To paleontologists, the news was only slightly less startling than if someone had spotted a live Apatosaurus stomping around the bayous of Louisiana. Last March Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University reported that she had extracted soft tissue from the 68-million-year-old fossilized femur of a Tyrannosaurus rex. Her finding, if confirmed, overthrows every grade school textbook's explanation that fossils result from the mineralization of bone and the destruction of soft tissue. It also opens staggering possibilities. If tissue proteins can survive for millions of years, scientists could analyze them to make detailed interpretations of the biology of ancient species and their relationship to those living today.
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