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Science 13 April 2007:
Vol. 316. no. 5822, p. 169
DOI: 10.1126/science.316.5822.169g
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Soft tissues have been thought to be rarely if ever preserved in the fossil record, aside from some samples entombed in amber or for a few million years in ice. Recently, a femur of a Tyrannosaurus rex dating to about 67 million years ago was recovered that seemed to preserve internal soft tissues, including blood vessels within its bone. Schweitzer et al. (p. 277) and Asara et al. (p. 280) have further analyzed these tissues, as well as samples from a mastodon, and show that original collagen proteins were preserved. Mass spectrometry was used to recover at least some of the original collagen sequence. Thus, aspects of genetic information can be obtained from select samples of extinct species preserved for tens of millions of years.




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)