Preserved flesh of 2-million-year-old human ancestor found?

His jaw must have dropped when he examined the material before him. It was a rare find. So rare, in fact, that, if what he was looking at was really what he thought it could be, it would be the first and only evidence of soft body tissue from an early hominin ever discovered.......soft tissue from an early (possible) pre-human ancestor nearly 2 million years old. The find was part of the remains uncovered by paleoanthropologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand and his colleagues when they discovered fossils of Australopithecus sediba, a possible precursor to our earliest human ancestors (the Homo genus) in the Malapa cave system of South Africa.

"I was standing with Lee in his lab looking at what might be australopithecine skin" said Dr. John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist with the University of Wisconsin - Madison. "I'm not talking about an imprint of skin, like a skin cast. These appear to be thinly layered, possibly mineralized tissue"[1].

The possible mineralized skin tissue was found on top of the skull of the fossil remains of what was identified as a young boy, and on the jaw near the chin of a fossilized woman. Scientists suggest that such surviving evidence is possible because the remains of the individuals found at Malapa were rapidly deposited and entombed in a thick layer of sand and clay through natural causes in a cave or shaft at or soon after their deaths.

Preserved flesh of 2-million-year-old human ancestors found?
Populated Archaeology ^ | Wednesday, September 21, 2011 | San McSmearan
Posted on Monday, September 26, 2011 10:20:26 PM by Sunnk

This reminds me of the photo of an elderly lady in a similar string bikini, walking down the street. Her skin was all wrinkled, worst that this woman’s, but her breasts were held out straight and firm.

The caption on the photo was something like you can tell when there are breast implants. If anyone can find that photo, post it. It will make you sick but it proves a point, about something.

Now, when Helen Thomas takes a shower, the tiles fall off the wall, the curtain melts, and mice jump down the drain to commit suicide.

Hello.

Here is a good start for an introduction to the many recent soft tissue finds in rock strata.

http://www.icr.org/article/dinosaur-soft-tissue-issue-here-stay/

I personally did not get any skin and run a test to date it, but I did look at the relevant literature.

PS, for twenty five years, I’ve been doing work in a field of science that represents a transitional regime between classical and statistical fluid dynamics.

Fishtank, Ph.D.

Manning, P. L. et al. 2009. Mineralized soft-tissue structure and chemistry in a mummified hadrosaur from the Hell Creek Formation, North Dakota (USA). Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Published online before print, July 1, 2009.

Mineralized soft-tissue structure and chemistry in a mummified hadrosaur from the Hell Creek Formation, North Dakota (USA)

Phillip L. Manning1,2,
Peter M. Morris1,3,
Adam McMahon4,
Emrys Jones4,
Andy Gize1,
Joe H. S. Macquaker1,
George Wolff7,
Anu Thompson7,
Jim Marshall7,
Kevin G. Taylor8,
Tyler Lyson9,
Simon Gaskell5,
Onrapak Reamtong5,
William I. Sellers6,
Bart E. van Dongen1,3,
Mike Buckley1,10 and
Roy A. Wogelius1,3,*

+ Author Affiliations

1
School of Earth, Atmospheric, and Environmental Sciences
, University of Manchester,
Manchester
, UK
2
The Manchester Museum
, University of Manchester,
Manchester
, UK
3
Williamson Research Centre for Molecular Environmental Science
, University of Manchester,
Manchester
, UK
4
Wolfson Molecular Imaging Centre
, University of Manchester,
Manchester
, UK
5
Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre
, University of Manchester,
Manchester
, UK
6
Faculty of Life Sciences
, University of Manchester,
Manchester
, UK
7
Earth and Ocean Sciences
, University of Liverpool,
Liverpool
, UK
8
Environmental and Geographical Sciences
, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
9
Geology and Geophysics Department
, Yale University, USA
10
Department of Biology
, University of York, UK

*Author for correspondence (roy.wogelius@manchester.ac.uk).

Abstract

An extremely well-preserved dinosaur (Cf. Edmontosaurus sp.) found in the Hell Creek Formation (Upper Cretaceous, North Dakota) retains soft-tissue replacement structures and associated organic compounds. Mineral cements precipitated in the skin apparently follow original cell boundaries, partially preserving epidermis microstructure. Infrared and electron microprobe images of ossified tendon clearly show preserved mineral zonation, with silica and trapped carbon dioxide forming thin linings on Haversian canals within apatite. Furthermore, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) of materials recovered from the skin and terminal ungual phalanx suggests the presence of compounds containing amide groups. Amino acid composition analyses of the mineralized skin envelope clearly differ from the surrounding matrix; however, intact proteins could not be obtained using protein mass spectrometry. The presence of endogenously derived organics from the skin was further demonstrated by pyrolysis gas chromatography mass spectrometry (Py-GCMS), indicating survival and presence of macromolecules that were in part aliphatic (see the electronic supplementary material).

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