Scientists just found soft tissue inside a dinosaur fossil. Here's why that's exciting.

Vox.com ^ | June 9, 2015 | Joseph Stromberg

[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.

[editor-surveyor]

.
>> “Both statements are invalid since carbon dating is only used to about 50,000 years.” <<

.
Yes, obviously.

The 65 million was picked out of their ass for sure.
.

[mbj]

Wow.

[Tramonto]

The devil must of put the soft tissue in the fossils to test the science community’s commitment to Darwin.

[Advil000]

Which is where I was leading the argument.

It’s more absurd to assume they got lucky and found actual soft tissue in a 65 million year old sample rather than to assume something might be wrong with their method of assigning age to it.

[ApplegateRanch]

my tissues aren’t soft now.

---

Well, aren’t you the lucky one. Just wait a few more decades...

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks, it’s a big keyword by now.

[Eric Pode of Croydon]

It's a chess analogy, describes giving up the strongest piece on the board to save the weakest.

YEC's drive people away from belief in God by telling them they must also accept belief in something that's demonstrably absurd.

[skepsel]

Which ‘pseudo scientists’ are you ranting of and what is the “whole ‘billions and billions’ lash-up” ?

Seems such a waste of time for the ‘pseudo-scientists’ to have spent all that time and money earning advanced science degrees and performing years of lab and field work when they could have just gone to Bible college instead.

[Popman]

Thank you...never heard that term used before...

[Tucker39]

Have a nice eternity.

[Red Badger]

Imagine finding a bone from a real dinosaur, or even a frozen carcass under the tundra or buried in the Antarctic!.............................

[editor-surveyor]

.
You simply specialize in inane replies, don’t you.

When does Mom get home?
.

[ThanhPhero]

Where? I didn’t see any theropod stuff in that picture.

[To Hell With Poverty]

Sounds like Godzilla to me!

[huldah1776]

crocks never “raise themselves up” either!

[Yollopoliuhqui]

>>I’ve often wondered that myself. Nobody has ever seen a dragon, but every culture has them, even the Aztecs.....................

Gotcher dragon myth right here:

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_asteroids_comets63.htm

[Red Badger]

I don’t buy it. In order for a civilization, such as the Aztecs or Babylonians to project onto an astronomical occurrence the likeness of a ‘dragon’, there first had to be a ‘dragon’ for them to use as a template.........................

[editor-surveyor]

.
Isn’t it amazing how people squirm around rather than believe the simple truth!
.

[editor-surveyor]

.
Damn you’re gullible!
.

[colorado tanker]

Don’t even think about trying to clone one . . .