Scientist find soft tissue of T-Rex

And also its metabolism may not be suited to any food humans could produce for it.

I don't think they'll turn their nose up to cows.. pigs... cats... dogs... deer... zebra... and lets not forget lamb

Dr. Schweitzer revealed this at last years SVP meeting. I beleive she is also the researcher who found haemoglobin proteins in previous fossils. Its not uncommon to be able to find various proteins in fossils, the proteins apparently can last for a long time. This however, isn't just proteins, its tissue and DNA. I was wondering how long it would take for this to get into the mainstream news. Schweitzer's great, great researcher, nice lady, well resepcted.

She used to work with the rather well known Jack Horner at Montana. He is actually M. Chricton's basis for the jurassic park character 'Alan Grant', so, its a double reference to that movie.

I can tell ya, people were danged excited and pretty stunned when she gave that talk!

Originally posted by Klepto
Maybe I am missing something.. what would be the major benefit of bringing back a T-Rex, they are incredibly large and I would bet pretty deadly. It is something could not release into the wild.

Money would be the major benefit, If they could make something like a real Jurassic park they would stand to make a huge income. I personally would pay up too $10,000 to visit such a park and see a live T-rex. I mean just look at how much money the movie Jurrassic park made.

There would also a huge scientific benefits though I doubt they would be the driving force behind them doing something like this. Bones can only tell us so much and couldnt compare to the information you could learn from a living creature.

But I doubt they will be getting a usable DNA out of this right now to make a clone we need pretty near perfect DNA. They are not even sure if they could clone a Tazmanian Tiger from a preserved fetus as the DNA has already been damaged. It was also in a jar not in the ground for some 65 million years.

Maybe in 50 years they could reconstruct the DNA from bits and pieces or find some they couldnt before.

Originally posted by electric

Originally posted by Quest
Well, we can;t clone it with current technology... nothing around could carry it to term. Need surogate mothers for cloning.

Dinosaurs lay eggs don't they?

Anyways, my main concern about cloning a dinosaur would be that its genetic code would not be suitable to deal modern bacteria. And also its metabolism may not be suited to any food humans could produce for it.

Dinosaurs do indeed lay eggs, some of the larger ones about the size of a football. They largest egg we have is a ostrich egg which is what we would have to use to make a clone.

As for the bacteria I dont think anyone could answer that we just dont have enough information. About them eating food I dont think that would be a problem as the plant eaters at least made due with plants that had about as much nutrition as newspaper. There was not even any grass back then something like hay that our modern animals eat would be so much better then anything they had. They made due with some poor quality food so I think better plant food would not be a problem from a metabolic standpoint.

Dino's USED to lay eggs.
None have been laid recently.

If it ever goes that far, it seems a crocodillian egg might serve the purpose as surrogate. Have fossilized T-rex eggs ever been recovered? How big would the egg need to be?

Originally posted by spacedoubt
If it ever goes that far, it seems a crocodillian egg might serve the purpose as surrogate. Have fossilized T-rex eggs ever been recovered? How big would the egg need to be?

Not too big, I guess, but bigger than we're used to. They grow pretty fast when young, I would figure.

10 grand for a visit? Hell, I'll apply to be an intern there, MAKE some money while seeing a T-Rex.

Personally, I am much more interested in isolating the causes of the preservation of soft tissues for 70 MILLION years!!!

That is much more important for medicine, than the answers to questions of dinosaur biology.

Doing the math in my head, DNA should be totally worthless in a dinosaur specimen. The reason is that cosmic radiation breaks the weak bonds that hold the DNA spiral together. Cosmic radiation, even in the infinitesmal doses that hit the earth each day, would totally disrupt DNA in a few million years, much less 70 mil!!!!.


Oh yeah, pass the A - 1 sauce, please.

I just read about this in the Los Angeles Times this morning. Pretty exciting to say the least. However, I don't think well be cloning a T-Rex anytime soon. It would be neat to see one in person but it would be kept at some kind of research facility or zoo. An animal like that shouldn't be kept in captivity. I wouldn't want it out in the wild either.

Bottom line, an animal such as this shouldn't be cloned.

[edit on 25-3-2005 by _Anubis_]

I think science really needs to come up with an explanation for how dinosaur dna, or soft tissue for that matter, survived intact for 70 million years.

Otherwise, score one for creationism.

Biblical scholars hypothesize that the pre-deluvian world had a water canopy that significantly reduced the surface pressure on the earth, kind of like being under water increases buoyancy, allowing the dinosaurs to grow to behemoth size. It would be impossible under todays atmospheric conditions for anything of that size to survive on land. The shear weight of the animal would crush its heart and lungs. Thats why the largest creatures on earth today live in the oceans. The world Noah encountered after the flood was vastly different from before, and the dinosaurs he brought on the ark died quickly - so say the creationists.

Me, I'm still straddling the fence, with inconsistencies piling up on both sides.



[edit on 25-3-2005 by Icarus Rising]

would t-rex taste like chicken or beef?
just think of the amount of meat on a critter that size.

