What is the Latest On Dr Schweitzer Trex Soft Tissue Find?

Has anyone heard the LATEST reasoning behind the tissue being soft after 65mil years? This is obviously a huge find.

Please bring only scientific answers to the questions and not accusations as to why I am asking.

Thread copied here from the What is the Latest On Dr Schweitzer Trex Soft Tissue Find? thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

Has anyone heard the LATEST reasoning behind the tissue being soft after 65mil years?

No, what is it?

Has anyone heard the LATEST reasoning behind the tissue being soft after 65mil years?

According to the people who found the tissue (Schweitzer et al) it was mineralized. This would rather preclude people, or at least sane people, from offering reasoning to explain why it wasn't.

The tissue wasn't soft until Dr. Schweitzer (well, a grad student, more likely) dissolved all the calcium-containing minerals in that chunk of fossil with EDTA. The remaining proteinaceous stuff had been encased in those minerals well enough that bacteria couldn't eat it, water couldn't hydrolyze it, and oxygen couldn't oxidize it.

That's my latest reasoning, and it is only a minute or so old. I think that puts it in the running for the latest, no?

Second-latest reasoning may be this, from Live Science in November 2013:

Iron is an element present in abundance in the body, particularly in the blood, where it is part of the protein that carries oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. Iron is also highly reactive with other molecules, so the body keeps it locked up tight, bound to molecules that prevent it from wreaking havoc on the tissues. After death, though, iron is let free from its cage. It forms minuscule iron nanoparticles and also generates free radicals, which are highly reactive molecules thought to be involved in aging. "The free radicals cause proteins and cell membranes to tie in knots," Schweitzer said. "They basically act like formaldehyde." Formaldehyde, of course, preserves tissue. It works by linking up, or cross-linking, the amino acids that make up proteins, which makes those proteins more resistant to decay. Schweitzer and her colleagues found that dinosaur soft tissue is closely associated with iron nanoparticles in both the T. rex and another soft-tissue specimen from Brachylophosaurus canadensis, a type of duck-billed dinosaur. They then tested the iron-as-preservative idea using modern ostrich blood vessels. They soaked one group of blood vessels in iron-rich liquid made of red blood cells and another group in water. The blood vessels left in water turned into a disgusting mess within days. The blood vessels soaked in red blood cells remain recognizable after sitting at room temperature for two years.

Edited by Coragyps, : addition of Live Science quote

It seems that the presence of iron, which was originally locked up in the animals blood, contributed to the preservation of the collagen fibres within the bone through generation of oxygen free radicals. You can read more about it in this article, also the original journal article can be found here which should come out from behind the paywall in the next few months. Of course rapid burial and mineralisation, as Dr Adequate highlighted, also contributed to preservation, and remember that it was only after release from it's mineralised state that the collagen tissue became pliable.

Edit: And Coragyps beat me to it

Edited by Malcolm, : No reason given.

Thanks Malcolm.

Also interesting in it is the following part:

The tissue was collagen, they reported in the journal Science, and it shared similarities with bird collagen — which makes sense, as modern birds evolved from theropod dinosaurs such as T. rex.

Thank you for the explanations. I wasn't aware the collagen could last 65 mil years. Amazing.

I am curious as to what research you yourself had done on this subject before coming here and asking. You know the subject well enough to know a name and that name along with "t-rex" brings up the relevant article on google, so I have to wonder: what was your reasoning for asking here if your only response is "neat"? Do you have any thought provoking original ideas regarding this discovery? do you have an alternate theory as to how soft tissue survived so long?

Well, he didn't know it wasn't soft, which he could have found out by glancing at the abstract of the paper.

You should read more scientific articles and fewer religious websites masquerading as "science".

The collagen had to be demineralised. Dr Schweitzer (an evangelical Christian) et al showed a way soft tissues can be preserved as long as those fossils exist, by publising their research in peer-reviewed scientific journals. You should try to tell your creationist buddies how science is done.

I would wish to direct everybody's attention to a particular number. Namely mram10's total number of posts.

24.

I'm not very smart nor sharp. But isn't that the typical number of posts that students in Sunday School and other typical bullshit creationist classes are asked to post to websites?

mram10 has already posted the number of posts he needs for his homework assignment. I very much doubt that we will ever see him again.

Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner.

I would wish to direct everybody's attention to a particular number. Namely mram10's total number of posts. 24. I'm not very smart nor sharp. But isn't that the typical number of posts that students in Sunday School and other typical bullshit creationist classes are asked to post to websites? mram10 has already posted the number of posts he needs for his homework assignment. I very much doubt that we will ever see him again.

I would also point out that my "homework" has taken me over a year to post 24 times

Seriously?? It amazes me that some of you consider yourselves "scientists". Again, thank you for the laugh this morning

Edited by Adminnemooseus, : Off-topic banner.

I am curious as to what research you yourself had done on this subject before coming here and asking. You know the subject well enough to know a name and that name along with "t-rex" brings up the relevant article on google, so I have to wonder: what was your reasoning for asking here if your only response is "neat"? Do you have any thought provoking original ideas regarding this discovery? do you have an alternate theory as to how soft tissue survived so long?

I bring it up here, hoping people have more information. The articles are written for the general public and have stated "red blood cells", etc. It makes it easier to track down the associated articles by asking those that are interested, then it is to google and go through 100 articles.

Like the member pic