The 70-million-year-old T. rex thighbone that was unearthed in Montana was too far from a road and too big for the helicopter to lift. So, the team of paleontologists cut it in half. And, to their surprise, inside the bone was soft tissue: blood vessels and cells preserved in deep layers of bone. Because soft tissue decays quickly, samples of dinosaur soft tissue have never before been recovered. “This is something I never dreamed I’d see”, says paleontologist Mary Scheitzer. The soft tissue sample will make it possible to more closely compare dinosaurs to modern living things. If fragments of DNA are found, they will reveal a lot of new genetic information. Link.
March 24, 2005
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