Fossil find: blood of a dinosaur

Archaeologists from the Imperial College London were studying bone fossilisation. They cut out tiny fossil fragments in bones and studied them. By chance, they found blood-like cells and collagen from a 75-million-year-old dinosaur fossil that lived about 10 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex, the king of the dinosaurs (New Scientist, June 9, 2015).

The blood-like cells may not contain DNA, but the researchers think the other extracted cells, such as soft tissue (flesh) cells, from other dinosaur fossils may contain DNA. Even without DNA, blood cells and molecules may still reveal information from the bone sample. Previously, soft flesh cells were only found in fossils in rare cases, such as when fossils were found frozen in ice or in a dry environment that had not broken down the flesh on the animal's bones.

The blood cells that they found came from a claw of a dinosaur at the Dinosaur Park Formation in Canada. Three-dimensional examinations of the blood-like cells under an electron microscope showed that the cells have nuclei (human red blood cells do not have nuclei). Researchers used mass spectrometry, which showed that the dinosaur blood sample looked very similar to the blood of a living bird - the Australian emu.

Susannah Maidment and Sergio Bertazzo of the Imperial College London published their findings in the Nature Communications journal, and are hoping to investigate more samples of dinosaur fossils to understand the preservation of cells, and how far back in time it happens.

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