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Thursday, March 24, 2005

Jurassic Park is coming to life

When breaking a newly founded T-Rex bone, paleontologists found inside preserved soft tissues and some blood vessels! That happened today, and there is good chance that there will be whole cells intact in there (==>DNA). If this is true it will be the greatest discovery ever for paleontology.

Why did this happened? Usually they transport the bones intact from the dig site to the facility. But in that specific case the site was remote, and only helicopter could access it. The specific bone was so big that it couldn't fit inside, so they had to break it in half. And when broken, the tissues inside revealed themselves.

Maybe that also means that other bones in the museums and labs around the world have such preserved tissues inside them, yet usually the policy is not to alter their shape at all, something that might change after this discovery.

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