Reconstruction of the Jehol Biota and the well-preserved specimen of Caudipteryx.
Posted on 09/24/2021 6:06:50 PM PDT by LibWhacker
Reconstruction of the Jehol Biota and the well-preserved specimen of Caudipteryx.
A team of scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and from the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature (STM) has isolated exquisitely preserved cartilage cells in a 125-million-year-old dinosaur from Northeast China that contain nuclei with remnants of organic molecules and chromatin. The study was published in Communications Biology on Sept. 24.
The dinosaur, called Caudipteryx, was a small peacock-sized omnivore with long tail feathers. It roamed the shores of the shallow lakes of the Jehol Biota in Liaoning province during the Early Cretaceous.
"Geological data has accumulated over the years and shown that fossil preservation in the Jehol Biota was exceptional due to fine volcanic ashes that entombed the carcasses and preserved them down to the cellular level," said Li Zhiheng, Associate Professor at IVPP and a co-author of this study.
The scientists extracted a piece of distal articular cartilage from the right femur of this specimen, decalcified it, and used different microscopy and chemical methods to analyze it. They realized that all the cells had been mineralized by silicification after the death of the animal. This silicification is most likely what allowed the excellent preservation of these cells.
They also discovered two main types of cells: cells that were healthy at the time of fossilization, and not-so-healthy cells that were porous and fossilized while in the process of dying. "It is possible that these cells were already dying even before the animal died," said Alida Bailleul, Associate Professor at IVPP and the corresponding author of this study.
Cell death is a process that occurs naturally throughout the lives of all animals. But being able to place a fossilized cell into a specific spot within the cell cycle is quite new in paleontology. This is one of the objectives of the IVPP scientists: to improve cellular imagery in fossils.
Furthermore, the team isolated some cells and stained them with a chemical used in biological laboratories worldwide. This purple chemical, called hematoxylin, is known to bind to the nuclei of cells. After staining the dinosaur material, one dinosaur cell showed a purple nucleus with some darker purple threads. This means the 125-million-year-old dinosaur cell has a nucleus so well-preserved that it retains some original biomolecules and threads of chromatin.
Chromatin within the cells of all living organisms on Earth is made of tightly packed DNA molecules. The results of this study thus provide preliminary data suggesting that remnants of original dinosaur DNA may still be preserved. But to precisely test this, the team needs to do a lot more work and use chemical methods that are much more refined than the staining they used here.
"Let's be honest, we are obviously interested in fossilized cell nuclei because this is where most of the DNA should be if DNA was preserved," said Alida Bailleul. Last year she published another study reporting exceptional nuclear and biomolecule preservation in the cartilage cells of a dinosaur from Montana." So, we have good preliminary data, very exciting data, but we are just starting to understand cellular biochemistry in very old fossils. At this point, we need to work more."
The team insists they need to do many more analyses and even develop new methods to understand the processes that may allow biomolecule preservation in dinosaur cells, because no one has ever successfully sequenced any dinosaur DNA. In the ancient DNA community, sequencing methods are used to confirm if ancient DNA is preserved in fossils. So far, these methods have only worked for young fossils (not much older than about one million years), but they have never worked for dinosaur material. Dinosaurs are considered way too old to retain any DNA. However, the chemical data collected by the scientists from IVPP and STM suggest otherwise.
Even though more data must be collected, this study definitely shows that 125-million-year old fossil dinosaur cells cannot be considered 100% rock. They are not completely "stonified." Instead, they still contain remnants of organic molecules. Now, it is vital to figure out precisely what these molecules are, whether they retain any biological information and remnants of DNA.
Yes...but how did the recent “dragons” get fossilized in rock which are thought to be millions of years old? Maybe the rock wasn’t formed that long ago? Big conundrum. Some ways to explain it could that the rock dating technique has flaws...or biomolecules are preserved by unknown chemical means. Some suggest that the molecules found are microorganisms derived, which contaminated the fossil...
The textbooks may have to be rewritten again...
Freegards.
