Mechanisms of soft tissue and protein preservation in Tyrannosaurus rex.

Clicks: 335
ID: 85713
2019
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Steady

Ranked #427 of 1,628 articles by views in Scientific reports

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 1,628 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
The idea that original soft tissue structures and the native structural proteins comprising them can persist across geological time is controversial, in part because rigorous and testable mechanisms that can occur under natural conditions, resulting in such preservation, have not been well defined. Here, we evaluate two non-enzymatic structural protein crosslinking mechanisms, Fenton chemistry and glycation, for their possible contribution to the preservation of blood vessel structures recovered from the cortical bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex (USNM 555000 [formerly, MOR 555]). We demonstrate the endogeneity of the fossil vessel tissues, as well as the presence of type I collagen in the outermost vessel layers, using imaging, diffraction, spectroscopy, and immunohistochemistry. Then, we use data derived from synchrotron FTIR studies of the T. rex vessels to analyse their crosslink character, with comparison against two non-enzymatic Fenton chemistry- and glycation-treated extant chicken samples. We also provide supporting X-ray microprobe analyses of the chemical state of these fossil tissues to support our conclusion that non-enzymatic crosslinking pathways likely contributed to stabilizing, and thus preserving, these T. rex vessels. Finally, we propose that these stabilizing crosslinks could play a crucial role in the preservation of other microvascular tissues in skeletal elements from the Mesozoic.
Reference Key
boatman2019mechanismsscientific Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Boatman, Elizabeth M;Goodwin, Mark B;Holman, Hoi-Ying N;Fakra, Sirine;Zheng, Wenxia;Gronsky, Ronald;Schweitzer, Mary H;
Journal Scientific reports
Year 2019
DOI
10.1038/s41598-019-51680-1
URL
Keywords
photoplethysmography chicken embryos heart rate measurement smartphone sensing

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.