Its official. For the first time in years, I want to become a Paleontologist.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=1&u=/nm/20050324/sc_nm/dinosaur_to_dc

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - 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.

so, would there be DNA in it? I smell a real life jerrasic park =]

Holy shit that's incredible.

My god... I'm so excited I'm farting.

Soft tissue? Cells? In a T-Rex bone?

It's in one of the March issues of Science. I'm trying to get my hands on a copy right now.

Soft-Tissue Vessels and Cellular Preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex
Mary H. Schweitzer, Jennifer L. Wittmeyer, John R. Horner, and Jan K. Toporski
Science 25 March 2005; 307: 1952-1955 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1108397] (in Reports)

Sorry, no. No Jurassic Park. Even if dinosaurs cells were preserved in a cryogenic freezer for 70 million years, solar radiation would have destroyed the DNA to an extent that no animal could be reproduced from those cells. Seriously - I worked in a biorepository that used liquid nitrogen to preserve tissue samples, and solar (and to a lesser extent, earthly) radiation, was found to be an issue over the course of a thousand years in terms of DNA preservation. Compare 70 million to one thousand. Not to be a killjoy, but, just because it's wet doesn't mean that it's interesting to anybody but hard-core paleontologists, in a practical sense.

Sorry, no. No Jurassic Park. Even if dinosaurs cells were preserved in a cryogenic freezer for 70 million years, solar radiation would have destroyed the DNA to an extent that no animal could be reproduced from those cells. Seriously - I worked in a biorepository that used liquid nitrogen to preserve tissue samples, and solar (and to a lesser extent, earthly) radiation, was found to be an issue over the course of a thousand years in terms of DNA preservation. Compare 70 million to one thousand. Not to be a killjoy, but, just because it's wet doesn't mean that it's interesting to anybody but hard-core paleontologists, in a practical sense.

I don't know you, so this is not an attack on what you have said; however, I am confused about your absoluteness regarding no useable DNA. They have already replicated some prehistoric insects that were traped in pertified tree sap.

I can confirm what Zyncoid said. I heard it from an expert on the topic once during a lecture.

I don't doubt it. I'm not excited over the possibility of cloning T-rex or anything. Just excited over soft tissue being found. It likely won't give us much information, it won't radically alter what we know about T-Rex, but it is amazing. And it gives hope that more may be found in the future.

Think about it. We could find out if the dinosaurs had feathers or not.
Or how about to solve the cold-blooded or warm-blooded issue? Could there be a way to use these cells to determine that?

It's just so freaking amazing. Jurassic Park can go to hell.


Mac,

Never heard of that. Sure you're not victim to an urban legend?

With enough genetic modification, I can make you something indistinguishable from a T-rex using a monitor lizard and a chicken. It would just take one hell of a lot of work and many failures before you get something worthwhile.

With enough genetic modification, I can make you something indistinguishable from a T-rex using a monitor lizard and a chicken.

No, you cannot. :)

(Not unless you're talking about the plot line for a sci-fi movie script you're writing.)<P>

I dont mean -I- can. I mean it is theoretically possible given a couple decades more tech and a buttload of scientist man hours. There is no reason you could not.

Someone could make a T-rex like creature if you geneticlly enginered some animal, but it wouldn't really be a T-rex.

Now this new finding of actual T-rex parts that are not just rock is something much better.

Make something close enough and nobody will ever know the difference. As there are no living T-rex around and mostly bones as evidence that they ever existed, the details are foggy. Get it close enough and for all intents and purposes it will be a T-rex.

Mac,

Never heard of that. Sure you're not victim to an urban legend?

NO. Its been a few years so I am not sure but it would have been Discovery or Scientific American or something like that.

I haven't found the actual article but I did run across this.

********************** Extract *************************
http://www.sciamdigital.com/browse.cfm?sequencenameCHAR=item2&methodnameCHAR=resource_getitembrowse&interfacenameCHAR=browse.cfm&ISSUEID_CHAR=B33B4E4E-EB85-46E0-9C00-1E88AEBD8CB&ARTICLEID_CHAR=75C1E9BD-1139-4F37-8249-3D99F97A22F
Ancient DNA; November 1993; by Pääbo; 7 page(s)

Most of our knowledge of the molecular processes that underlie evolutionary change is based on the comparison of the genes of living species. From such differences, molecular evolutionists infer the historical changes that gave rise to presentday DNA sequences. Yet these studies are tentative in nature. Unlike the remains of animals and plants, DNA molecules do not leave impressions in rock. Biologists therefore despaired of ever being able to check their conclusions against the historical record, as paleontologists do.
But in the past decade scientists have learned that ancient DNA, though degraded, sometimes survives the ravages of time, and molecular biologists have perfected methods of amplifying these trace amounts of ancient DNA. Workers have so far used DNA from bone and soft tissues to establish reliable sequences for seven extinct mammals. The oldest was the woolly mammoth--a frozen carcass that was found in the permafrost of Siberia. More such studies are under way, including efforts to decode DNA extracted from insects entombed in amber millions of years ago. We can thus look forward to learning much more about the genetic relations among extinct species.
************************************************** **


************* Link **********************
http://www.mhrc.net/ancientDNA.htm

A mixture of claims
*****************************************

****************** Extract ******************************
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1466744.stm
The Wits/Queensland researchers say they have taken rigorous precautions to minimise contamination. Ken Dusza, a graduate student in Professor Loy's laboratory, says methods have advanced so much in recent years that it is quite feasible that hominid DNA could survive for more than a million years.
************************************************** ****


Most information (over 98%, seems to agree that the DNA degrades) but there are some claims being made for having resurected 500 million year old bacterium, etc.

If you can look at the remnants of many strands of what was originally identical DNA (like in multiple cells), you should be able to figure out what the complete original looked like. Its like taking many photographs and burning them in random patches. You can lay whats left over each other so that the intact parts complete the picture.

Mammoths were frozen. That is different then being fossilized.

Some interesting links MacM.

I'm not sure how the science works. But if soft tissue can stick around for 70 million years we should change our precepts about whats possible..

In principle we will will be able to create every species that ever existed and even species that never existed using every possible combination of DNA.

In principle, maybe. In reality, uhm not.

I'm not sure how the science works. But if soft tissue can stick around for 70 million years we should change our precepts about whats possible..
As I read it is fossilized, but only in a molecular state, i.e., that is a fossil which has a simmilar structure as the original, but it's now made from entirely different components, i.e., it's not really flesh anymore, it's a fossil that feels like flesh, a replica.

I don't know you, so this is not an attack on what you have said; however, I am confused about your absoluteness regarding no useable DNA. They have already replicated some prehistoric insects that were traped in pertified tree sap.

PCR amplification of ancient DNA is routine for comparative analysis, but even for short sequences, faulty. Now if we scale it up to a genome-wide scale...

I've never heard of the replication of prehistoric insects. Do you have a citation? If true, that would be really cool.

I can confirm what Zyncoid said. I heard it from an expert on the topic once during a lecture.

Ugh. Even though you're right, don't take 'experts' for their word on anything. If you're a scientist, it's your job to be critical.

Ugh. Even though you're right, don't take 'experts' for their word on anything. If you're a scientist, it's your job to be critical.

That was the critical view that was being expressed.