A tiny blob of stretchy brown matter, soft tissue from inside the leg bone, suggests the specimen had not completely decomposed

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Dinosaur Shocker

Probing a 68-million-year-old T. rex, Mary Schweitzer stumbled upon astonishing signs of life that may radically change our view of the beasts that once ruled the earth

  • By Helen Fields
  • Smithsonian magazine, May 2006

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    A tiny blob of stretchy brown matter, soft tissue from inside the leg bone, suggests the specimen had not completely decomposed

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    Neatly dressed in blue Capri pants and a sleeveless top, long hair flowing over her bare shoulders, Mary Schweitzer sits at a microscope in a dim lab, her face lit only by a glowing computer screen showing a network of thin, branching vessels. That’s right, blood vessels. From a dinosaur. “Ho-ho-ho, I am excite-e-e-e-d,” she chuckles. “I am, like, really excited.”

    After 68 million years in the ground, a Tyrannosaurus rex found in Montana was dug up, its leg bone was broken in pieces, and fragments were dissolved in acid in Schweitzer’s laboratory at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. “Cool beans,” she says, looking at the image on the screen.

    It was big news indeed last year when Schweitzer announced she had discovered blood vessels and structures that looked like whole cells inside that T. rex bone—the first observation of its kind. The finding amazed colleagues, who had never imagined that even a trace of still-soft dinosaur tissue could survive. After all, as any textbook will tell you, when an animal dies, soft tissues such as blood vessels, muscle and skin decay and disappear over time, while hard tissues like bone may gradually acquire minerals from the environment and become fossils. Schweitzer, one of the first scientists to use the tools of modern cell biology to study dinosaurs, has upended the conventional wisdom by showing that some rock-hard fossils tens of millions of years old may have remnants of soft tissues hidden away in their interiors. “The reason it hasn’t been discovered before is no right-thinking paleontologist would do what Mary did with her specimens. We don’t go to all this effort to dig this stuff out of the ground to then destroy it in acid,” says dinosaur paleontologist Thomas Holtz Jr., of the University of Maryland. “It’s great science.” The observations could shed new light on how dinosaurs evolved and how their muscles and blood vessels worked. And the new findings might help settle a long-running debate about whether dinosaurs were warmblooded, coldblooded—or both.

    Meanwhile, Schweitzer’s research has been hijacked by “young earth” creationists, who insist that dinosaur soft tissue couldn’t possibly survive millions of years. They claim her discoveries support their belief, based on their interpretation of Genesis, that the earth is only a few thousand years old. Of course, it’s not unusual for a paleontologist to differ with creationists. But when creationists misrepresent Schweitzer’s data, she takes it personally: she describes herself as “a complete and total Christian.” On a shelf in her office is a plaque bearing an Old Testament verse: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

    It may be that Schweitzer’s unorthodox approach to paleontology can be traced to her roundabout career path. Growing up in Helena, Montana, she went through a phase when, like many kids, she was fascinated by dinosaurs. In fact, at age 5 she announced she was going to be a paleontologist. But first she got a college degree in communicative disorders, married, had three children and briefly taught remedial biology to high schoolers. In 1989, a dozen years after she graduated from college, she sat in on a class at Montana State University taught by paleontologist Jack Horner, of the Museum of the Rockies, now an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. The lectures reignited her passion for dinosaurs. Soon after, she talked her way into a volunteer position in Horner’s lab and began to pursue a doctorate in paleontology.

    She initially thought she would study how the microscopic structure of dinosaur bones differs depending on how much the animal weighs. But then came the incident with the red spots.

    In 1991, Schweitzer was trying to study thin slices of bones from a 65-million-year-old T. rex. She was having a hard time getting the slices to stick to a glass slide, so she sought help from a molecular biologist at the university. The biologist, Gayle Callis, happened to take the slides to a veterinary conference, where she set up the ancient samples for others to look at. One of the vets went up to Callis and said, “Do you know you have red blood cells in that bone?” Sure enough, under a microscope, it appeared that the bone was filled with red disks. Later, Schweitzer recalls, “I looked at this and I looked at this and I thought, this can’t be. Red blood cells don’t preserve.”
    Schweitzer showed the slide to Horner. “When she first found the red-blood-cell-looking structures, I said, Yep, that’s what they look like,” her mentor recalls. He thought it was possible they were red blood cells, but he gave her some advice: “Now see if you can find some evidence to show that that’s not what they are.”

    What she found instead was evidence of heme in the bones—additional support for the idea that they were red blood cells. Heme is a part of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood and gives red blood cells their color. “It got me real curious as to exceptional preservation,” she says. If particles of that one dinosaur were able to hang around for 65 million years, maybe the textbooks were wrong about fossilization.

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    Neatly dressed in blue Capri pants and a sleeveless top, long hair flowing over her bare shoulders, Mary Schweitzer sits at a microscope in a dim lab, her face lit only by a glowing computer screen showing a network of thin, branching vessels. That’s right, blood vessels. From a dinosaur. “Ho-ho-ho, I am excite-e-e-e-d,” she chuckles. “I am, like, really excited.”

    After 68 million years in the ground, a Tyrannosaurus rex found in Montana was dug up, its leg bone was broken in pieces, and fragments were dissolved in acid in Schweitzer’s laboratory at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. “Cool beans,” she says, looking at the image on the screen.

