Dinosaur blood, uh, finds a way.
Somehow, a trace amount of red blood cells survived in the bones of a dinosaur that died 115 million years ago, improbably immortalized through some form of fossilization that the researchers still haven’t quite wrapped their heads around yet.
The findings, reported in a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are a “world first,” said lead author Kliti Grice at Curtin University in Western Australia.
We can only hope that someone in the zillionaire class — which isn’t known for taking away the right lessons from cautionary sci-fi tales — doesn’t jump on this to start their own “Jurassic Park.”
“We are seeing a mineral and molecular echo of the dinosaur’s original biology,” Grice told The Guardian. “Fossilised red blood cells with distinct chemistry related to heme have never been found in situ in any fossil, let alone a dinosaur.”
The fossilized red blood cells were found in the hind leg bones of a carnivorous dinosaur called an Aratasaurus, which lived in what is now north-eastern Brazil. The specimen has been housed and continuously studied at the nation’s National Museum since being unearthed in a mine in 2008.
Using an electron microscope, the researchers examined vascular canals in the bones, where they found microscopic structures that appeared to be red blood cells. Chemical tests on the area found traces of heme, the iron-containing organic molecule that forms the protein hemoglobin and allows blood to delivery oxygen to different parts of the body.
Grice clarified to Reuters that what they found isn’t a “vial of dinosaur blood. What we are seeing is a mineral and molecular echo of ancient biology, and that is scientifically much more interesting.”
For now, we may be safe from having ancient monstrous carnivores resurrected and inflicted on us all. We’re only half joking about that, since buzzy “de-extinction” companies like Colossal Biosciences are very much trying to bring lost species back from the dead. At any rate, the findings don’t suggest that there’s dino-genetic-material just waiting to be plundered.
“Any extraordinary claim needs extraordinary analytical evidence,” Grice told The Guardian. “The aim isn’t to find Jurassic Park DNA, it’s to determine how much genuine molecular information deep time can preserve.”
“The really exciting implication is that extraordinary molecular information may already be sitting in museum collections around the world, waiting for us to ask new questions of old fossils,” she added.
A university release called the evidence “unequivocal,” but the findings are already proving controversial. Mary Schweitzer, a biologist who found remains of blood vessels and soft tissues in dino fossils, told The Guardian that she’s skeptical that what Grice’s team found are indeed red blood cells. Red blood cells should have dome-like protrusions called a “nuclear bulge” on each side, but the discovered structures are concave, she said.
More on dinosaurs: Man Discovers 82-Foot Dinosaur Skeleton in Backyard