Maybe the rock isn’t millions of years old but more like hundreds of thousands of years old. Or, cartilege lasts a lot longer than scientists thought.
Chinese scientists going through preliminary steps to create their own Jurassic Park.
So there was a carbon-hydrogen bond or did the dinosaurs eat kale?
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They were not sissy kale eaters! They ate spinach like Popeye!
They seem to keep finding more fossils with cellular intact components.
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Then again maybe ‘scientists’ are wrong about how long organic material can last to begin with. Simpler explanation. So there is no ‘conundrum’.
“Wuhan Park is frightening in the dark
All the dinosaurs are running wild...”
Thanks LibWhacker.
That's not an impediment on FR...................
That’s why every civilization has had a version of a ‘dragon’ in their mythology.....................
I agree. Sunken Civ has a file on that. Dragons are more than mere mythology, such as the Crocodile-Panther painted on pottery.
Komodo Dragons being the largest land reptiles left in isolated areas, suggest that other, larger species could have lived to relatively recent times.
The Komodo Dragon was only ‘discovered’ by Europeans in 1910!.................
The largest reptiles to survive the asteroid impact of 65 million years ago, as far as I can see they all ate carrion. Plenty of that food left over after the conflagration.
During the Middle Ages, tales of struggle with dragons probably arose due to the presence of "horse eels" found *and hunted/killed) in the larger streams of the British Isles, and possibly elsewhere in western Europe. These critters are now rare, probably now (recently?) extinct, other than in Loch Ness.
In classical antiquity, dragon myths come from fossil forms remembered in Scythian folklore. The dino fossils were visible in the cliff face somewhere in Central Asia, I think even the location has been rediscovered in modern times. Adrienne Mayor's "The First Fossil Hunters" is the reference on that.
Dragon myths in other places with no solid folkloric connection with the two above do tend to be ancient, but refer to dragons in the sky, hence, likely large comets which spent periods visible in the sky, or large messy bolides coming down, breaking up, and appearing to be at least two entities struggling in battle.
Well, at least it was ‘well done’..............................
...Bones helped to put ancient peoples in touch with the past and to vivify their mythology for them, but so did the recreation of these myths spatially. As it turns out, providing an area for reliving Roman myths was something not uncommon in antiquity or today...
This fact was particularly true for the private collections held by Roman emperors, which were often displayed in gardens and grottos. The so-called antrum Cyclopis (Atrium of the Cyclops) became a common feature installed in Roman villas in the imperial period. It was usually a watery grotto with sculptures of Polyphemus, the cyclops from Homer's Odyssey, and other scenes from Odysseus' travels...
Even into late antiquity and the early middle ages, the alleged bones of mythical creatures drew crowds. The emperor Constantine had a fascination with them. Saint Jerome states that the early 4th century ruler travelled to Antioch just to see the bones of a satyr that had been preserved in salt. The 6th century Byzantine historian Procopius notes that he stopped off in the Italian city of Benevento in order to see the 27-inch tusks of the Calydonian Boar famously battled by Greek heroes. As Mayor notes in her book, these were likely the tusks of woolly mammoths and not those of the mythic boar--despite what the signs at Benevento told visitors.Roman Emperors, Monster Bones, And The Early History Of Fossil Hunting | Sarah Bond | Forbes | June 29, 2016
[snip] The earliest documented case of a valuable fossil appropriated by a stronger state took place in 560 BC. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, the city of Sparta stole a giant skeleton they identified as the giant hero Orestes. The skeleton (most likely that of a mastodon or mammoth) had been discovered in Tegea, a town that Sparta sought to dominate. Spartan soldiers absconded with the skeleton and enshrined the bones in their own city. Possession of Orestes’ remains was a brilliant propaganda move and the power that Sparta reaped from the fossil coup eventually led to the Peloponnesian War. [/snip]
Fossil Appropriations Past and Present
by Adrienne Mayor
https://web.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Mayorwhosebones.pdf
-and-
Giants (Greek mythology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giants_(Greek_mythology)
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