http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17060-first-dino-blood-extracted-from-ancient-bone.html

A dinosaur bone buried for 80 million years has yielded a mix of proteins and microstructures resembling cells. The finding is important because it should resolve doubts about a previous report that also claimed to have extracted dino tissue from fossils.

Proteins such as collagen are far more durable than DNA, but they had not been expected to last the 65 million years since the dinosaurs died out. So palaeontologist Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University attracted wide attention when she reported finding first soft tissue and later collagen from a Tyrannosaurus rex leg bone that was intact until it was broken during excavation.

Yet critics said the extraordinary claim required extraordinary evidence, and asked for protein sequences, better handling of samples to prevent contamination, and confirmation analyses from other laboratories.

So Schweitzer took a look at the pristine leg bone of a plant-eating hadrosaur that had been encased in sandstone for 80 million years. She and colleagues exhaustively tested the sample, sequencing the proteins they found with a new and better mass spectrometer and sending samples to two other labs for verification.

Now they report recovering not just collagen – which conveys little evolutionary information because it is the same in almost all animals – but also haemoglobin, elastin and laminin, as well as cell-like structures resembling blood and bone cells. The proteins should reveal more about dinosaur evolution because they vary much more between species.

5/7/2009 4:51:40 PM

now it's only a matter of time before a t-rex is storming san diego

5/7/2009 4:54:14 PM

[old], highly contested, and still not independently reproduced

^ It's not DNA containing tissue

[Edited on May 7, 2009 at 4:58 PM. Reason : more info]

5/7/2009 4:56:37 PM

hahaha at the comments....

Quote :

"God must have created the La Brea Tar Pits after the flood. The dinosaurs were too big to fit on Noah's ark, so there wouldn't have been any left by then. Or else he was just trying to fool the evil Darwinists. He is more devious than you can imagine. In fact He is so good at covering His tracks that you could almost imagine He never existed at all..."

5/7/2009 5:01:03 PM

i love how people say [old] when its not linked on TWW

5/7/2009 5:05:47 PM

^^^Post links

5/7/2009 5:11:23 PM

^ Read her papers in Science and then look at all the Technical comments. Her work may prove true, but it's still has a long way to go. Also, unless they can explain the significance of the work in relation to the fossilization process, the work is of little scientific value.

e.g.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;324/5927/626?maxtoshow=&HITS=30&hits=30&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=Schweitzer+&andorexacttitle=or&andorexacttitleabs=or&andorexactfulltext=or&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&fdate=7/1/2002&tdate=5/31/2009&resourcetype=HWCIT,HWELTR
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;316/5822/280?maxtoshow=&HITS=30&hits=30&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=Schweitzer+&andorexacttitle=or&andorexacttitleabs=or&andorexactfulltext=or&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&fdate=7/1/2002&tdate=5/31/2009&resourcetype=HWCIT,HWELTR
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;307/5717/1952?maxtoshow=&HITS=30&hits=30&RESULTFORMAT=&author1=Schweitzer+&andorexacttitle=or&andorexacttitleabs=or&andorexactfulltext=or&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&sortspec=relevance&fdate=7/1/2002&tdate=5/31/2009&resourcetype=HWCIT,HWELTR

[Edited on May 7, 2009 at 5:22 PM. Reason : more info]

5/7/2009 5:20:47 PM

Quote :

"i love how people say [old] when its not linked on TWW"

OLD I ALREADY SAW THAT ON ANOTHER MESSAGE BOARD OMG

5/7/2009 5:23:33 PM

so have they agreed that dinosaurs were warm-blooded yet?

5/7/2009 6:02:33 PM

Dinosaurs are a conspiracy

Life started with Adam and Eve

5/7/2009 6:10:52 PM

one of my good friends just got his PhD in paleo from Mary. She's cool... she will go out and get a beer with you and have Jack Horner in town to visit, etc.

5/8/2009 12:39:38 AM

^^ If you are going to mock Christians then at least get the story right.

5/8/2009 12:41:08 AM

Wasn't this discovery made years ago? I swear I remember reading about this in the Technician when I was still a student.

5/8/2009 2:36:18 AM

see, in science you try to repeat your results to make sure they weren't a fluke.

5/8/2009 6:37:06 AM

Well no crap, but this isn't exactly breaking news. Unless she's found more bones like this and I missed that part.

5/8/2009 7:42:12 AM

yeah, this is crazy [old]...as in, still when i was an undergrad [old]...i remember the notices they put up all over jordan when it happened

5/8/2009 8:44:42 AM

well im glad you made a thread about it

5/8/2009 10:22:24 AM

^ THANK YOU GUNZZ! Wtf people! Who cares if it's "[old]"! Yes, you are probably the only few who care that it's old. I haven't heard about it and would like to. If it's old to you, then why bother to post in the thread and argue about it. Just find another interesting and "new" thread to post in.

5/8/2009 11:18:01 AM

Most of the science findings/articles are [old] to somebody. I had a professor who discovered some old Nordic village in 2004.... in 2008 it was a featured story in the Smithsonian. Weird, cause I never read it but I was at the dentist.

5/8/2009 11:29:46 AM

Where did this absurb notion of only posting a story on a message board, if and only if, no one else has ever seen or made a thread about it? If you think about it, that's a rather unrealistic and insane concept. It's Hitleresk.

5/8/2009 12:11:00 PM

Quote :

"Unless she's found more bones like this and I missed that part."

Quote :

"Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University attracted wide attention when she reported finding first soft tissue and later collagen from a Tyrannosaurus rex leg bone that was intact until it was broken during excavation."

Quote :

"So Schweitzer took a look at the pristine leg bone of a plant-eating hadrosaur that had been encased in sandstone for 80 million years. She and colleagues exhaustively tested the sample, sequencing the proteins they found with a new and better mass spectrometer and sending samples to two other labs for verification."

5/8/2009 12:28:31 PM