ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2014
A role for iron and oxygen chemistry in preserving soft tissues, cells and molecules from deep time.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers.
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43 citing papers in PubMed, 109 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Taphonomic variation in vascular remains from Mesozoic non-avian dinosaurs.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Age is just a number: Examining the preservation of cells and soft tissues in Bothriolepis and other Devonian fish.PloS one · 2025Article
- Human brains preserve in diverse environments for at least 12 000 years.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Molecular Taphonomy of Heme: Chemical Degradation of Hemin under Presumed Fossilization Conditions.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Independent Evidence for the Preservation of Endogenous Bone Biochemistry in a Specimen ofBiology · 2023Article
- Biomolecular histology as a novel proxy for ancient DNA and protein sequence preservation.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Extracellular Hemoglobin: Modulation of Cellular Functions and Pathophysiological Effects.Biomolecules · 2022Review
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- Nuclear preservation in the cartilage of the Jehol dinosaur Caudipteryx.Communications biology · 2021Article
- Confirmation of ovarian follicles in an enantiornithine (Aves) from the Jehol biota using soft tissue analyses.Communications biology · 2020Article
- Evidence of proteins, chromosomes and chemical markers of DNA in exceptionally preserved dinosaur cartilage.National science review · 2020Article
- Genome-centric resolution of novel microbial lineages in an excavated Centrosaurus dinosaur fossil bone from the Late Cretaceous of North America.Environmental microbiome · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The persistence of original soft tissues in Mesozoic fossil bone is not explained by current chemical degradation models. We identified iron particles (goethite-αFeO(OH)) associated with soft tissues recovered from two Mesozoic dinosaurs, using transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, micro-X-ray diffraction and Fe micro-X-ray absorption near-edge structure. Iron chelators increased fossil tissue immunoreactivity to multiple antibodies dramatically, suggesting a role for iron in both preserving and masking proteins in fossil tissues. Haemoglobin (HB) increased tissue stability more than 200-fold, from approximately 3 days to more than two years at room temperature (25°C) in an ostrich blood vessel model developed to test post-mortem 'tissue fixation' by cross-linking or peroxidation. HB-induced solution hypoxia coupled with iron chelation enhances preservation as follows: HB + O2 > HB - O2 > -O2 >> +O2. The well-known O2/haeme interactions in the chemistry of life, such as respiration and bioenergetics, are complemented by O2/haeme interactions in the preservation of fossil soft tissues.
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