) Ribs, remember where you heard it first. Or second, or whenever this message drifted across your desk.
Re:Crazy sounding 'but hear me out' prediction (Score:5, Insightful)
Sorry, but the brontoburger [snopes.com] already exists!
In response I'm joining... (Score:5, Funny)
The obligitory Matrix Quote
"We're gonna need Guns...Lots of Guns"
Crack open more bones? (Score:4, Interesting)
Can they more accurately date the dinosaur now? (Score:4, Interesting)
Never mind cloning (Score:5, Insightful)
If they find any dinosaur DNA just think of what could be done with that. Mostly what I'm thinking about here is ancestry analysis. Our understanding of the exact way evolutionary processes have behaved contains much that is based on similarity and guesswork. It seems if we could get solid information on what now-living organisms that dinosaurs were related to and to what extent-- or what dinosaurs were related to each other and how, if more soft tissue can be found in other fossils-- it seems this could verify science's understanding of paleobiology (sic?) and the evolutionary tree, or change it, in an unprecedented way. Has anything of this sort-- DNA from living tissue that old-- ever been found before, has there ever been any comparable way we have been able to perform genetic testing on a sample of that age?
This is even aside from what that DNA and any found proteins can tell us about how dinosaurs looked and behaved...
This is a really big deal.
What Yahoo News doesn't mention (Score:5, Informative)
"Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, cautions
that looks can deceive: Nucleated protozoan cells have been found in
225-million-year-old amber, but geochemical tests revealed that the
nuclei had been replaced with resin compounds. Even the resilience of
the vessels may be deceptive. Flexible fossils of colonial marine
organisms called graptolites have been recovered from
440-million-year-old rocks, but the original material--likely
collagen--had not survived."
Dinosaurs lived in a higher oxygenated world. (Score:4, Interesting)
-Steve
Re:Uh oh. (Score:3, Funny)
Shit.
Re:Uh oh. (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Uh oh. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:5, Interesting)
Methods of Soft Tissue Preservation (Score:5, Informative)
Soft part preservation - Soft tissues are preserved only under exceptional conditions. Examples include preservation of Siberian Mammoths (freezing in permafrost), Pleistocene cave faunas and older mummified remains (dessication), and insects and small animals preserved in lithified tree sap (amber). Soft parts can also be preserved after being replaced by minerals.
Original hard parts - Resistant materials such as calcium, silica, and calcium phosphate are sometimes preserved as original hard parts in shells, bones, and teeth.
Recrystallized hard parts - It is common, however, for original hard parts to be altered during diagenesis and after lithification. Unstable minerals such as aragonite will recrystallize to a more stable form such as calcite. Mineral crystals within an organism's hard parts my regrow to become larger and consolidated. Often recrystallization destroys fine, internal detail within a fossil.
Carbonization - Organic-laden hard parts and soft parts can be preserved as a thin film of organic carbon. This occurs when the organic material is preserved undecayed through burial. As heat increases throughout burial the volitile components of the organic material (N, O, H, and S) are driven off leaving a thin film of black carbon behind.
Replacement - Chemical reactions that occur during diagenesis can result in the molecule by molecule replacement of mineral for mineral or mineral for organic tissue. Replacement can often preserve exquisite detail in fossils.
Silicification - replacement of calcite by silica.
Pyritization - replacement of calcite or soft tissues with pyrite
Phosphatization - replacement of low phosphate apatite with high phosphate apatite.
Permineralization - Porous organic structures such as wood and bone are often preserved by the mineral infilling of the pore spaces. A common way of 'petrifying' wood and dinosaur bone.
Source [hofstra.edu]
-----------
It would have been helpful if the scientists had provided a hypothesis on the preservation of the tissues. I googled this phenomenon and there seems to be a rather broad definition for "soft tissue". Soft Tissue, it appears, can be preserved in many ways (see above). I'm curious as to how this tissue survived micro-organisms, mineralization/calcification, carbonization, or simply, or even dehydration. How was it able to remain soft enough to be squeezed?
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:5, Insightful)
Kinda shocked that no one else mentioned it yet, but...
The T-Rex, like most dinosaurs and like most modern lizards, laid eggs.
If we could get a viable T-Rex zygote, we could almost certainly implant it in the egg of any larger still-living lizard (monitor?) without much difficulty.
But after this long, even if we found a perfectly preserved T-Rex frozen in ice, it would not have a single viable cell in its body.
As the best possible outside chance for making a living T-Rex, we might manage to get enough overlapping DNA fragments to piece them together, then manually generate a complete genome for the beastie. Allowing for that (IMO, physically possible if not technologically feasible yet) that, we would still need to get a few intact T-Rex mitochondria, which I suspect will not happen for the same reason we won't find a whole viable T-Rex cell - Namely, DNA breaks down at a relatively steady rate, and after 150 million years, you don't have many long runs of it left intact.
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:5, Informative)
No, you've read something into my statement that I did not intend. And somehow gotten an "Insightful" mod for it - Kudos!
I refer to plain, ordinary entropy-obeying molecular breakdown. DNA slowly decays into less complex molecules over time, after the organism dies. IIRC, somewhere around 0.1% per millenium - Which sounds small but over the course of 150M years really adds up, making it pretty lucky to find evem a few thousand base pairs intact at a time.
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:5, Funny)
God kills dinosaur.
God creates man.
Man kills God.
Man creates dinosaur.
Dinosaur eats man.
Woman inherits the earth.
Re:Jurassic Park (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just in time (Score:5, Informative)
>
>does it taste like chicken?
Considering that birds are the distant descendants of dinosaurs, and considering that the article [newscientist.com] someone else referred to describes traces of proteins from 70M-year-old eggs as bearing "strong similarities to proteins from chicken eggs.", I'd bet good money that the answer is probably "yes".
The dino in the NewScientist article was a herbivore, and T. Rex was either a carnivore or carrion-eater; so maybe it'll taste more like eagle or vulture.
Personally, I've never eaten eagle or vulture. Anyone know wha-yeah, I figured as much. Chicken.
Re:What about X-rays or MRI first (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Young earth (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, there is still lots of other geological evidence that the earth is WAY more than 6000 years old. The find is interesting, but you certainly can't jump to that conclusion from it.
Of course, using logic isn't the strong suit of the ID\Young Earth\Creationism set anyway, so I fully predict those guys will show up here in force with a bunch of "I told you so" posts, mostly with out actually reading TFA.