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Breaking New Ground With Research on Dinosaur Fossils

Posted on: Wednesday, 30 March 2005, 00:00 CST

A new find by an N.C. State paleontologist isn't quite the stuff of "Jurassic Park," but it's no less fascinating for anyone with even a passing interest in dinosaurs.

Mary Schweitzer, an assistant professor of paleontology with a joint appointment at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, has unsettled conventional wisdom by discovering soft tissue in the leg bone of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex.

"I don't look at dinosaur fossils as rock; I see bone," Schweitzer told Raleigh's News & Observer. Yet, seeing ancient fossils as rock is what paleontologists typically do. As an N.C. State news release about her findings notes, "current theories about fossil preservation hold that organic molecules should not preserve beyond 100,000 years."

So it's even more remarkable that the tissue isolated from the T. rex fossil, found in northeastern Montana, is described as not only "largely intact" but "transparent and pliable," and it contains structures that resemble blood vessels and cells. Schweitzer has found similar vessel- and cell-like structures in other well- preserved fossils, all as old as or older than the T. rex fossil.

John R. Horner, a Montana State University paleontologist who trained Schweitzer and co-authored an article in the March 25 issue of the journal Science with her, is just one of the scientists hailing her findings as an exciting new direction for dinosaur research. "We don't even know what questions to ask yet," Horner told the News & Observer.

Schweitzer's early studies of dinosaur tissue suggest that some fragments of DNA may remain. If so, the traces of genetic material may offer new clues on dinosaurs' relationships to modern-day birds - believed to be more closely related to dinosaurs than any other species. And more opportunities to uncover the mysteries that remain about dinosaurs, including "how and why they were preserved in the first place," she said.

"This was totally unexpected," Schweitzer said of her initial discovery of the T. rex tissue. May her next step yield even more groundbreaking results.

Source: Greensboro News Record

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