Soft tissue and blood from dinosaurs have been found in fossils for the first time ever by paleontologists. The specimens were recovered from the remains of dinosaurs who lived 75 million years ago.
Red blood cells with some of the original components from the ancient animal were found within the fossils. However, no genetic material from the long-extinct animal was recovered from the artifacts, so scientists are unable to breed a new generation of living dinosaurs from DNA, as seen in Jurassic Park.
The fossils used in the study were in such poor condition that the Natural History Museum in London who owned the artifacts allowed the research team to break pieces off eight of the samples. When the team broke into these fossils, thought to be of little interest to palentologists, they discovered fossilized red blood cells and collagen (a main component of connective tissues) among the specimens. The blood cell fossils were discovered within a fossilized claw of a theropod, a group of dinosaurs which include velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus rex.
"We have several indications that the structures we found are consistent with red blood cells and collagen," said Sergio Bertazzo of the Imperial College London.
Utilizing a technique known as mass spectrometry, the team also discovered amino acids and proteins within the fossils, materials which usually fall apart within 4 million years. Researchers are puzzled as to how these traces of blood cells and soft tissue have remained preserved over such a long period of time.
"This pushes that envelope back about 71 million years. We can only speculate, and there's a lot of research that will be needed to explain how this sort of preservation has occurred," Susannah Maidment of the Imperial College London said.
Modern electron microscopes, usually utilized to study living tissue, were used to study these fossils from the Late Cretaceous period. This was the last era of the dinosaurs, which ended 65.5 million years ago when an asteroid the size of Mount Everest came crashing down on Earth, off the coast of modern-day Mexico. This event left behind birds as the sole direct descendants of dinosaurs.
When researchers first saw material that appeared to be blood on the theropod claw, they first thought it was from a human who bled on the sample. Analysis quickly showed the substance did not come from a person.
This discovery also highlights how advanced laboratory techniques make it possible to extract a wealth of information even from low-quality fossils. Information gleaned from such discoveries could answer the question of whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded, cold-blooded, or a combination of the two systems.
Discovery and analysis of fossilized collagen and blood cells from dinosaurs was published in the journal Nature Communications.
