Jurassic Geek

This could prove really interesting - and no, not for the reason you first think.

[R]esearchers have recovered 70-million-year-old soft tissue, including what may be blood vessels and cells, from a Tyrannosaurus rex.

If scientists can isolate proteins from the material, they may be able to learn new details of how dinosaurs lived, said lead researcher Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University. ...

The soft tissues were recovered from the thighbone of a T. rex, known as MOR 1125, that was found in a sandstone formation in Montana. The dinosaur was about 18 years old when it died.

The bone was broken when it was removed from the site. Schweitzer and her colleagues then analyzed the material inside the bone. ...

Richard A. Hengst of Purdue University said the finding "opens the door for research into the protein structure of ancient organisms, if nothing else. While we think that nature is conservative in how things are built, this gives scientists an opportunity to observe this at the chemical and cellular level."

There are, of course, some big ifs still here; perhaps the biggest being whether or not they can actually extract any proteins.

Remember, however, that the tissue came from a bone that got broken, something the researchers that find the fossils and the museums that store them try to avoid. So even a partial success might drive others, because the find may well be by no means unique; other recoverable tissue may lie hidden in other fossils. Museums might be willing to risk breaking some less-important fossils to look for tissue inside.

But no, this has nothing to do with Jurassic Park and no, cloned dinosaurs are not just around the corner or even way down at the end of the lane. But it could, you'll pardon the expression, flesh out our knowledge about dinosaurs and how they lived. A fair amount of what is now thought about dinosaurs is extrapolation from the fossils and a little bit of what is now thought is no more than speculation. Examination of this tissue could lead to confirming (or changing) some of those ideas through solid facts. And that would be much cooler than any movie.