    It was big news indeed last year when Schweitzer announced she had discovered blood vessels and structures that looked like whole cells inside that T. rex bone—the first observation of its kind. The finding amazed colleagues, who had never imagined that even a trace of still-soft dinosaur tissue could survive. After all, as any textbook will tell you, when an animal dies, soft tissues such as blood vessels, muscle and skin decay and disappear over time, while hard tissues like bone may gradually acquire minerals from the environment and become fossils. Schweitzer, one of the first scientists to use the tools of modern cell biology to study dinosaurs, has upended the conventional wisdom by showing that some rock-hard fossils tens of millions of years old may have remnants of soft tissues hidden away in their interiors. “The reason it hasn’t been discovered before is no right-thinking paleontologist would do what Mary did with her specimens. We don’t go to all this effort to dig this stuff out of the ground to then destroy it in acid,” says dinosaur paleontologist Thomas Holtz Jr., of the University of Maryland. “It’s great science.” The observations could shed new light on how dinosaurs evolved and how their muscles and blood vessels worked. And the new findings might help settle a long-running debate about whether dinosaurs were warmblooded, coldblooded—or both.

    Meanwhile, Schweitzer’s research has been hijacked by “young earth” creationists, who insist that dinosaur soft tissue couldn’t possibly survive millions of years. They claim her discoveries support their belief, based on their interpretation of Genesis, that the earth is only a few thousand years old. Of course, it’s not unusual for a paleontologist to differ with creationists. But when creationists misrepresent Schweitzer’s data, she takes it personally: she describes herself as “a complete and total Christian.” On a shelf in her office is a plaque bearing an Old Testament verse: “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

    It may be that Schweitzer’s unorthodox approach to paleontology can be traced to her roundabout career path. Growing up in Helena, Montana, she went through a phase when, like many kids, she was fascinated by dinosaurs. In fact, at age 5 she announced she was going to be a paleontologist. But first she got a college degree in communicative disorders, married, had three children and briefly taught remedial biology to high schoolers. In 1989, a dozen years after she graduated from college, she sat in on a class at Montana State University taught by paleontologist Jack Horner, of the Museum of the Rockies, now an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution. The lectures reignited her passion for dinosaurs. Soon after, she talked her way into a volunteer position in Horner’s lab and began to pursue a doctorate in paleontology.

    She initially thought she would study how the microscopic structure of dinosaur bones differs depending on how much the animal weighs. But then came the incident with the red spots.

    In 1991, Schweitzer was trying to study thin slices of bones from a 65-million-year-old T. rex. She was having a hard time getting the slices to stick to a glass slide, so she sought help from a molecular biologist at the university. The biologist, Gayle Callis, happened to take the slides to a veterinary conference, where she set up the ancient samples for others to look at. One of the vets went up to Callis and said, “Do you know you have red blood cells in that bone?” Sure enough, under a microscope, it appeared that the bone was filled with red disks. Later, Schweitzer recalls, “I looked at this and I looked at this and I thought, this can’t be. Red blood cells don’t preserve.”
    Schweitzer showed the slide to Horner. “When she first found the red-blood-cell-looking structures, I said, Yep, that’s what they look like,” her mentor recalls. He thought it was possible they were red blood cells, but he gave her some advice: “Now see if you can find some evidence to show that that’s not what they are.”

    What she found instead was evidence of heme in the bones—additional support for the idea that they were red blood cells. Heme is a part of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood and gives red blood cells their color. “It got me real curious as to exceptional preservation,” she says. If particles of that one dinosaur were able to hang around for 65 million years, maybe the textbooks were wrong about fossilization.

    Schweitzer tends to be self-deprecating, claiming to be hopeless at computers, lab work and talking to strangers. But colleagues admire her, saying she’s determined and hard-working and has mastered a number of complex laboratory techniques that are beyond the skills of most paleontologists. And asking unusual questions took a lot of nerve. “If you point her in a direction and say, don’t go that way, she’s the kind of person who’ll say, Why?—and she goes and tests it herself,” says Gregory Erickson, a paleobiologist at Florida State University. Schweitzer takes risks, says Karen Chin, a University of Colorado paleontologist. “It could be a big payoff or it could just be kind of a ho-hum research project.”

    In 2000, Bob Harmon, a field crew chief from the Museum of the Rockies, was eating his lunch in a remote Montana canyon when he looked up and saw a bone sticking out of a rock wall. That bone turned out to be part of what may be the best preserved T. rex in the world. Over the next three summers, workers chipped away at the dinosaur, gradually removing it from the cliff face. They called it B. rex in Harmon’s honor and nicknamed it Bob. In 2001, they encased a section of the dinosaur and the surrounding dirt in plaster to protect it. The package weighed more than 2,000 pounds, which turned out to be just above their helicopter’s capacity, so they split it in half. One of B. rex’s leg bones was broken into two big pieces and several fragments—just what Schweitzer needed for her micro-scale explorations.

