There's no evidence of goosebumps just yet, but a remarkably preserved dinosaur reveals that the prehistoric reptile had skin like that of birds and crocodiles, a new study says.
"This is the closest you're going to get to patting the animal," said excavation leader Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at Britain's University of Manchester.
Advanced imaging and chemical techniques revealed that the 66-million-year-old "mummified" duckbilled dinosaur had two layers of skin, as do modern vertebrates, including humans.
Such a discovery was possible because the dinosaur's skin fossilized before bacteria had a chance to eat up the tissue.
[...]
With electron microscopes and x-rays, Manning discovered that Dakota had cell-like structures indicative of two-ply skin: a thin surface layer plus an underlying layer of dense connective tissues.
That's just like skin of modern birds and reptiles, which scientists believe are closely related to duckbilled dinosaurs.
Protein-recovery techniques used on the skin and a claw detected amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Proteins themselves, complex molecules that degrade easily over time, were not found, however.
But Manning did identify molecules that would have broken down proteins in Dakota's body.
That's like finding fragments of a broken vase instead of the intact vase, explained Thomas R. Holtz Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland.
Again, no time, but it is really good to see the famed dino mummies producing papers for a change, instead of just news stories.
No comments:
Post a Comment