[firmbeliever]

Are dinosaur bones discovered as fossils?

If yes,could you please link me so I can read up on it.


Thank you in advance for all your help.:)

[NeedKarma]

Teachers' Domain: How a Dinosaur Became a Fossil

[firmbeliever]

Thanks NK for the link,that was an easy to follow description.:).

I was also wondering,are all dinosaur bones discovered fossilised(or become rock/mineral)?
Are bones of that age ever discovered which are not fossils? Or am I thinking the impossible?

I was thinking of preserved human like creatures being found in ice.

Is it possible to have preserved bones or whole animal skeletons(dinosaur or bit earlier or bit later periods) buried beneath the ice?

Or if this has already been discovered where can I read up on it.

Thanks again.

[asking]

Hi FirmBeliever,

All dinosaur bones (excluding those of modern birds, which are technically dinosaurs) are fossilized. No one has found a frozen dinosaur in a glacier like with mammoths. I THINK there are not any glaciers that have been around for at least 65 million years, which is when the dinosaurs went extinct.

BUT some scientists have been able to extract bone marrow from VERY old fossilized (stone) dinosaur bones. In other words, the bones were not completely fossilized and there was still traces of organic matter in the very center of the bone.

Here is an example of an article about this:
Blood vessels recovered from <I>T. rex</I> bone - life - 24 March 2005 - New Scientist


Here's a story on fossil frogs that are only 10 million years old:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Fossil frogs yield 'soft tissues'

[firmbeliever]

Thank you asking.

[asking]

You are welcome! I was wondering about how old the oldest ice is, and the answer is up to 8 million years-- AND it contains live bacteria from 8 million years ago. Their DNA is damaged, probably by radiation, which is stronger at the poles. I read this in an article in Science magazine, which you can read only if you have a subscription. Here are the first few paragraphs.

Life From the Oldest Ice?

By Hannah Devlin
ScienceNOW Daily News
6 August 2007
When Captain Robert Falcon Scott discovered the Dry Valleys as part of the British Antarctic Expedition in 1905, he described them as "valleys of the dead." But beneath their desolate, icy surface life goes on, according to a new study suggesting that microbes can remain alive for millions of years when frozen.

Previous studies of ancient ice samples taken from Antarctic subglacial lakes indicate that ice can preserve microorganisms for up to 300,000 years. In the new study, appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, molecular biologist Paul Falkowski of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and his colleagues examined ice they had collected from the Upper Beacon Valley in Antarctica. They used a range of dating techniques, including measuring the isotope ratios in the ice, to show that samples ranged from about 100,000 years old to 8 million years old, making the latter ice the oldest sample ever studied.

After melting the samples that were 100,000 and 8 million years old, the researchers found signs of live bacteria in the water from both. Adding nutrients to the meltwater led to bacteria growth in both samples, although the microbes in the oldest ice grew much more slowly, doubling every 1 to 2 months versus every week.

And I was assuming you already knew that glaciers preserve frozen people and animals like this 37,000 year old mammoth calf. But maybe you will find this interesting.

<http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL1178205120070711>
Cheers,
Asking