    It turned out Bob had been misnamed. “It’s a girl and she’s pregnant,” Schweitzer recalls telling her lab technician when she looked at the fragments. On the hollow inside surface of the femur, Schweitzer had found scraps of bone that gave a surprising amount of information about the dinosaur that made them. Bones may seem as steady as stone, but they’re actually constantly in flux. Pregnant women use calcium from their bones to build the skeleton of a developing fetus. Before female birds start to lay eggs, they form a calcium-rich structure called medullary bone on the inside of their leg and other bones; they draw on it during the breeding season to make eggshells. Schweitzer had studied birds, so she knew about medullary bone, and that’s what she figured she was seeing in that T. rex specimen.

    Most paleontologists now agree that birds are the dinosaurs’ closest living relatives. In fact, they say that birds are dinosaurs—colorful, incredibly diverse, cute little feathered dinosaurs. The theropod of the Jurassic forests lives on in the goldfinch visiting the backyard feeder, the toucans of the tropics and the ostriches loping across the African savanna.

    To understand her dinosaur bone, Schweitzer turned to two of the most primitive living birds: ostriches and emus. In the summer of 2004, she asked several ostrich breeders for female bones. A farmer called, months later. “Y’all still need that lady ostrich?” The dead bird had been in the farmer’s backhoe bucket for several days in the North Carolina heat. Schweitzer and two colleagues collected a leg from the fragrant carcass and drove it back to Raleigh.

    As far as anyone can tell, Schweitzer was right: Bob the dinosaur really did have a store of medullary bone when she died. A paper published in Science last June presents microscope pictures of medullary bone from ostrich and emu side by side with dinosaur bone, showing near-identical features.

    In the course of testing a B. rex bone fragment further, Schweitzer asked her lab technician, Jennifer Wittmeyer, to put it in weak acid, which slowly dissolves bone, including fossilized bone—but not soft tissues. One Friday night in January 2004, Wittmeyer was in the lab as usual. She took out a fossil chip that had been in the acid for three days and put it under the microscope to take a picture. “[The chip] was curved so much, I couldn’t get it in focus,” Wittmeyer recalls. She used forceps to flatten it. “My forceps kind of sunk into it, made a little indentation and it curled back up. I was like, stop it!” Finally, through her irritation, she realized what she had: a fragment of dinosaur soft tissue left behind when the mineral bone around it had dissolved. Suddenly Schweitzer and Wittmeyer were dealing with something no one else had ever seen. For a couple of weeks, Wittmeyer said, it was like Christmas every day.

    In the lab, Wittmeyer now takes out a dish with six compartments, each holding a little brown dab of tissue in clear liquid, and puts it under the microscope lens. Inside each specimen is a fine network of almost-clear branching vessels—the tissue of a female Tyrannosaurus rex that strode through the forests 68 million years ago, preparing to lay eggs. Close up, the blood vessels from that T. rex and her ostrich cousins look remarkably alike. Inside the dinosaur vessels are things Schweitzer diplomatically calls “round microstructures” in the journal article, out of an abundance of scientific caution, but they are red and round, and she and other scientists suspect that they are red blood cells.

    Of course, what everyone wants to know is whether DNA might be lurking in that tissue. Wittmeyer, from much experience with the press since the discovery, calls this “the awful question”—whether Schweitzer’s work is paving the road to a real-life version of science fiction’s Jurassic Park, where dinosaurs were regenerated from DNA preserved in amber. But DNA, which carries the genetic script for an animal, is a very fragile molecule. It’s also ridiculously hard to study because it is so easily contaminated with modern biological material, such as microbes or skin cells, while buried or after being dug up. Instead, Schweitzer has been testing her dinosaur tissue samples for proteins, which are a bit hardier and more readily distinguished from contaminants. Specifically, she’s been looking for collagen, elastin and hemoglobin. Collagen makes up much of the bone scaffolding, elastin is wrapped around blood vessels and hemoglobin carries oxygen inside red blood cells.

    Because the chemical makeup of proteins changes through evolution, scientists can study protein sequences to learn more about how dinosaurs evolved. And because proteins do all the work in the body, studying them could someday help scientists understand dinosaur physiology—how their muscles and blood vessels worked, for example.

    Proteins are much too tiny to pick out with a microscope. To look for them, Schweitzer uses antibodies, immune system molecules that recognize and bind to specific sections of proteins. Schweitzer and Wittmeyer have been using antibodies to chicken collagen, cow elastin and ostrich hemoglobin to search for similar molecules in the dinosaur tissue. At an October 2005 paleontology conference, Schweitzer presented preliminary evidence that she has detected real dinosaur proteins in her specimens.

    Further discoveries in the past year have shown that the discovery of soft tissue in B. rex wasn’t just a fluke. Schweitzer and Wittmeyer have now found probable blood vessels, bone-building cells and connective tissue in another T. rex, in a theropod from Argentina and in a 300,000-year-old woolly mammoth fossil. Schweitzer’s work is “showing us we really don’t understand decay,” Holtz says. “There’s a lot of really basic stuff in nature that people just make assumptions about.”

    Young-earth creationists also see Schweitzer’s work as revolutionary, but in an entirely different way. They first seized upon Schweitzer’s work after she wrote an article for the popular science magazine Earth in 1997 about possible red blood cells in her dinosaur specimens. Creation magazine claimed that Schweitzer’s research was “powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible’s account of a recent creation.”

