T. Rex Soft Tissue Found Preserved

[Guest solius symbiosus]

What is the low down Fruitbat?

Hillary Mayell

for National Geographic News

March 24, 2005

A Tyrannosaurus rex fossil has yielded what appear to be the only preserved soft tissues ever recovered from a dinosaur. Taken from a 70-million-year-old thighbone, the structures look like the blood vessels, cells, and proteins involved in bone formation.

Most fossils preserve an organism's hard tissues, such as shell or bone. Finding preserved soft tissue is unheard of in a dinosaur-age specimen.

"To my knowledge, preservation to this extent—where you still have original flexibility and transparency—has not been noted in dinosaurs before, so we're pretty excited by the find," said Mary H. Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh.

The findings may provide new insights into dinosaur evolution, physiology, and biochemistry. They could also increase our understanding of extinct life and change how scientists think about the fossilization process.

"Finding these tissues in dinosaurs changes the way we think about fossilization, because our theories of how fossils are preserved don't allow for this [soft-tissue preservation]," Schweitzer said.

Uncovering T. Rex

For three years scientists from the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, Montana, excavated the T. rex from sandstone at the base of the nearby Hell Creek formation. The dinosaur was relatively small and around 18 years old when it died.

"The dinosaur was under an incredible amount of rock," said Jack Horner, a curator of paleontology at the museum. "When it was collected, the specimen was very far away from a road, and everything had to be done by helicopter.

"The team made a plaster jacket to get part of the fossil out, and it was too big for the helicopter to lift. And so we had to take the fossil apart.

"In so doing, we had to break a thighbone in two pieces. When we did that, it allowed [schweitzer] to get samples out of the middle of the specimen. You don't see that in most excavations, because every effort is made to keep the fossil intact," said Horner, a co-author of the study.

A certain amount of serendipity lead to the discovery.

Because the leg bone was deliberately broken in the field, no preservatives were added. As a result, the soft tissues were not contaminated.

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[Guest Nicholas]

Incredible find!, great posting. I really want to hear more about this.. *does more research*

[Guest solius symbiosus]

I'm thinking Fruitbat would be the one to fill us in on this. I think that, I remember that, Dr. Horner is his GA. Though,IDK.

[Roz]

I think that it is Bob, cause he goes to school there.

[Guest solius symbiosus]

^Probably so, I thought that I remember someone on the board was a grad student there.

[Boesse]

Hey guys,

*Technically* I'll be a grad student here at MSU under Jim Schmitt, who's a sedimentary geologist. I'll be researching the taphonomy and depositional environments associated with marine vertebrate fossils (i.e. Where do marine vertebrates occur, how do they occur etc, which roughly translates to: where to dig for shark teeth).

Anyway, I have Jack for a class right now. Currently, I'm an undergradutate student under Dave Varricchio (who discovered/published Oryctodromeus, the burrowing dinosaur). Dave was also the one who discovered Suchomimus on Paul Sereno's expedition to Nijer. Oh, ya, and the complete-ish skull of Carcharodontosaurus from Morocco.

In any event, I'll be officially graduating a week from today.

Bobby