Dinosaur Remains Recently Discovered; There Is A Trace Of Tissue, Researchers Believe

A recent report shows that researchers think they have found what they have believed to be a preserved tissue from the remains of a dinosaur that has been extinct 195 million years ago.

The research findings suggest that proteins are able to survive at least 100 million years more than they were previously thought. If confirmed, these findings could open up a whole new window into the study of the long-gone animals.

The discovery was believed to be from the fossil of a Lufengosaurus, which is a common leaf-eating creature from the early Jurassic period. The creature reached up to 9 meters or 30 feet in length. The researchers think that they have found traces of collagen as well as potential remnants of blood.

Science Alert reported that one of the research team members, Robert Reisz, who is a paleontologist, said that, "These proteins are the building blocks of animal soft tissues, and it's exciting to understand how they have been preserved."

The research that has been published in the Nature Communications studied the chemical makeup of the possible soft tissue in the bone using what is commonly known as infrared spectroscopy. It revealed that the material was absorbing the infrared in the wavelengths that coincide with those of collagen. Not only that, an iron-rich mineral in the bone could also be evidence of preserved blood, the researchers argue, according to IFL Science.

However, while the results are somehow exciting, it is not yet conclusive. The paper has come out at a time that another has also been published in the Journal of Proteome Research. The researchers were able to properly detach collagen proteins in an 80-million-year-old dinosaur fossil, which currently stands as the oldest identified protein.

Thus, the results were also able to reveal that some of the proteins extracted were the same with those of the birds.

However, some of the experts including Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University say the current tests are too limited in scope for people to know decisively what the experts are dealing with in these bones. Thus, further analysis is required.

For the others that include Stephen Brusatte at the University of Edinburgh in the U.K., they think that the evidence is already strong enough. Both Schweitzer and Brusatte were directly involved in the study.

Brusatte told BBC that "To find proteins in a 195-million-year-old dinosaur fossil is a startling discovery. It almost sounds too good to be true, but this team has used every method at their disposal to verify their discovery, and it seems to hold up."