    This drives Schweitzer crazy. Geologists have established that the Hell Creek Formation, where B. rex was found, is 68 million years old, and so are the bones buried in it. She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.” For her, science and religion represent two different ways of looking at the world; invoking the hand of God to explain natural phenomena breaks the rules of science. After all, she says, what God asks is faith, not evidence. “If you have all this evidence and proof positive that God exists, you don’t need faith. I think he kind of designed it so that we’d never be able to prove his existence. And I think that’s really cool.”

    By definition, there is a lot that scientists don’t know, because the whole point of science is to explore the unknown. By being clear that scientists haven’t explained everything, Schweitzer leaves room for other explanations. “I think that we’re always wise to leave certain doors open,” she says.

    But schweitzer’s interest in the long-term preservation of molecules and cells does have an otherworldly dimension: she’s collaborating with NASA scientists on the search for evidence of possible past life on Mars, Saturn’s moon Titan, and other heavenly bodies. (Scientists announced this spring, for instance, that Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus appears to have liquid water, a probable precondition for life.)

    Astrobiology is one of the wackier branches of biology, dealing in life that might or might not exist and might or might not take any recognizable form. “For almost everybody who works on NASA stuff, they are just in hog heaven, working on astrobiology questions,” Schweitzer says. Her NASA research involves using antibodies to probe for signs of life in unexpected places. “For me, it’s the means to an end. I really want to know about my dinosaurs.”

    To that purpose, Schweitzer, with Wittmeyer, spends hours in front of microscopes in dark rooms. To a fourth-generation Montanan, even the relatively laid-back Raleigh area is a big city. She reminisces wistfully about scouting for field sites on horseback in Montana. “Paleontology by microscope is not that fun,” she says. “I’d much rather be out tromping around.”

    “My eyeballs are just absolutely fried,” Schweitzer says after hours of gazing through the microscope’s eyepieces at glowing vessels and blobs. You could call it the price she pays for not being typical.


     
    Comments

    Fantastic discovery, work, and patient PEOPLE. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR EFFORTS....PLEASE CONTINUE...!!!! You're Great!---john nieb

    Posted by john nieb on November 19,2007 | 10:46PM

    So they still don't explain how that tissue survived for 65 million years.....

    Posted by zip on January 8,2008 | 02:09PM

    I agree with zip. Their ideas on decay could be wrong (after all, how many laboratory tests have been done to show an animal decay into a fossil?), or maybe the ideas are right and the time frame is wrong by a few million years. To Schweitzer I would say, get God out of the box you made for Him, and let the evidence speak for itself: that the Bible is correct in all matters, not just where she decides it should be for her personal agenda. Science was made by God in the manner described in Genesis and elsewhere. Secular science will invariably prove God and disprove godless, humanistic evolution, and if Schweitzer is truly a Christian then hopefully she will switch sides to fight the good fight, which will invariably win.

    Posted by smoore on January 12,2008 | 03:49PM

    this is a pretty cool discovery, paleontology rocks !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Posted by qwertyuiop on January 13,2008 | 02:02PM

    Dr. Schweitzer sounds like a pretty cool person. I congratulate her (belatedly) on her discoveries. It's an amazing thing when people challenge stagnant ideas and conceptions and show us how incredible our world is. P.S. I would ask that smoore refrain from accusing Dr. Schweitzer of lacking Christianity. It's really quite rude to assume things about the beliefs of others when you don't know them at all, regardless of how they may be portrayed. Besides, just because her beliefs don't fit into your personal agenda doesn't mean that they're wrong.

    Posted by allo on January 15,2008 | 05:13PM

    Well I guess we won't ever see the 14C Dating data on these T-Rex bone fragments (not the fleshy stuff). It's bad enough that Mary has 'rocked the boat' with this new discovery. Why capsize it with radiometric dates like 49K to 2K BP. Heck that would put T-Rex's within human coexistence. Fancy that the enigmatic T-Rex inscribed Ica Peru petroglyph artifacts* could not be a hoax** after all. I wonder if that impacts the similar prehistoric animal ceramic artifacts found at Acámbaro, Guanajuato, Mexico by the late Waldemar Julsrud? Naah - paleontologists are not trying to hide anything... Are they? Protecting their turf from hard empirical data? That's crazy talk isn't it? ;-/ *Ornamental lacquered stones found by the late Dr.Javier Cabrera **Identified as hoax by UPENN.edu paleontologists

    Posted by Dr. Anon Yusef Mous on January 16,2008 | 03:59AM

    I think your fantastic, please keep up the great work your doing, God gave you the gift to be able to look into bones and find blood cells. As for the bible; who really knows what a day was when God made the earth, all the animals, and Adam and Eve. God gave us the free will and the mind to invent things and to look into the past. Don't stop too long, digging in the ground looking for fossils. We need you to find more about the past, and why they all died. I look forward to your next discovery! Yvonne

    Posted by Yvonne Lubman on January 24,2008 | 05:17PM

    JURRASSIC PARK!!! Let's make it happen!

