bigsky
03-13-2006, 01:28 PM
Doyouthinkhesaurus?
Feb 23rd 2006
>From The Economist print edition
"There is more to studying dinosaurs than just digging up bones
THE days when fossil-hunters bestrode the globe, smashing ancient beliefs with blows from their geological hammers, are long gone. But fossils still fascinate. And a session at last week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science devoted entirely to the beasts showed that no group of fossils is more fascinating than the dinosaurs.
The presiding genius of modern dinosaurology, and co-organiser of the session, is Jack Horner, of Montana State University, on whom the character of Alan Grant in “Jurassic Park” is modelled. Dr Horner and his disciples have changed the image of dinosaurs from the lumbering, pea-brained swamp-dwellers of 19th–century dioramas to the alert, co-operative hunters of Michael Crichton's story by clever interpretation of the details of fossil bones. Indeed, the session's co-organiser, Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University, has found that there is more than just bone in some fossils. Excitingly, there are also remains of the dinosaurs' flesh and blood.
Dr Horner's trick was to look not just at the fossils, but inside them, by cutting the bones open and studying them under the microscope. This approach has yielded a surprising amount of information about dinosaur life history. For example, bones have growth rings in them, in much the same way that tree trunks do. In modern animals these growth rings are almost always annual, so it is reasonable to assume that those in dinosaur bone are, too. By counting the rings, Dr Horner showed that the herbivorous duckbilled dinosaurs of the Cretaceous became fully grown in seven or eight years. Tyrannosaurus, by contrast, took 20 years and Brontosaurus a full 30 years.
Another piece of Dr Horner's work confirms the theory that modern birds are descended from dinosaurs, for birds and dinosaurs share bony features called marrow tubes that are not found in other reptiles. He has also been able to show, again by comparison with modern birds, which dinosaurs were up and running as soon as they hatched, and which stayed in the nest waiting for their parents to come and feed them."
"pea-brained swamp-dwellers"The Economist has obviously been to North Carolina!
I don't know how you get the rest of the article from the magazine. It goes on to describe how Mary found the 65 million year old soft tissue that contains hemoglobin.
"The disbelief that attended her initial publication—that chemically unaltered soft tissue could survive for more than 65m years—has now been dispelled. She has shown that her fossils react with antibodies to haemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying pigment in red blood cells. They also react with antibodies to collagen, the main structural protein in cartilage, suggesting that it is present, too.
She has, she believes, found both blood cells and bone cells that are more or less intact, as well as other soft-tissue features such as fibrous collagen matrices. Sadly, the cells are unlikely to contain intact dinosaur DNA—the idea that fired Dr Crichton's imagination when he penned “Jurassic Park”. But a decade ago no one would have believed that any biomolecule would be preserved from the Cretaceous. It is amazing what you can find if you look for it."
Feb 23rd 2006
>From The Economist print edition
"There is more to studying dinosaurs than just digging up bones
THE days when fossil-hunters bestrode the globe, smashing ancient beliefs with blows from their geological hammers, are long gone. But fossils still fascinate. And a session at last week's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science devoted entirely to the beasts showed that no group of fossils is more fascinating than the dinosaurs.
The presiding genius of modern dinosaurology, and co-organiser of the session, is Jack Horner, of Montana State University, on whom the character of Alan Grant in “Jurassic Park” is modelled. Dr Horner and his disciples have changed the image of dinosaurs from the lumbering, pea-brained swamp-dwellers of 19th–century dioramas to the alert, co-operative hunters of Michael Crichton's story by clever interpretation of the details of fossil bones. Indeed, the session's co-organiser, Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University, has found that there is more than just bone in some fossils. Excitingly, there are also remains of the dinosaurs' flesh and blood.
Dr Horner's trick was to look not just at the fossils, but inside them, by cutting the bones open and studying them under the microscope. This approach has yielded a surprising amount of information about dinosaur life history. For example, bones have growth rings in them, in much the same way that tree trunks do. In modern animals these growth rings are almost always annual, so it is reasonable to assume that those in dinosaur bone are, too. By counting the rings, Dr Horner showed that the herbivorous duckbilled dinosaurs of the Cretaceous became fully grown in seven or eight years. Tyrannosaurus, by contrast, took 20 years and Brontosaurus a full 30 years.
Another piece of Dr Horner's work confirms the theory that modern birds are descended from dinosaurs, for birds and dinosaurs share bony features called marrow tubes that are not found in other reptiles. He has also been able to show, again by comparison with modern birds, which dinosaurs were up and running as soon as they hatched, and which stayed in the nest waiting for their parents to come and feed them."
"pea-brained swamp-dwellers"The Economist has obviously been to North Carolina!
I don't know how you get the rest of the article from the magazine. It goes on to describe how Mary found the 65 million year old soft tissue that contains hemoglobin.
"The disbelief that attended her initial publication—that chemically unaltered soft tissue could survive for more than 65m years—has now been dispelled. She has shown that her fossils react with antibodies to haemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying pigment in red blood cells. They also react with antibodies to collagen, the main structural protein in cartilage, suggesting that it is present, too.
She has, she believes, found both blood cells and bone cells that are more or less intact, as well as other soft-tissue features such as fibrous collagen matrices. Sadly, the cells are unlikely to contain intact dinosaur DNA—the idea that fired Dr Crichton's imagination when he penned “Jurassic Park”. But a decade ago no one would have believed that any biomolecule would be preserved from the Cretaceous. It is amazing what you can find if you look for it."
