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Dinosaur:T-rex thigh tissue


Amonia-X

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Hey guys, A couple of days ago Paleontologists had found a T-rex thigh bone. In this thigh bone was some tissue. Well, thats by far the most biggest fossil find in history to be recorded. But the questions surfaced just as fast as the big discovery. So my objective of this thread is .... Do you think that we should clone this piece of tissue to see what a T-Rex really looks like or should we just preserve it and study little by little and never really clone it. (Also there might be whole cells in this tissue just for the FYI) Here is the actual report:

WASHINGTON - A 70-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex fossil dug out of a hunk of sandstone has yielded soft tissue, including blood vessels and perhaps even whole cells, UA.SA. researchers reported on Thursday.Paleontologists forced to break the creature's massive thighbone to get it on a helicopter found not a solid piece of fossilized bone, but instead something looking a bit less like a rock.

When they got it into a lab and chemically removed the hard minerals, they found what looked like blood vessels, bone cells and perhaps even blood cells.

"They are transparent, they are flexible," said Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and Montana State University, who conducted the study.

She said the vessels were flexible and in some cases their contents could be squeezed out.

"The microstructures that look like cells are preserved in every way," added Schweitzer, whose findings were published in the journal Science.

"Preservation of this extent, where you still have this flexibility and transparency, has never been seen in a dinosaur before." Feathers, hair and fossilized egg contents yes, but not truly soft tissue.

Studying the soft tissues may help answer many questions about dinosaurs. Were they cold-blooded like reptiles, warm-blooded like mammals, or somewhere in-between? How are they related to living animals?

"If we can isolate certain proteins, then perhaps we can address the issue of the physiology of the dinosaur," Schweitzer said.

Of course, the big question is whether it will be possible to see dinosaur DNA. "We don't know yet. We are doing a lot in the lab now that looks promising," Schweitzer said.

To make sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing, Schweitzer, a biologist by training, compared the Tyrannosaur samples with bone taken from a dead ostrich. She chose an ostrich because birds are thought to be the closest living relatives of dinosaurs and ostriches are big birds.

Both the dinosaur and ostrich blood vessels contained small, reddish brown dots that could be the nuclei of the endothelial cells that line blood vessels.

Taking the minerals out of both ostrich bone and the Tyrannosaur bone — a simple experiment that can be duplicated by anyone using a chicken bone, for example, and vinegar — yielded flexible fibers. Microscopic examination showed what look like bone cells called osteocytes in both.

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This issue is being discussed in another thread. Currently, cloning is out of the question, as there has yet to be DNA found in any of the samples.

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are you sure there was any use-able DNA? or any DNA at all?

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if theres blood or cells theres DNA.. no matter what.... anyway i think it be nice to close dinosaurs but clone them on a isolated tropical island... with no human inhabitants... cause u never know how a 70 million year old t-rex would think

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if theres blood or cells theres DNA.. no matter what.... anyway i think it be nice to close dinosaurs but clone them on a isolated tropical island... with no human inhabitants... cause u never know how a 70 million year old t-rex would think

558993[/snapback]

Oh yes we do:

Mr. Speilberg showed us all...three times!! laugh.gif

- Dark

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um...........its a fossil; meaning, rock. huh.gif

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Blood or cells doesn't mean there is definitely DNA. A cell is composed of many different structures, and after 70 million years, it wouldn't be surprising that the only thing left was the strongest part of it: the cell wall. Everything inside could simply have disintegrated.

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Thats true, plus red blood cells dont even have nucleus and so dont have any DNA. Thats why they need to be made in the bone marrow instead of division like other body cells.

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Even if there WAS viable DNA (which there isn't of course) I highly doubt modern cloning methods would be able to clone one anyway tongue.gif We've had a pickled thylasine for decades now, but nobody's cloning that.

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I'm experiencing déjà vu...

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  • 5 months later...

Even if complete DNA were found, given our current state of technology, it will be many years before we could accomplish a dinosaur clone. The book "The Science of Jurassic Park" explains all of the obstacles.

Fundamentalists are using this find to "prove" that the fossil could not possibly be 70 million years old, but instead, about 6000, when ithe Rex allegedly drowned during the Biblical Flood. But according to some Fundies, at least two T-Rexes survived on Noah's Ark, to explain why "dragons" are mentioned living on the world after the flood! I'm not making this up.

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But wouldn't they have killed all the other animals on the ark? How did Noah lure them in? With corndogs?

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Good question snuffy, I suppost they can say they were helped by angels or something that kept the T-rexes and other carnivores in line.

They use flood-surviving carnosaurs to explain the "dragons" in the Bible, but then fail to explain how/why some of these dragons talk, "sing praises to God" (as it says in Psalms), God riding on their backs, wings, flying, etc. It is quite amusing in that this is perhaps the only place in their entire system of beliefs that they try to be slightly scientific, and state biblical dragons must be dinosaurs, even if it contradicts the Bible.