    Posted by pollux.rees on January 29,2008 | 04:23AM

    If science shows that the book of nature contradicts darwin's strange ideas (descent-with-modification, or macroevolution), then there must be a mistake somewhere. And since darwinism is infallible (just ask teachers who were fired for questioning evolution - NOT 'teaching creationism' [sic]), it necessarily follows that the mistake is being made by scientists, “Schweitzer’s work is just showing us we really don’t understand decay. There’s lots of really basic stuff in nature that people just make assumptions about.” So which should we trust?... The known laws of science or the “assumptions” darwinists “just make”… so they can keep believing in darwin? Heaven forbid secular scientists ask the question, "Is this SOFT dino tissue really 68 million yrs old?" THAT'S a scientific question that is not allowed to be asked! Regardless, it's important for darwinists to be able to harmonize their philosophy with science because many are members of knowledge-intensive occupations. It's never a good time to be a secular scientist.

    Posted by windarr on February 6,2008 | 02:02PM

    The imagination soars at such promise this discovery entails! Who was the vet that accually found and voiced the fact that they were red blood cells in the bone? I believe that the vet should be named and have a clear claim to the discovery of the cells, don't you think? Right is right and fair is fair. Thanks Al.

    Posted by Al Brown on February 10,2008 | 06:15PM

    So they still don't explain how that tissue survived for 65 million years..... See, that's the cool part about science. It doesn't claim to know everything. That's how you know it's science, not faith.

    Posted by Adam Shinbrot on February 14,2008 | 10:00AM

    That's my professor. She's great!

    Posted by KA on February 16,2008 | 05:43AM

    its been a long journey science versus faith( the creationists) remember that these folks believe the world is flat that the earth is the centre of the universe man walked with the dinosaurs that the virus and bacteria do not exist and many other debunked theories science is not perfect but its is open minded it speculates yes but all speculations and must be proven by hard cold facts the creationist do not use facts they use faith that does not have to prove anything but a belief in god nothing wrong with faith einstein was asked does he believe in god he replied "god does not play dice with the universe " but faith has to realize that man has been given the ability to think and reason by evolution or by god take your pick

    Posted by leslie martin on February 24,2008 | 08:10PM

    The tissue didn't survive 75 million years, according to the Bible, the Earth is really quite young, maybe only 50 thousand yrs. or even less. Since Job is the oldest book in the Bible read what he says aboput the Behemoth, and he even states that the "The Earth hangs on nothing" (Space), how did he know that since "Science" books weren't written way back then. and lastly, take a good look at Icca stones, these petroligths have carved drawings on them with men fighting dinosaurs, yep, man lived with dinosaurs up until the flood , Noah's flood, which by the way is up in the Moutains of Ararat, which is why Turkey won't let any credible scientist, (Christian) or otherwise go up there, the discovery would be to much of a shock to our "politically correct culture". Hang in there people, Jesus is coming soon, bye.

    Posted by Mike Sexton on February 25,2008 | 05:12PM

    I would absolutely love to read an article on the kind of soil that was around this particular dino. Reason being, what preserved this dino so well and could it something that would help out modern world? Also, would it not be so cool to come across actual blood?

    Posted by Mel Taylor on March 8,2008 | 10:02PM

    Congradualtions on a great scientific find. It is a amazing what dilute acid reveals on fossilized slices of bone matrix. We also have uncovered mammoths with collogen found inside the bones on the Peace River Florida in the late nineties. For the past three summers we have been digging in the Hell Creek formation and have found numerous fragemsnts of Tricertops with tips of T. rex teeth found in situ. Although there have been millions and millions of fossils collected over the years the verdict honestly is still no clear record of how we got here. There are just as many transiitioanl fossils missing as we make case for new species. The Hell Creek formation only with even the most of the modern finds added there only according to Norrel et.al. from the American Musium of Natural History states that the can only identify 40 different kinds of dinosoaurs becasuse the fossil record is incomplete in his words "we suspect it may be very bad." The dino dig we are involved in is revealing that many tricertops mad their demise there. We are looking at catastrophic event perhaps like a global flood. It should be mentioned that they preent Geological column is made of index fossils that are 95 % shallow water invertebrates mostly shell fish. Beacuse of this new discovery of Dr. Schweitzer there have been Carbon dating studies done on other femurs which indicate that there Carbon 14 found which give dates in lower thousands versus 65 million years. It is our contention if the research leads to earth that dates young - lets go with it. Good science allows conclusions that are not censored! Tom D

    Posted by Tom D on March 22,2008 | 09:08PM

    Great discovery! Great to see someone trying something like this that others would not. I think an honest scientist will admit they have some sort of bias or model or a scenario into which the pieces of the evidence puzzle are placed and by which they are interpreted. A useful scientific model should be able to make some predictions, and in my opinion the Biblical model with shorter time scales is better at predicting this type of evidence than if this critter had lived millions of years ago. However, I understand why others may think it must have been preserved for millions of years because that is the model they are working with, so they are looking at the evidence in that context. I don't automatically think millions of years when I see a fossil because I hold to the Biblical model, like the great scientist Sir. Isaac Newton ref. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Religious_views. I also believe that fossils in general can't take a very long time to form because decay before fossilization would ruin it. As far as I know most living tissue decays quickly; even the Egyptians couldn't fully beat that. A fossil that shows features that are not very durable must have formed quite quickly e.g. the fossil jellyfish shown here http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/10/071031-jellyfish.html

    Posted by Joel P on March 28,2008 | 12:34AM

    People, let us deal with evidence and facts...not beliefs. I too could write a wonderfully told story, have many people translate it into and out of different languages, and pass it off as my beliefs - but would that make every aspect of the stories true? Would a multitude of people interpret the exact wording (after many translations mind you) to be 'fact'? Would they use those exact words to try to prove a point? Where is the empirical evidence to support it? That is what makes religion a system of beliefs, not facts. Yes, these beliefs have merit and a place in our societies. They help many people govern themselves and also guide their behaviors and actions. It also gives a valuable checklist of what actions benefit and hinder the progression of societal interaction. These tenets have helped us progress to the place we are in today. But remember folks, it is a series of stories told to help guide and govern our behaviors and actions. It is a belief. It is not fact-based like science. Science does not deal in beliefs. Let's compare apples to apples, not apples to kiwi. Kudos to those scientists who continue to look at things in different ways and who try new methods to gain knowledge.

