I love it when I run across an article like this one (Los Angeles Times by Robert Lee Holtz) reprinted in our daily newspaper, headline reading "Scientists Discover Soft Tissues in Tyrannosauros Rex Remains." Who needs to read further? The imagination just takes over, thinking about what scientific plans this discovery will invariably inspire! But I do read on:

The discovery of the meat, preserved for 70 million years, is considered a first and holds scientific promise.

Savor that sentence slowly. Doesn't it conjure up images of cloning a flock of T-Rexes, not just to see if it can be done but for the betterment of mankind, science, and the American way! Reading on, we learn that the tissue was accidently found in the marrow of a huge fossil femor which was sawed in two for more ready transport to the Schweitzer Lab at North Carolina State University in Raieigh, North Carolina.

It gets even better as we learn that the tissues from further examination by electron microscope were "virtually indentical" to those of modern ostrich. I can already hear the background music ramping up to full play.

Apparently, this may not be a unique find. There are lots of fossil femurs stored at museums and research facilities all over the world. Nobody ever thought to section one and see if there was any residual tissue inside. Apparently "paleotologists were too squeamish to break open their irreplacable dinosaur specimens to dissolve the mineral matrix inside the bones." Well, I'm happy to report that some scientists have now overcome such squeamishness: "Indeed, a quick examination of three other dinosaur specimens revealed similar microscopic tissues inside the bones."

So far scientists have not acknowledged finding any "intact genetic material" but if they do "it might help settle debates about the kinship of dinosaurs and birds, or even prompt cloning experiments aimed at replicating the creatures." Anyone got a spare ostrich egg?

This is big news, and I'm sorry about spewing some of my coffee over my morning paper. It's hard to harvest further details from my newspaper but maybe someone could provide a "blue clicky" link to this emerging story.

I'll have my dinoburger with fries, please!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble