ArticleeLife2019
Cretaceous dinosaur bone contains recent organic material and provides an environment conducive to microbial communities.
Article in eLife, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Collagen fingerprinting and sequence analysis provides a molecular phylogeny of extinct Australian megafauna.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- In situ analysis of vascular structures in fractured Tyrannosaurus rex rib.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Comparing Protein Stability in Modern and Ancient Sabkha Environments: Implications for Molecular Remnants on Ancient Mars.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Thermal taphonomy experiments challenge ultrastructural preservation in the Chengjiang yunnanozoans.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Evidence for Endogenous Collagen inAnalytical chemistry · 2025Article
- Taphonomic variation in vascular remains from Mesozoic non-avian dinosaurs.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Preservation of proteins in the geosphere.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Review
- Morphological and organic spectroscopic studies of a 44-million-year-old leaf beetle (Coleoptera: Chrysomelidae) in amber with endogenous remains of chitin.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- Biomolecular histology as a novel proxy for ancient DNA and protein sequence preservation.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Raman Spectra and Ancient Life: Vibrational ID Profiles of Fossilized (Bone) Tissues.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- Article
- Phylogenetic Signal and Bias in Paleontology.Systematic biology · 2022Article
- Review
- Transition from unclassified Ktedonobacterales to Actinobacteria during amorphous silica precipitation in a quartzite cave environment.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The bone-degrading enzyme machinery: From multi-component understanding to the treatment of residues from the meat industry.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2021Article
- Reanalysis of putative ovarian follicles suggests that Early Cretaceous birds were feeding not breeding.Scientific reports · 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
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
19 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Fossils were thought to lack original organic molecules, but chemical analyses show that some can survive. Dinosaur bone has been proposed to preserve collagen, osteocytes, and blood vessels. However, proteins and labile lipids are diagenetically unstable, and bone is a porous open system, allowing microbial/molecular flux. These 'soft tissues' have been reinterpreted as biofilms. Organic preservation versus contamination of dinosaur bone was examined by freshly excavating, with aseptic protocols, fossils and sedimentary matrix, and chemically/biologically analyzing them. Fossil 'soft tissues' differed from collagen chemically and structurally; while degradation would be expected, the patterns observed did not support this. 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing revealed that dinosaur bone hosted an abundant microbial community different from lesser abundant communities of surrounding sediment. Subsurface dinosaur bone is a relatively fertile habitat, attracting microbes that likely utilize inorganic nutrients and complicate identification of original organic material. There exists potential post-burial taphonomic roles for subsurface microorganisms.
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