Soft tissue in hadrosaur remains

The simplest explanation for the presence of blood vessels and their proteins in these bones is that the dinosaurs were recently and rapidly inundated and preserved, just as one would expect to observe in a world that began thousands rather than millions of years ago.

A North Carolina State University paleontologist has more evidence that soft tissues and original proteins can be preserved over time " even in fossilized remains " in the form of new protein sequence data from an 80 million-year-old hadrosaur, or duck-billed dinosaur.

Dr. Mary Schweitzer, associate professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at NC State with a joint appointment at the N.C. Museum of Natural History, along with colleague Dr. John Asara from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Chris Organ from Harvard University, and a team of researchers from Montana State University, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Matrix Science Ltd. analyzed the hadrosaur samples.

The researchers' findings appear in the May 1 edition of Science.

Schweitzer and Asara had previously used multiple methods to analyze soft tissue recovered from a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus Rex. Mass spectrometry conducted on extracts of T. rex bone supported their theory that the materials were original proteins from the dinosaur.

These papers were controversial, and the team wanted to demonstrate that molecular preservation of this sort in dinosaurs was not an isolated event. Based upon other studies, they made predictions of the type of environment most likely to favor this preservation, so Schweitzer and students, working with Jack Horner's Museum of the Rockies field crews, went looking for a dinosaur preserved under a lot of sandstone. Using specially designed field methodology, with the aim of avoiding environmental exposure until the fossil was inside the lab, they set aside the femur from a Brachylophosaurus canadensis " a hadrosaurid dinosaur"buried deeply in sandstone in the Judith River formation.

"This particular sample was chosen for study because it met our criteria for burial conditions of rapid burial in deep sandstones," Schweitzer says. "We know the moment the fossil is removed from chemical equilibrium, any organic remains immediately become susceptible to degradation. The more quickly we can get it from the ground to a test tube, the better chance we have of recovering original tissues and molecules."

Preliminary results seemed to confirm their methodology, as Schweitzer found evidence of the same fibrous matrix, transparent, flexible vessels and preserved microstructures she had seen in the T. rex sample in the much older hadrosaur bone. Because of the rapidity of analyses after the bones were removed, the preservation of these dinosaurian components was even better. The samples were examined microscopically via both transmitted light and electron microscopes to confirm that they were consistent in appearance with collagen. They were also tested against antibodies that are known to react with collagen and other proteins.

Next, Schweitzer sent the samples to Asara's lab to be analyzed by a new mass spectrometer, capable of producing sequences with much greater resolution than the one used previously. Mass spectrometry identifies molecules by measuring the mass of the protein fragments, or peptides, that result from breaking apart molecules with specific enzymes. The masses are measured with very high mass accuracy, and then compared with existing databases of proteins to achieve a best fit. In this way, Asara was able to identify eight collagen peptides from the hadrosaur, then confirm the identity of the sequences by comparing them both to synthesized fragments and to modern proteins analyzed under the same conditions. Once sequence data were validated, they were evaluated by Organ who determined that, like T.rex, this dinosaur's protein family tree is closer to that of modern birds than that of alligators.

All results were independently verified by researchers at BIDMC, Montana State University, Harvard University, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, and Matrix Science of London.

The data were consistent with that of the earlier T. rex analysis, confirming that molecular preservation in fossilized remains is not an isolated event. "We used improved methodology with better instrumentation, did more experiments and had the results verified by other independent labs," Schweitzer says. "These data not only build upon what we got from the T. rex, they take the research even further."

Schweitzer hopes that this finding will lead to more work by other scientists on these ancient molecules.

"I'm hoping in the future we can use this work as a jumping off point to look for other proteins that are more species-specific than collagen. It will give us much clearer insight into all sorts of evolutionary questions."


###

Note to Editors: An abstract of the paper follows.

"Biomolecular Characterization and Protein Sequences of the Campanian Hadrosaur Brachylophosaurus canadensis"
Authors: Mary H. Schweitzer, North Carolina State University and the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences; John M. Asara, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, et al.
Published: May 1, 2009 in Science

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 (MOR 2598). Microstructural and immunological data are consistent with preservation of multiple bone matrix and vessel proteins, and phylogenetic analyses of Brachylophosaur 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.

