It was a fossil. It says so in the quote. “During microscopic examination of the fossilized remains”.
Almost the entirety of the bone had been mineralized, or to be accurate, permineralized. It was only once they broke it open did they find traces of bone matrix and proteins locked inside.
So it was a fossil.
Also, that quote isn’t even referring to the T-Rex that got the acid bath. It’s from the the one in 1990 that was thinly sliced. The one that the veterinary pathologist picked up on.
The T.Rex that got the acid bath, Bob, yielded up something of particular interest. The presence of a medullary bone, which is something found on modern birds. It’s a calcium-rich structure they create on certain bones before they breed. Once they start producing eggs, they draw on the calcium in the medullary bones to create the shells. After comparing these samples to that of modern ostrich and emu, they have nearly identical structures! That’s pretty cool.
Which is why these discoveries are so exciting. It’s possible that many of the predictions made by the theory of evolution that were previously untestable, can now be tested like in the example above.
My cow; you’re goodusername under a second acct. That’s frowned upon.
TOL, if you have the time & inclination, could you check the two users listed above? I believe with near 100% certainty they are the same individual. Goodusername posted to me quite a bit, until I got fed up with certain aspects of his posting style. At that moment, as if by magic, Swing_Ladder suddenly appeared, with the explanation that he/she, while just signing up, was a “long time lurker”.
Swing_Ladder took up exactly where goodusername had left off. He/she posted only to this thread, only to me, only stuff goodusername had been posting, and most telling, he/she posted it all EXACTLY the same way/in same style as goodusername. The odds of this being two different people are astronomical. Please do whatever you think best; thank you in advance.