Posted on 06/09/2015 12:22:24 PM PDT by ETL
Dinosaur fossils, it was long thought, are simple objects. The fossilization process leaves the overall shape of a dinosaur's bones intact, but all the microscopic structures inside them the blood cells, connective fibers, and other sorts of soft tissue inevitably decay over time.
The photo above, from a new study published today in Nature Communications and led by Sergio Bertazzo of Imperial College London, shows an extremely zoomed-in view of a 75-million-year-old theropod claw, taken from the London Natural History Museum's collection. When researchers scraped tiny pieces off the fossil and looked at them under an electron microscope, they found tiny structures that look a lot like collagen fibers present in our own ligaments, tendons, and bones.
In other dinosaur fossils, the researchers found features that resemble red blood cells. Tests showed that they have a similar chemical composition to the blood of an emu (a bird thought to be a relatively close relative to dinosaurs).
The idea that dinosaur fossils might harbor soft tissue first surfaced about a decade ago, when paleontologist Mary Schweitzer found evidence of blood cells preserved inside T. rex fossils.
But what's so exciting about this new study is that the fossils used, unlike Schweitzer's, aren't particularly well-preserved. Susannah Maidment, one of the paleontologists who worked on the paper, called them "crap" specimens. If they have preserved soft tissue inside them, it could be a sign that thousands of other fossils in museum collections do too.
love Occam’s razor. It is much easier to believe they existed than not. Loved the movie “DragonHeart,” too.
If dragons or dinosaurs existed alongside humans, why dont we find their remains alongside human remains?
maybe they ate all the neanderthals.
First, there is no "current scientific paradigm" which prevents some well protected organic material from lasting indefinitely.
Second, it's still not 100% certain just exactly what that material is -- 65 myo dino remains or something growing there more recently.
Schaef21: "It seems to me that the most logical explanation (and simplest....Occams Razor) is that it is not that old....."
Hardly, because we well know what "not that old" looks like.
Over the years dozens & dozens of frozen Mammoth carcasses have been found, along with other Pleistocene megafauna, dated by radiometric methods from 10,000 to 50,000 years old.
Some even have recoverable DNA, giving people (so far) wild ideas about "resurrecting" those beasts.
That's what "not that old" really looks like.
By stark contrast, these alleged "dino soft tissues" are greatly degraded, to the point where it's still not certain exactly what's there.
Further, unlike "not that old" mammoths, dinosaur fossils are all found in geological strata always dated to Cretacious times or before.
Bottom line: it's too soon to say for certain, but the scientific probability of that "dino soft tissue" being "not that old" is near zero. Indeed, if it did somehow turn out to be "not that old", then Occam's Razor says it would have to come from some other type critter, living in dino remains.
http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/science-soft-tissue-dinosaur-bones-02893.html
With todays gravity they would collapse and die of starvation/dehydration.
That’s because dinosaur fossils exist all around the world and humans have been picking them up forever.
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