New research challenges dinosaur tissue survival theory

by Rich Bowden - Jul 30 2008, 23:13

Doubt has been cast on claims by scientists that material found in the thighbone of a tyrannosaurus rex in 2005 was dinosaur tissue that had somehow survived to the present day.

The world of paleontology was turned on its head three years ago when a team led by paleontologist Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University announced they had found remnants of blood vessels from dinosaur fossils unearthed at Hell Creek in Montana.

The discovery was one of the biggest claims in scientific history as paleontologists believed that any such evidence should have disappeared many millions of years ago.

However, new research, led by Tom Burke of the Burke Museum of Natural History, has found the material to be far more mundane than previously thought. 

According to the group's report in the journal PLoS One, the remnants actually amounted to little more than modern day bacterial slime, which had gathered on the inside of the dinosaur's thigh bone. Carbon dating found the bacterial remnants to date from as recently as only sixty years ago.

"Bacteria are nowhere near as exciting as soft tissues," said lead author and paleontologist Thomas Burke of the findings. "We have to go, though, where the science leads us."

However, Schweitzer has disputed the claims put forward by Burke, saying her team's original hypothesis that the structures are at least partly preserved dinosaur tissue are correct.

"The idea that biofilms are completely and solely responsible for the origin or source of the structures we reported is not supported," Schweitzer wrote in an e-mail statement.

She said her team had considered, and ruled out, the possibility that such bacterial biofilms were responsible for the material.

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