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I think the bigger discovery was, that it was never killer, but a scavenger. Big Turkey Dino big nostrols prove he rathers smell dead things than alive things. His small arms cant do anything, his big thighs make him have to paste up a attack run. Even with two of them its to big to hunt like a silent predetor. A t-Rex presence is felt by heards of dino birds from miles away, because of its high weight. Like I said T-Rex Biiig Turkey

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Didnt need that much energy!!! Even though he's big he still only walks. Mopes around. Just use your nose and healthy sized eyes

Write complete sentences much? :P

Obviously cloning technology hasn't advanced to the point where we can use incomplete DNA. Scientists are having a hard enough time with it when there is plenty of readily available DNA. Jurassic Park won't be happening anytime soon.

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But wouldn't they have killed all the other animals on the ark? How did Noah lure them in? With corndogs?

LOL that's the funnies thing I've heard all day!! :rofl:

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I think the bigger discovery was, that it was never killer, but a scavenger. Big Turkey Dino big nostrols prove he rathers smell dead things than alive things. His small arms cant do anything, his big thighs make him have to paste up a attack run. Even with two of them its to big to hunt like a silent predetor. A t-Rex presence is felt by heards of dino birds from miles away, because of its high weight. Like I said T-Rex Biiig Turkey

I saw something on this not long ago. They were saying that, like all carnivores today, the line between predator and scavenger is blurred. All carnivores do a bit of both, even hyenas will hunt if it happens to be an exeptionally well-fed year and carcasses are hard to come by, and lions will eat carcasses if it's a bad year and pickings are slim (rough summary).

Anyway, if Rexy walked past a dead triceratops, he wouldn't pass it up. But if he didn't, and passed by one lone triceratops...

Besides which, something I saw once on juvenile rexes. The babies had longer legs and slimmer bodies than their parents, which filled out as they got older. The theory is Baby Rex chased supper to Mommy Rex, who ambushed it, which implies parental care.

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Write complete sentences much? :P

Obviously cloning technology hasn't advanced to the point where we can use incomplete DNA. Scientists are having a hard enough time with it when there is plenty of readily available DNA. Jurassic Park won't be happening anytime soon.

A good question the movie brought up:...why would we want to? :huh:

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A good question the movie brought up:...why would we want to? :huh:

In a quick word- tourism. Just like in the movie. Admit it. I know if there were a place I could see living, breathing dinos, I'd make it a point to check it out.

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As far as adaptations go, Jurrasic Park was pretty good. There were some subtle differences, but for the most part, it was the same. One major difference is Mr. Hammond's personality.

In the book, it was pure proffit. In the movie, it was the delight of seeing children looking at live dinosaurs.

They're thinking about making a fourth, if I'm not mistaken. I read the rumors about it, and it's...well, if they do it right, it's awesome. If they do it not-right, it's...well...

The gist of it (that I heard) is that the pterodactyls are attacking people, and Hammond feels guilty, and wants to make sterile ones that will breed with the other ones, but produce no offspring, ending the species without going on a hunting trip. BUT for obvious reasons, the UN has banned cloning and so forth, and the selling of amber. So Hammond sends this guy to go get the embryos Nedry dropped in the first movie (ten-hour coolent and it lasts three more movies?! Wow!). He gets it, but gets hijacked by the bad guy and offered more money to train T-rex-like (I forget the species, but it was a relative of Rexy) human/dinosaur hybrids.

For those of you taking notes, this is where it goes from awesome to "Well...maybe."

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The "T-Rex is a scavenger" theory is complete BS invented by a huckster/charlatan paleontologist trying to get on TV and sell books.

Yes, the T-Rex has very small arms that can't be used while hunting, but when has that stopped every species of carnivorous bird, that also does alright without any arms at all.

There is no such thing as a mammal, reptile or bird that is a pure scavenger, and especially not in the reptile world. The T-Rex can best be described as an "ambush" predator, much like a crocodile that merely waits in ambush for unwary creatures to come close to the water.

A T-Rex is a "land crocodile" that does exactly the same thing, waiting in ambush in places where other dinos are sure to pass, and then lunging out and dispatching them in their huge jaws. This is really a "no brainer" yet its amazing how people will believe any bit of nonsense if it is in print or on television.

Back to Noah's T-Rex escapade, another fundamentalist christian site recognized this problem and suggests that Noah just brought the T- Rex eggs on board the ark. How he knew he had male and female eggs is not mentioned, nor how he incubated them. They still did not say how Noah got the mother away from her nest long enough to take the eggs either. Maybe it was those corn dogs again. T-Rexes are a real "sucker" for them!

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There is no bait, now, then, or in the future, as deadly effective as the mighty corndog. :tu:

Just out of curiousity, Dracon, where do you get your knowledge? Granted, I'm more a casual observor than an expert on just about everything, but you come with ideas I've never even heard of.

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