Scientists Get Rare Look at Dinosaur Soft Tissue - Fossil May Shed New Light on the Creatures
- From: rst0wxyz <rst0wxyz@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Dec 2007 14:18:26 -0800 (PST)
Scientists Get Rare Look at Dinosaur Soft Tissue
Fossil May Shed New Light on the Creatures
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2007/12/03/ST2007120300591.html
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 3, 2007; Page A01
A high school student hunting fossils in the badlands of his native
North Dakota discovered an extremely rare mummified dinosaur that
includes not just bones but also seldom seen fossilized soft tissue
such as skin and muscles, scientists will announce today.
The 25-foot-long hadrosaur found by Tyler Lyson in an ancient river
flood plain in the dinosaur-rich Hell Creek Formation is apparently
the most complete and best preserved of the half-dozen mummified
dinosaurs unearthed since early in the last century, they said.
Much scientific investigation remains to be done, and no peer-reviewed
studies of it have yet been published, but the discovery appears to be
yielding tantalizing new clues about the size, body mechanics and
appearance of the reptilian beasts that ruled the Earth millions of
years ago, said paleontologists studying the specimen.
"He looks like a blow-up dinosaur in some parts," said Phillip
Manning, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in England
who is leading the inquiry. "When you actually look at the detail of
the skin, the scales themselves are three dimensional. . . . The arm
is breathtaking. It's a three-dimensional arm, you can shake the
dinosaur by the hand. It just defies logic that such a remarkable
specimen could preserve."
Although it is described as "mummified," the 65 million-year-old
duckbilled dinosaur that scientists have named Dakota bears no
similarity to the leather-skinned human mummies retrieved from ancient
tombs in Egypt. Time long ago transformed Dakota's soft tissue into
mineralized rock, preserving it for the ages.
"It's a dinosaur that was turned into stone, essentially," said Lyson,
24, now a graduate student in paleontology at Yale University.
A lifelong dinosaur enthusiast, Lyson has been strapping on a backpack
and hunting (and finding) dinosaur bones in the arid outback of his
home state ever since elementary school. He even started an
organization, the Marmarth Research Foundation ( http://www.mrfdigs.com),
in his home town of Marmarth, N.D., to support education and research
on dinosaur fossils.
On an expedition in 1999, Lyson noticed some bone fragments at the
base of a hill and traced their origin to a point farther up. There he
spotted three vertebrae from the tail of a hadrosaur, a common plant
eater that traveled in herds and is sometimes described as the cow of
the Cretaceous Period. A pretty good find, Lyson thought, but not
outstanding. He marked the location in his notes and moved on.
But in 2004, after leading a team of amateur researchers in an
excavation that did not pan out, a disappointed Lyson turned his
attention again to the vertebrae he had left behind five years
before.
"I didn't have very high hopes for the animal," Lyson said. "I figured
the excavation would take two or three weeks, I'd have a hadrosaur
tail, it would make a nice museum piece, but scientifically it would
not be that impressive."
After finding a small piece of fossilized skin, however, Lyson knew he
was onto something special. A friend at the dig knew Manning, and
within months, Lyson and he had agreed to pursue the project.
They completed the excavation in summer 2006, removing a 10-ton block
containing most of Dakota's body and a four-ton block with most of the
tail. These were later whittled down to about four tons and less than
a ton, respectively. Researchers are studying them with common tools
such as tweezers but also with massive CT scanners at a facility near
Los Angeles formerly used by NASA and Boeing.
Already, the scientists say they have made fascinating discoveries.
The skin around the tail and on large swaths of the body appears
generally in its original shape rather than squashed flat against the
bones, giving researchers a three-dimensional look at Dakota. They can
see both legs and arms and the chest cavity. The head and neck are not
visible, but the researchers think they may be folded within the body
block. They do not know whether the internal organs are there, nor
have they determined the creature's sex, although they refer to it as
a male.
The scientists have felt the scales near Dakota's elbow, noticing that
they vary in size -- an indication, perhaps, of changes in skin color,
texture or flexibility. They found a fleshy pad on its palm, an
indication that it did not permanently walk on all fours, and keratin
hooves on its feet.
The areas of uncollapsed skin have aided researchers in reconstructing
Dakota's muscle sizes and allowed them to see, for instance, that a
hadrosaur's backside was about 25 percent larger than previously
thought. They estimate that Dakota could run as fast as 28 mph, faster
than a Tyrannosaurus rex, the top predator of the time.
"It's almost as if we've geochemically preserved this dinosaur
laboratory, and we've only just unlocked the door," said geochemist
Roy Wogelius of the University of Manchester.
How Dakota perished is a mystery, but his death came near a river, and
his body, curled in the fetal position, was quickly covered in water,
wet sand and other sediment. The carcass was visited by at least one
scavenger, a crocodile of the era that, Manning said, may have become
stuck while feeding and died. Scientists found its preserved arm
poking through Dakota's chest.
"It's a fossil within a fossil," Manning said. "We were over the moon
when we found it."
Over time, weak acids in the sediment probably helped form the
siderite, or iron carbonate, that encased both bodies and preserved
them for millions of years, the researchers said.
Three experts said Dakota sounds like a potentially significant find,
but they cautioned that there is no way to know until scientific
studies are published. One expressed disappointment that the National
Geographic Channel already plans to air a documentary about the case,
"Dino Autopsy," Sunday, and that the team has already written two
laymen's books (one for children) about it.
"It's never been published scientifically, and so it's all just
hearsay," said paleontologist Jack Horner of Montana State University.
"The job of a scientist is to be skeptical until evidence is
presented. . . . We try not to put stuff out to the public before it's
been peer-reviewed. Otherwise you get all kinds of crazy stuff out
there."
The Dakota researchers have one scientific paper in peer-review now
and two others nearly ready for submission, said Lyson, who expects
one or more to be published in the next few months. He said the
documentary merely walks viewers through the process of the science
and shows them the excitement of it.
"We don't have many conclusions in there because that wasn't really
the point of it," said Lyson, who plans to display Dakota someday in a
nonprofit museum he is creating in Marmarth. "I totally agree that
before we go out and say, 'Oh look, this is the greatest dinosaur
ever, and it has showed us this and showed us that,' we have to prove
it to the scientific community. We're still waiting on a lot of
that."
.
- Prev by Date: Hey!! half-wit, lose screws, monkey see monkey do abum_chump, Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee?
- Next by Date: Re: Is the exported Chinese food really that unsafe?
- Previous by thread: Hey!! half-wit, lose screws, monkey see monkey do abum_chump, Are You Smarter Than a Chimpanzee?
- Next by thread: FROM A CALIFORNIA SCHOOL TEACHER
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
