Dinosaur soft tissue explanation?

[nlsherrill]

I have read/heard about this for awhile now and I haven't really read any good explanations for this. Does anyone know how exactly soft tissue could be preserved for so long?....assuming it is indeed >60 million years old?

[Evo]

I have read/heard about this for awhile now and I haven't really read any good explanations for this. Does anyone know how exactly soft tissue could be preserved for so long?....assuming it is indeed >60 million years old?Please post a link to your source, I have heard nothing about preserved dinosaur soft tissue. Do you mean imprints of the tissue?

[bobze]

I have read/heard about this for awhile now and I haven't really read any good explanations for this. Does anyone know how exactly soft tissue could be preserved for so long?....assuming it is indeed >60 million years old?

Assuming your talking about the T-rex (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/03/0324_050324_trexsofttissue.html) "soft-tissue", as described here, it isn't really soft tissue. The media pretty much (as normal on scientific press releases) dropped the ball.

It was a mineral matrix, that once dissolved in acid and treated with lots of chemicals yielded a matrix reminiscent of soft-tissue--Enough so, to give us a little insight to dinosaur tissue. Its not like the media seems to imply that it was a chunk of "flesh".

[madcat8000]

I think nlsherrill is refering to an article in this months Scientific American, page 62, "Blood From Stone" - Mary H. Schweitzer The thrust of the article is they believe that they are microscopic organic(soft) remains like osteocytes, red blood cells, and various fibers. It is written very cautiously never saying they have anything specific, while beating you over the head with evidence. It appears to me that they just cant get enough money to do a proper study on it and are trying to stir up interest to aquire said money.

[nlsherrill]

Well I have seen it talked about on a few websites, and my universities web page not to long ago, but I think this is the same story.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/ns/technology_and_science-science/

I didn't realize that was so long ago...As the page seems to indicate, the scientists took pictures of what appears to be some "meat" of the dinosaur femur.

Anyway, I just haven't read any cold hard facts about the finds and was curious to see if they had explained why the soft tissue was preserved, which was previously thought to be impossible.

[Evo]

Interesting, they removed the minerals.

Schweitzer said that after removing the minerals from the specimen, the remaining tissues were soft and transparent and could be manipulated with instruments.

The bone matrix was stretchy and flexible, she said. Also, there were long structures like blood vessels. What appeared to be individual cells were visible.

She did not know if they were blood cells. "They are little round cells," Schweitzer said.

She likened the process to placing a chicken bone in vinegar. The minerals will dissolve, leaving the soft tissues.

[madcat8000]

Student, if you are saying that the structers inside are just very well fossilized then what explains the fact that they were able to get antibody reactions to them.

[Ophiolite]

Please post a link to your source, I have heard nothing about preserved dinosaur soft tissue. Do you mean imprints of the tissue?

There is this 2007 Science article (http://www.sciencemag.org/content/316/5822/277.abstract): "Analyses of Soft Tissue from Tyrannosaurus rex Suggest the Presence of Protein".

A National Geographic article (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070412-dino-tissues.html)reports on that study and a further one that yielded the antibody reactions referred to by madcat8000.

McNamara et al report (http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1680/423.abstract) in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, October 14 2009, on very well preserved tissue from an 18 myr old salamander and conclude that "Our results provide unequivocal evidence that high-fidelity organic preservation of extremely labile tissues is not only feasible, but likely to be common."

And we have this:

Schweitzer, M. et al " Biomolecular Characterization and Protein Sequences of the Campanian Hadrosaur B. canadensis", Science 1 May 2009

Abstract
Molecular preservation in non-avian dinosaurs is controversial. We present multiple lines of evidence that endogenous proteinaceous material is preserved in bone fragments and soft tissues from an 80-million-year-old Campanian hadrosaur, Brachylophosaurus canadensis [Museum of the Rockies (MOR) 2598]. Microstructural and immunological data are consistent with preservation of multiple bone matrix and vessel proteins, and phylogenetic analyses of Brachylophosaurus collagen sequenced by mass spectrometry robustly support the bird-dinosaur clade, consistent with an endogenous source for these collagen peptides. These data complement earlier results from Tyrannosaurus rex (MOR 1125) and confirm that molecular preservation in Cretaceous dinosaurs is not a unique event.

It seems likely that this will become an expanding field for two reasons: 1) analytical techniques are now sophisticated enough to work with this material; 2) researchers will now actively seek out examples.