U.S. scientists have found bones of a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex that contains soft tissue
Paleontologists at North Carolina State University said they have isolated soft tissue from the femur of the T. rex that is not only largely intact, but it also is still transparent and pliable, and microscopic interior structures resembling blood vessels and even cells are present.
In a paper published in the March 25 edition of the journal Science, the scientists describe how their removal of minerals from the fossilized bone actually left behind stretchy bone matrix material that included blood vessels, bone-building cells and other recognizable organic features.
Also, when the team compared the dinosaur tissues with that of living birds, they found significant similarities. In both samples, transparent branching blood vessels were present and many of the small microstructures in the T. rex sample displayed the same appearance as the blood and bone cells from a sample from an ostrich.
The scientists said they then duplicated their findings with three other well-preserved dinosaur specimens, one 80-million-year-old hadrosaur and two 65-million-year-old tyrannosaurs. All of these specimens preserved vessels, cell-like structures, or flexible matrix that resembled bone collagen from modern specimens.
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