4 ms·

Sometimes soft tissue does survive: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinosaur-shocker-115306469/ http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/dinos

• kyberias 9y ago
  I think it's not fair to say that "soft tissue survives". These stories are all about bone. When you look at a piece of fossilized dinosaur bone, it's all rock. What the first article (from 2006) discusses is the work of Mary Schweitzer who has published several papers claiming that she has been able to extract _proteins_ from the fossilized _bone_: specifically collagen. Others imagine seeing "red blood cell type of structures". It's mainly one person, Mary Schweitzer, publishing these claims. Schweitzer's 2007 article with Asara was called into question e.g. by Pevzner et al. in 2008 and others. The mineralization of bone may ofcourse leave imprints of microscopic tissue structures in the remaining rock. I wouldn't call it soft tissue surviving. Let me offer a link with some quotes. http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/biotech/sdut-dinosaur-cells-protein-preserved-2015jun09-htmlstory.html http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/biotech/sdut-di... "UC San Diego computational biologist Pavel Pevzner, a prominent skeptic, said the study doesn't change anything. Pevzner said these claims run up against a great body of research that has failed to find soft tissue components in much younger tissues. Moreover, he said previous criticism that one study's results were tainted by contamination has not been adequately addressed." "One of the original claims made, that hemoglobin fragments purportedly from T. rex closely resembled those of ostriches, is likely the result of contamination with the lab's earlier work with ostriches, Pevzner said. No subsequent studies have ruled out that possibility. "'The big elephant in the room of this research is actually an ostrich,' Pevzner said. 'There is no hemoglobin reported from much younger (fossil) samples, like cave bears, mastodons, or anything else. In samples 10,000 years old, you don't find hemoglobin. But they found hemoglobin ... It has become a textbook example of how science should not be made.'