14 DAY TRIAL // A team of paleontologists at Imperial College London in the UK believe to have found traces of blood in fossilized dinosaur remains estimated to date back to around 75 million years ago.
The fossils are so badly degraded that the researchers cannot even say which species they come from. Still, having closely examined them, they zoomed in on what appears to be remnants of red blood cells and collagen fibers.
The Imperial College London team of paleontologists details their investigation and their findings in a study published in the science journal Nature Communications this past Tuesday.
Zooming in on traces of soft tissue in dinosaur fossils
As detailed in the Nature Communications report, the researchers focused their study on a total of eight dinosaur skeleton fragments unearthed well over a century ago and kept in storage at the Natural History Museum.
One of the fossilized remains that sparked their interest was a claw. When they analyzed it with the help of a microscope, the scientists pinned down many odd structures in the shape of an ovoid and seemingly packing a somewhat denser inner core.
This is yet to be confirmed, but the Imperial College London paleontologists suspect that these 75-million-year-old ovoid structures might just be dinosaur red blood cells.
As for the supposed collagen fibers, they were identified in another dinosaur skeleton fragment that, when put under a microscope, was found to pack fibrous, banded structures.
“The ancient tissue structures we have analyzed have some similarities to red blood cells and collagen fibers,” explained in an interview study author Dr. Sergio Bertazzo, a Junior Research Fellow from the Department of Materials at Imperial College London.
No, there will be no Jurassic Park, at least not for now
Even if the peculiar structures found by Dr. Sergio Bertazzo and his team are, in fact, dinosaur red blood cells and collagen fibers dating back to ancient times, there's no need to worry as nobody is planning on trying to use these infinitesimal soft tissue samples to bring Jurassic Park to life.
Rather, the Imperial College London researchers plan to study the alleged 75-million-year-old red blood cells and collagen fibers to try and gain a better understanding of the biology and the evolution of these ancient Earth inhabitants.
“These poorly preserved fossils may be useful pieces in the dinosaur jigsaw puzzle to help us to understand in more detail how dinosaurs evolved into being warm blooded creatures, and how different dinosaur species were related,” said scientist Dr Susannah Maidment in a statement.