Originally posted by drogo
would t-rex taste like chicken or beef?

Thats easy they would taste like Chicken since a T-rex is more closely related to birds then any other living animal.

Plus everything seems to taste like chicken

Dinosaurs still lay eggs. I consider birds just as a branch of dinosaurs.

Originally posted by Icarus Rising
I think science really needs to come up with an explanation for how dinosaur dna, or soft tissue for that matter, survived intact for 70 million years.

Otherwise, score one for creationism.

Biblical scholars hypothesize that the pre-deluvian world had a water canopy that significantly reduced the surface pressure on the earth, kind of like being under water increases buoyancy, allowing the dinosaurs to grow to behemoth size. It would be impossible under todays atmospheric conditions for anything of that size to survive on land. The shear weight of the animal would crush its heart and lungs. Thats why the largest creatures on earth today live in the oceans. The world Noah encountered after the flood was vastly different from before, and the dinosaurs he brought on the ark died quickly - so say the creationists.

Me, I'm still straddling the fence, with inconsistencies piling up on both sides.

[edit on 25-3-2005 by Icarus Rising]

If we're barely understanding how DNA/skin cells last this long, what makes you think that biblical "scholars" are right? Science is ever evolving. The beginnings of life are written in the Bible. There's more room for expansion in the world of science than there is for religion. I think there's more important questions that religion has failed to answer over the centuries. If there's one thing that man should have learned throughout the ages its that you can't rely on devine interventions or religion to provide you with answers.

These so called "inconsistencies" are part of the learning process. Do you really expect the science community to get it all right in one shot? Maybe there's some sort of reaction that takes place in decaying matter that, under the right conditions, can preserve skin and other biological material. Im sure there is all kinds of factors such as wheather conditions, soil makeup, biological makeup of dinosaurs, etc.

Think of all the possibilities before you go about stating that creationism is the right answer. And maybe you should let the qualified scientists make judgements before you arrive at your concrete conclusion.

Me, I'm still straddling the fence, with inconsistencies piling up on both sides (creation and evolution). You call that a concrete conclusion?

An earlier post also pointed out that soft tissue and DNA aren't supposed to be around after 70 million years due to radioactive decay. I'm just stating that this is a new challenge for science to explain how it happened.

And if they can't, score one for creation.

I'm not a creationist per se, I merely passed on what I've heard from the creationist viewpoint.

Personally, I think that both viewpoints (creation and evolution) have elements of truth to them. The timeframes just seem whack to me.

But I'll let a real scientist figure that out for me.

Is that ok with you Anubis?

Originally posted by spacedoubt
Have fossilized T-rex eggs ever been recovered? How big would the egg need to be?

Viviparous dinosaurs? and egg sites
and
T. rex eggs and brooding
T. bataar egg clarification
T. bataar eggs...again

These are from the DML archive. The Dinosaur Mailing List is an email listserv populated by amateurs, students, and professionally employed dinosaur paleontologists.

Here are some links to the topic being discused on the archive also, which might prove informative.

T-Rex soft tissue?
and
T. rex Blood Vessels

I think that there might also be discussion from several months ago when the discovery was first announced.


[edit on 25-3-2005 by Nygdan]

Originally posted by ShadowXIX

Thats easy they would taste like Chicken

since a T-rex is more closely related to birds then any other living animal

Actually, if you are familiar with Larry Witmer's Extant Phylogenetic Bracket' method then there is something to this. The hypothesis is that if we have a descendant of a group, and a member of a closley related sister group or even ancestral group, then you can hypothesize about the characteristics of the extinct group inbetween. Dinosaurs are nicely bracketed by crocodiles and birds.

Birds generally taste like chicken. Alligators are said to taste like chicken. SO dinosuars probably really did taste like chicken!

Originally posted by Nygdan
Alligators are said to taste like chicken.

Yes, like a rubber chicken!

Originally posted by Klepto
Maybe I am missing something.. what would be the major benefit of bringing back a T-Rex, they are incredibly large and I would bet pretty deadly. It is something could not release into the wild.

This would give me (and a lot of other people) a reason to go to the zoo.

This would give me (and a lot of other people) a reason to go to the zoo.

Originally posted by Icarus Rising
Personally, I think that both viewpoints (creation and evolution) have elements of truth to them. The timeframes just seem whack to me.

But I'll let a real scientist figure that out for me.

Yep it's all about the timeframe. This is probably something we'll never know for sure about.

Like most dating techniques, even carbon dating has it's flaws.

And the bible gives no dates.

So.....

From what I understand, Bible scholars have tried to add up all the generations in the Bible with the stated ages of parents at the birth of their children, and the stated ages at death for individuals, to come up with the number of years since creation. Then a new genealogy is discovered and they have to re-calculate. Last I heard, creation was something short of 6000 years ago.

So we go from 6000 years to 70 million years, or 4.5 billion years for the age of the universe, and I go whoa! that is a major discrepancy!

Somebody has got it wrong. Or, maybe, nobody has got it right, yet.