A dinosaur bone buried for 80 million years has yielded a mix of proteins and microstructures resembling cells. The finding is important because it should resolve doubts about a previous report that also claimed to have extracted dino tissue from fossils.
Proteins such as collagen are far more durable than DNA, but they had not been expected to last the 65 million years since the dinosaurs died out. So palaeontologist Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University attracted wide attention when she reported finding first soft tissue and later collagen from a Tyrannosaurus rex leg bone that was intact until it was broken during excavation.
Yet critics said the extraordinary claim required extraordinary evidence, and asked for protein sequences, better handling of samples to prevent contamination, and confirmation analyses from other laboratories.
So Schweitzer took a look at the pristine leg bone of a plant-eating hadrosaur that had been encased in sandstone for 80 million years. She and colleagues exhaustively tested the sample, sequencing the proteins they found with a new and better mass spectrometer and sending samples to two other labs for verification.
Now they report recovering not just collagen – which conveys little evolutionary information because it is the same in almost all animals – but also haemoglobin, elastin and laminin, as well as cell-like structures resembling blood and bone cells. The proteins should reveal more about dinosaur evolution because they vary much more between species.
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Meet Matilda, or Diamantinasaurus matildae (above, in an artist’s depiction), one of two giant, plant-eating dinosaur species recently discovered in Australia.
The fossilized creature, which measures almost 60 feet (18 meters) long, was unearthed in the northeastern outback town of Winton, Queensland, in 2006. A third new species, a carnivorous dinosaur dubbed Banjo, was also found at the site. (Watch a video about Banjo’s discovery.)
The dinosaurs were named after famed Australian poet Banjo Paterson and characters from his works.
The 98-million-year-old Matilda is the first new sauropod to be described in Australia in 75 years, said team member Scott Hocknull, a paleontologist and senior curator of geosciences at Queensland Museum in Brisbane.
The fossils, described recently in the journal PLoS One, were unveiled at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum of Natural History in Winton on July 3, 2009.
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September 19th, 2009
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A missing link in the evolution of the front claw of living scorpions and horseshoe crabs was identified with the discovery of a 390 million-year-old fossil by researchers at Yale and the University of Bonn, Germany.
The specimen, named Schinderhannes bartelsi, was found fossilized in slate from a quarry near Bundenbach in Germany, a site that yields spectacularly durable pyrite-preserved fossils — findings collectively known as the Hunsrück Slate. The Hunsrück Slate has previously produced some of the most valuable clues to understanding the evolution of arthropods – including early shrimp-like forms, a scorpion and sea spiders as well as the ancient arthropods trilobites.
The fossil’s head section has large bulbous eyes, a circular mouth opening and a pair of segmented, opposable appendages with spines projecting inward along their length. The trunk section is made up of 12 segments, each with small appendages, and a long tail spine. Between the head and trunk, there is a pair of large triangular wing-like limbs — that likely propelled the creature like a swimming penguin, according to Briggs. Unlike its ancestors from the Cambrian period, which reached three feet in length, Schinderhannes is only about 4 inches long.
This finding caps almost 20 years of study by Briggs on the Hunsrück Slate. “Sadly, the quarry from which this fabulous material comes has closed for economic reasons, so the only additional specimens that are going to appear now are items that are already in collectors’ hands and that may not have been fully prepared or realized for what they are,” said Briggs.
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September 4th, 2009
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China says that they have found the world’s largest dinosaur fossil at eastern Shandong province.
Scientists had recovered some 7,600 fossils from a 300 metre (980 ft) long pit near Zhucheng city over the past seven months, Xinhua news agency said.
The discovered also found another 20 metre hadrosaurus fossil that could be another record for hadrosaurus size.
Zhucheng, known locally as China’s “Dinosaur City,” has produced dinosaur fossils in some 30 sites.
About Zhucheng
Zhucheng is a county-level city in Weifang prefecture, Shandong Province, China. It has a population of 1.06 million.
Zhucheng has been an important site for dinosaur excavation since 1960. The local community is known to use calcium rich fossils for traditional village remedies used to treat muscle cramps and other minor ailments.
The world’s largest hadrosaurid fossil was found in Zhucheng in the 1980s and is on display in the local museum.
Scientists have collected more than 50 metric tons (55 short tons) of fossils since 1960. The city has also been a place for smuggling of dinosaur bones; in January 2008, Australia returned hundreds of kilograms of Chinese dinosaur fossils, including dinosaur fossil eggs. These fossils were recovered during a sting operation carried out on warehouses and cargo containers.
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About Zhucheng