    Posted by JMSC on May 7,2008 | 01:44PM

    Rates of decay has been proved for decades. For quite some time scientists have been sure of these rates. So, logically, if the cells have not decayed, then they CANNOT be millions of years old. There are two relevant facts here: 1) Cells decay at a certain rate. 2) Cells have been found in a bone. So the conclusion to be drawn is: these cells are not older than the proven rates predict. Which means....the dino is not as old as everyone thinks. What's so bad about dinosaurs surviving for longer than expected?

    Posted by NKCar on May 16,2008 | 11:09AM

    "Rates of decay has been proved for decades. " Wait - are you seriously claiming that data exists demonstrating controlled measurement of decay over millions of years - heck, I'll settle for scientific experiments on decay that were initiated 6,000 years ago with an unbroken chain of observation? Lots of claims in the comments, but no substantiating evidence. That alone is a red flag.

    Posted by Skeptic on June 1,2008 | 08:27PM

    While I understand Dr. Schweitzer’s angst about the implications of her discovery and the response of some Christians, her characterization of biblical faith being in someway blind is not accurate. Biblical faith is not blind, it requires spiritual insight, but God's Word contains many infallible evidences for the reality of God and the infallibly of His Word, e.g. the proof of Prophecy. Read Isaiah 53, written seven centuries before the birth of Christ, for just one example. The real problem for Dr. Schweitzer is the evidence indicates a miracle has taken place, that flesh and blood has been preserved for 70 million years. That is truly blind faith.

    Posted by Steven Rowitt on June 5,2008 | 11:30AM

    JMSC- Fact and Belief are in the eye of the beholder. Facts come from investigation and analysis of information. What you are calling belief sounds strangely like a hypothesis. Faith is something else. That's where a person holds a view that is based on information PLUS other contributing elements: emotional, instinct, hope, intuition etc. Science is great for solving simple problems, but only faith and a personal relationship with God can answer the real questions that matter. This is a wonderful discovery, and I think is bringing the ministry of Jesus to hardworking scientists who are challenging their belief in the "truth" from "facts."

    Posted by Jonah P on June 5,2008 | 12:49PM

    Fact is NOT in the eye of the beholder. A FACT is something that cannot be disputed (eg the sun came up this morning, electricity is powering my computer, two plus two equals four, blood cells were apparently found preserved in a dinosaur fossil, etc) Belief is a choice. You accept something as true. It does not require (and most of the time does not have) any facts to back it up. You may have some personal reason to believe the way that you do, but you have no real proof, nothing you can show to someone else to compel them. In order to turn that belief into a fact (ie to get it accepted in science), you need evidence that is universal, something that most of the people you show it too agree is the same conclusion you have come to. Creationism does not have that kind of evidence. All it has is misleading and ineptly gathered data, improbable conclusions and holes in accepted science (which are growing smaller all the time) that it tries to exploit. Proving that I don't know everything does not make you right.

    Posted by Will G on June 13,2008 | 10:42PM

    To smoore, zip and any others who might be thinking that tissue survival for millions of years is impossible: the agents of biological decomposition in the sense of "rotting" or chemical digestion are microbes, such as Bacteria and Archaea. There isn't some magical ether that pervades everything and makes organic things decompose after death. If for some reason microbes don't have access to biological tissue, decomposition will not happen. The dense bone marrow of a dinosaur bone, likely microbe-free in life, is relatively inaccessable to microbes after death, and the miraculous discovery of soft tissue structures millions of years old may make sense if viewed in this light. Working from this first principle, it almost makes the discovery of the preserved soft tissue all the more remarkable, if we think of how efficiently microbes have otherwise removed almost all traces of the biological veneers on Earth's surface that made up past worlds.

    Posted by AMD on June 21,2008 | 03:04PM

    Nice try, AMD! Problem that you face though, is that stupidity is an incurable disease and all the explaining and using complicated stuff like facts is a waste of time. Suffice it to say that the main difference between scientists and "religionists" is that the former group, when presented with new facts, will take them on board and revise the science accordingly. The problem with the "faithful" is that they will never let facts get in the way of their opinions. The discoveries made by Ms Schweitzer, living proof that not all Christians are idiots, may change the face of palaeobiology beyond all recognition in the (near) future. For this we can all be grateful. For the other group of idiots: "Jurassic Park" was a movie, not a documentary!