The American Museum of Natural History is inviting human visitors to "come and meet your relatives."

The show, "Extreme Mammals," opens Saturday, featuring an assortment of strange and wondrous creatures, both extinct and living.

Specimens will range from the egg-laying platypus to the so-called walking whale, a type of giant sea mammal that developed legs and feet.

Curators note that despite the vast differences among mammals, "we all still have a few things in common " like three tiny bones in our middle ear."

Horner, a paleontologist at the Museum of the Rockies, excavated the fossil femur of the dinosaur's hind leg two years ago. It was a hadrosaur named Brachylophosaurus canadensis, and the single bone had lain "untouched and protected" under 23 feet of hard sandstone, Schweitzer's team said.

i don't know, i saw this documentary once, it was called jurassic park

Quote:

Hadrosaur Soft Tissues Another Blow to Long-Ages Myth
by Brian Thomas, M.S.*

(...many paragraphs of contrived propaganda...)

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

The simplest explanation for the presence of blood vessels and their proteins in these bones is that the dinosaurs were recently and rapidly inundated and preserved, just as one would expect to observe in a world that began thousands rather than millions of years ago.

Youre an idiot.

The simplest explanation for the presence of blood vessels and their proteins in these bones is that the dinosaurs were recently and rapidly inundated and preserved, just as one would expect to observe in a world that began thousands rather than millions of years ago.

Youre an idiot.

The age of the Earth as a collection of rocks is relatively uninteresting; the age of our living world is the real question and it plainly is short enough to rule out evolution as anything other than an ideological doctrine for yuppies.

Tho Gunga 's claim that this planet is less than 1,000,000 years old
may not be plausible, your characterization of him is off topic, and ad hominem.
U choose to kill the messenger and the horse he rode in on.

Tho Gunga 's claim that this planet is less than 1,000,000 years old
may not be plausible, your characterization of him is off topic, and ad hominem.
U choose to kill the messenger and the horse he rode in on.

Im reprehensible aint I? I oughta be ignored.

I gotta be me, so when gunga continues spewing
his irrational fact free ****, some of us usually would call him out .

Ad Hominems get his attention frequently. Since gunga has ignored everyone else,
Im all thats left (of a select group of scholars). I must carry on the work, "They" would want me to.

Gunga is stuck with a conclusion that has no basis in fact.

His attachment to the soft tissue issue is a feeble attempt to call into question the data re: the ages of the earth and life. He is, however, stuck in a corner in which none of any facts that would otherwise support his belief, are there. A fact basis for his beliefs just doesnt exist. Hes gone to try to support Kelvins calculations of the earths age based upon cooling rates. The "Bob BAss" character (Im not familiar with him so I looked him up), appears to be some Creationist "scholar" who likes to write from the hip and publishes crap on the web. Hes been highlighted by several internet folks as being "A nut", (A characterization that I am unable to either affirm or deny). The age of the earth has been suitably established by isotopic, landmass, and geologic data to be comfortably residing about 4.5 B y, with the initiation of the Archean at about 3.8 By. http://www.geosociety.org/science/timescale/timescl.pdf (You can dowload a geo time scale at that site.

Theres no equivocation from science, there is no disagreement among the bulk of scientists re: the age of the earth or the methods used to measure it.
Only te Cretinists have a vested interest in preserving a Biblical view of the earth and thats truly a shame. Defiant ignorance is, to me, only worth ad hominems.

(And, I may get myself ignored by this clown )

The age of hadrosaur remains doesn't really tell us much
about the age of the planet

but, then, neither do the dating schemes which f-man believes in
and the people who tell us the Earth is 4B years old are the same people
who go on telling us that hadrosaurs died out 70M years ago
which is plainly ridiculous in the light of the new evidence.

Bob Bass once redid Lord Kelvin's heat equations for our own
planet WITH a maximum possible figure for radioactive elements
included and got an upper bound of around 200M years and recent
studies tend to confirm that.

The age of the Earth as a collection of rocks is relatively uninteresting;

the age of our living world is the real question and it plainly is short enough
to rule out evolution as anything other than an ideological doctrine for yuppies.

(And, I may get myself ignored by this clown )