January 2012
10 posts
Dinosaur Bones: What ancient proteins can tell us about dinosaurs →
thetech.org
Remember in Jurassic Park when they got dinosaur DNA from an ancient mosquito’s stomach? Well, if they had been interested in dinosaur proteins, they only had to look at a dinosaur bone.
Dinosaur bones are at least 65 million years old. And all of the meat has turned to stone. Over this amount of time and with this much abuse, scientists thought no DNA or proteins could survive. They were wrong.
Recently, scientists were able to pull proteins out of a T. rex bone. Now they have done some additional work that suggests dinosaurs are closely related to birds. It is amazing that our technology has become so sensitive that we can examine dinosaur proteins.