    Posted by Dancat on July 4,2008 | 07:28PM

    I am a Registered Nurse for 23 years since I was 21. I worked in an operating room for 7 years. If we didn't put enough formalin on any tissue that had to be sent to the lab we got blasted by the pathologist. Red Blood Cells, tissue, skin, and cadaver smell- does not last. What I dont understand is, why didn't the scientists prior to Mary Schweitzer look inside the bones of the Dinosaurs? Thats elementary and common sense, you dont have to be a scientist to know that- no disrespect to any scientists on here. Another thing- why didn't anyone prior to Mary Schweitzer not notice the "cadaver smell" in Hell Creek? How could someone not notice that? Maybe a team of Medical professionas- RN's, MD's- Pathologists, Veterinarians- like the one who told Mary Schweitzer about the Red Blood Cells, and CSI investigators should be doing the examining of these Dinosaur bones. Pathologists in particular- they would give you a more accurate date to the age of the specimens. Susana RN

    Posted by Susana on July 15,2008 | 05:54AM

    Will G Stated: Fact is NOT in the eye of the beholder. A FACT is something that cannot be disputed (eg the sun came up this morning, electricity is powering my computer, two plus two equals four, blood cells were apparently found preserved in a dinosaur fossil, etc) Will I dispute your fact that the sun came up this morning. The sun did not come up the earth rotated giving the appearance of coming up. It is how you interpret the evidence. You say that soft tissue from the t rex was 68 million years old. you say that it has to be so because this type of dinosaur died out 65 million years ago. Why not test the soft tissue to see what its age is? Already many are saying why test it we know because we know what the age is. If ms Schweitzer had used this kind of thinking she would never have found red blood cells. What prevented this kind of discovery from happening over the past fifty years. To be honest it is because every scientist worth his salt knows beyond a doubt that blood cells would not survive 68 million years. That is why no one did it before. The best and most logical conclusion is that the bone is not millions but thousands of years old. That is good science.

    Posted by Chris on July 19,2008 | 09:41AM

    ROFL "To Schweitzer I would say, get God out of the box you made for Him, and let the evidence speak for itself: that the Bible is correct in all matters, not just where she decides it should be for her personal agenda." As if requiring the Bible to be infallible isn't putting your God in a box. You'd be funny if that comment wasn't so insanely ignorant.

    Posted by Thegreatpuma on July 29,2008 | 12:46PM

    Wonderful discovery indeed! Sorry I'm so "after the fact" in posting here, but I only came across this article today after doing some research on dinosaurs. I heard about this discovery while at the Creation Museum in Cincinnati (which hopefully everyone who reads this gets a chance to tour), and can't help but be amazed at how God chooses to reveal truth. This to me is firm evidence that the earth is not millions of years old, but more like 6,000 years old, as some of you suggest. Consider another twist. At the time of Creation, God did not create death. Why would he have, because he created a perfect world. It was only after the fall of Adam and Eve that death occurred. Now, if things didn't die before sin came about, then that would mean that animals and humans lived at the same time. Have humans been around for millions of years? I think not! We have accurate records in the Bible that Adam was the first man, and also how old he and his descendants were when they died, which gives us a time frame for the age of the world. Based on that, we can see that scientists have their rock and fossil datings way off course! Dinosaurs living only a few thousand years ago? Sure! Dinosaurs and humans cohabiting? Of course! Did dinosaurs become extinct after the flood? Quite likely. Remember, there would have only been two of every type of dinosaur in the ark, and it is quite likely that earth conditions after the flood were not conducive to sustaining their life. Who knows? God could have allowed them to die off just to give scientists something else to disagree on.

    Posted by Roger S on July 31,2008 | 05:13AM

    I agree with Roger's post (July 31, 2008). What I don't understand is why are some so against letting nature proves itself and that God's Word is true? Why are some so afraid of the proof showing that God created all? If I were an atheist I would think that I'd jump for joy to be shown through evidence that Creationism is the truth and not evolution, as this means that one's life is not over when the body dies. Why wouldn't anyone want to be shown evidence of this truth? Is it because they don't want to change their way of life and live as Christ had shown us we should and as the Bible instructs? Even if that could be the reason I don't get it, as who wouldn't be willing to live as God wants us to in return for eternal life with Him...and what's so hard about accepting Jesus as one's Saviour and after he suffered so on the cross for our sins...a free gift of our Lord's love, as opposed to works and a sinless life, which no man (or woman) can say they are without sin? I will just never understand why some wants so badly to believe in the lies of evolution. Another thing that I will never understand- how can evolutionists truly convince themselves that all was created by a big bang and everything fell into perfect balance as opposed to chaos, as that would take much more faith to believe? Well, one day God will reveal to all but unfortunately for those who refuse to be open to the truth, it will be too late...and so many who despise Christians (true Christians whose lives are in line with Jesus' teachings and love and not those who call themselves such but actually teach hate)for what they call, pushing religion down their throat, will finally realize that it was just their brotherly (or sisterly) love for them and wanting no one to parish, but to have ever lasting life with our Creator, just as our Creator wants for all of his Children.

    Posted by Turbe on August 9,2008 | 08:10PM

    Turbe, I completely agree with you, this is a gift that's extended to all people's, they only need to accept it. We have nothing to gain outside of perhaps another friend for helping the godless see that God indeed is ready willing and able to be there for them for all things., This discovery is the smoking gun, there are plans to break open more fossles, we have only scratched the surface on this one.

