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Proteins Found in Dino Bones
Ancient proteins have been found in the soft tissue recovered from the fossil bones of a 68 million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex (T. rex) and a half-million-year-old mastodon.
These results may change the way people think about fossil preservation and present a new method for studying diseases in which identification of proteins is important, such as cancer.
This image accompanied NSF press release, "Ancient T. rex and Mastodon Protein Fragments Discovered, Sequenced."
Credit: Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation
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