Posted on 08/15/2015 8:58:12 AM PDT by JimSEA
Twenty years ago Mary Schweitzer found herself the closest that anyone has ever been to a living dinosaur. As she examined a thin slice of a T. Rex bone fragment under a microscope, she realized she was looking at what appeared to be preserved red blood cells- cells which had no place in a 65 million year old fossil. It was the first time that anyone had found evidence that biological material could survive the passage of millions of years and still retain its molecular structure, challenging one of the central beliefs of paleontologists. Proving that what she was seeing had in fact once been dinosaur cells was a tall order, however, and one so outrageous at the time that it was met with considerable hostility from her peers. When Schweitzer first claimed to have found red blood cells in a T. Rex leg bone in 1993, her findings were dismissed by most scientists because it seemed improbable- not to mention downright impossible- that red blood cells could have survived in a 65 million year old bone. Schweitzer recieved her Ph.D. for her work on proving that the cells had originated from once-living dinosaur cells. The controversy was renewed in 2005 when Schweitzer reported finding collagen, a tough, elastic structural protein, in fossilized bones. Since then Schweitzer has found evidence of blood vessels, feather fibers, and osteocytes (specialized bone cells) associated with fossilized dinosaur bones.
uh, no.
nice teeth,
You barely made it this time.
classic!
the Great Lazamataz!
One for each of us. I like it. :-)
;’)
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