    Posted by Brian on August 17,2008 | 05:00PM

    It's just so, so unfortunate that there are so many supposedly intelligent people who premise their opinions on the contradictory mish-mash that makes up the Bible. Waving a book under my nose proves NOTHING. Waving a book of selected, legendary anecdotes proves even less. A book that has gone through hundreds of translations, often slanted and edited to prove the point of a certain religion, be it Judaism or Christianity. A book based on the premise that a Jewish Rabbi, born of a virgin, performed miracles, rose from the dead and will return sometime to judge all mankind. Let science govern itself without interference from the Christian ultra right wing. These saved-agains remind me of the censure of Galileo by the Catholic church. May I be preserved from the denizens of this Bible Belt. David.......31-8-2008

    Posted by David on August 31,2008 | 12:44PM

    what is your proof, David? about the bible being mish-mash....evidence and facts or is it based upon your opinion? The fact that you breath and that your mind is an amazing testimony of the fact that God created such a complex intstrument. God is real. "Every knee shall bow and every tongue shall confess that Jesus is Lord."

    Posted by David on September 7,2008 | 03:24AM

    Well there it is, on the tip of your nose... Evolution is a scam, in fact it has become a religion where many can't see straight anymore. LOL, evolution's minions are trying to reinvent molecular biology to "stick with Darwin's cloth" with ideas of polymers??? C'mon this stuff (heme/red blood cells) doesn't last beyond 10,000 years, being generous say 30,000 years. I am an atheist and have been working in the field of science and engineering for over 20 years. Clearly if you can't see the time of day, well it's time to move on to something simpler. This discovery is a paradigm shift but some still won't quit or seriously question the outdated theory of evolution. In fact astonishing artifacts in multiple carvings have been uncovered in South America (Dr. Cabrera: ICA rocks, Google it) depicting humans and dinosaurs in the same carving: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=Ica+Stones&ndsp=20&svnum=10&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&tab=iv# http://www.crystalinks.com/icastones.html Similar discoveries have been made in Texas (Taylor/Turnage Patton Trails) with human and dinosaur footprints on the same sedimentary rock layer... Rumors of recent dino carcase discovered by natives in remote South East Asian jungle!... Read Dr.Immanuel Velikovsky's book Worlds in Collision, Without being a Christian or of any other religion, the fact it that this planet as stated in the Bible (and other native culture histories from all over the planet) has went through a recent major catastrophe, period.

    Posted by MakeSense on September 7,2008 | 09:17AM

    It is both amazing and appalling to me that people will seize upon one facet of a piece of astounding research and abuse it for political purposes. There is nothing whatsoever in this research that suggests either that man and dinosaurs coexisted or that the fossilized remains studied are younger than believed. Rather, Schweitzer has opened a new door in science and revealed an area in which there is more learning to do. This is the wonderful thing about science. As we learn more, we can turn away from our misunderstanding of certain phenomena and toward a greater understanding of our world.

    Posted by Scott McLean on September 26,2008 | 09:17AM

    Science is the search for the truth Where does the evidence lead in this case? Darwinian Evolutionists please do not look for silly explanations lest you make yourself a fool, if still thinking dinos lived 70 millions years ago, keep on dreaming If evolutionists continue defending an old age position I will say I do not admire they intelligence but their blind fait and please do not call evolution neither evolutionary theory science, you can call it science fiction

    Posted by Jesus Ortega on September 27,2008 | 01:40PM

    We have our original E.D. Cope fossils from Garden Park at your famous place which would have come there around 1875-1895. As a volunteer who works in the lab @Dinosaur Depot in Canon City,CO, I would like your advice on what to choose for a new or used microscope and lighting system for use at home and/or in the lab. What is a good source for me on a limited budget but such an avid volunteer worker in our lab? I would surely appreciate any help you could provide. Thank you and we are sending back some of your fossils we worked on and will be picking up more soon.

    Posted by Chris L. Christensen on September 29,2008 | 11:04AM

    Is it possible that "science" and the "truths of God" can coexist? If there is only one truth, of which none of us have the perfect interpretation, it would seem that science would help us to find the answers. I would think that any "Godly" person would embrace the theories of science, because when fully "proven" it should provide a basis of faith, if there is a God. My question, is it not simple, "childlike", logic to presume that the "days" of Genesis 1 are "time periods, given that the "24 hour day" whas not "created" until the FOURTH time period???

    Posted by justwondering7 on September 30,2008 | 06:53PM

    In response to "just wondering", I ask: Do you think that the earth just began to revolve on the 4th day? My, what a cataclysmic event that would have been. All the vegetation of day 3 would have been totally wiped out with the sudden movement at the equator of over 1000 mph. A simple solution to your problem is that the earth obviously was spinning from the first day of creation, because When God said: "let there be light" the bible next states that the evening and the morning was the first day. From this narative it is obvious that the earth experienced night and day in respect to that source of light. The creation of the Sun, moon and the stars being made on day 4 was for the purpose of determining years and months, times and seasons. Scientists cannot tell how the dinosaurs were formed nor how they died out. The meteor theory is ridiculous. Why did not the elephants die out, or the giraffes? Jim 10-1-08

    Posted by Jim on October 1,2008 | 12:59PM

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