Scientists recover T. rex soft tissue
70-million-year-old fossil yields preserved blood vessels(Click Pic to read MSNBC.COM story)
Excerpts from Interview with
Professor Mary H. Schweitzer
North Carolina State University
(timed to videos above)
1:25 It flies in the face of everything that we understand about how tissues and cells degrade. Its not something that anyone of us could ever predict or hope for.
2:49 It is the first appearance of t-rex so therefore its... geologically its the oldest t-rex on record.
4:45 Like I said, a lot of our science doesn't allow for this. All of the chemistry and all of the molecular breakdown experiments that we've done don't allow for this. So if this material turns out to be actual remnants of the dinosaur then yes, I think we will have to do some, umm, certainly re-thinking of some of the basics of the model of fossilization.
5:16 It just doesn't seem possible. But yes, you can actually take the vessels and they do have internal components and so you can take a probe and kind of squeeze those things out into solution and the vessels are fine. Its just... I can't explain it to be honest. I just can't.