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Surprised by 'T-rex'

Every so often the earth reveals one of its secrets kept hidden for eons. Such was the discovery more than a decade ago of a 5,300-year-old prehistoric hunter mummified in the Alps, or the bumblebee encased in amber for 40-million years. A recent find in remote Montana could be the most fanciful yet - unfossilized tissue of a Tyrannosaurus rex that died 70-million years ago.

T-rex skeletons aren't anything new, but this could be a first. "Tissue preservation of this extent, where you still have this flexibility and transparency, has never been noted in a dinosaur before," said research-team leader Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University.

Some scientists are already dreaming of the possibilities. If the tissue survived its long hibernation inside the dinosaur's leg bone, "then we can potentially extract DNA," wrote Ohio University paleontologist Lawrence Witmer. "It's very exciting." (At this point one imagines the manic leer of Jeff Goldblum's character in the movie Jurassic Park.)

Before we plan any cloned-dinosaur zoos, however, scientists must study the tissue to determine if it holds any genetic clues. One theory, that organic molecules cannot survive more than 100,000 years, apparently has already been disproved. A scan of the tissue with an electron microscope revealed one tidbit: The blood vessels are indistinguishable from those of an ostrich. Maybe dinosaurs do live on as birds, as some scientists have suggested.

While researchers aren't likely to create another T-rex, they could find out if it is genetically similar to any living animals and whether dinosaurs were warm-blooded, unlike other reptiles. There is also the thrill of discovery. In an age of information overload, it is comforting that we can still be delighted by the unexpected.

[Last modified March 27, 2005, 00:33:11]