Re: Bone Marrow Preserved in 10 mya Fossil

["franklin e. bliss" <frank@blissnet.com>]

Bad taste in my mouth here.   Thuuuuph thzzzz.....   If the original  
color of the bone marrow (The soft, fatty, vascular tissue that fills  
most bone cavities and is the source of red blood cells and many  
white blood cells.) is still visible and the material is essentially  
unchanged, it may indeed technically be fossilized (Def:  All the  
processes that involve the burial of a plant or animal in sediment  
and the eventual preservation of all, part, or a trace of it.) I  
think however it is stretching the usage being preserved without  
replacement or substitution of the original material by some process  
other than isolation from degrading influences. Apparently these were  
preserved in a non-permeable, oxygen free, bacterial free  
environment.  Extrapolating metaphorically,..... a bone buried a week  
by a flood and then dug up is a fossil.  My question is, is the stuff  
just dried out and thusly preserved for 10 million years or is it in  
fact "fossilized" ?  Opinion? Maybe I am just splitting hairs with a  
razor.

I can see the discussion of resurrected fossil stem cells now to  
regenerate a missing fossil appendage.  If a piece of the fossil is  
missing, just grow it back.

Frank (Rooster) Bliss
MS Biostratigraphy
Weston, Wyoming
www.cattleranch.org

21.8647% of all statistics are made up at the time

On Jul 27, 2006, at 3:40 PM, Richard W. Travsky wrote:

> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/07/060725-fossil- 
> bone.html
> July 25, 2006
>
> Fossilized bone marrow has been discovered in ten-million-year-old  
> frogs and salamanders from an ancient lake bed in Spain, scientists  
> announced Friday.
>
> The specimens are the first examples of fossilized bone marrow ever  
> to be discovered. They are so well preserved that the original  
> color of the tissue is still visible.
>
> An international team of paleontologists, spearheaded by Maria  
> McNamara of Ireland's University College Dublin, made the find  
> while studying the remains of more than a hundred ancient frogs and  
> salamanders.
>
> The discovery suggests that many other fossil bones may contain  
> well-preserved remnants of bone marrow, the scientists say.
> ...
> "The marrow is organically preserved," McNamara said. "The original  
> color of the marrow is preserved."
> ...
> The finding is "very interesting," said John Horner, curator of  
> paleontology at Montana State University's Museum of the Rockies in  
> Bozeman.
> ...
> The next step, McNamara says, is to determine what the fossilized  
> marrow is made of.
>
> "We have started the analysis, but we're not finished," she said.
>
> The fact that part of the marrow is red, however, makes it likely  
> that it carries some of the original biological materials, such as  
> remnants of hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying substance that gives  
> blood cells their color.
> ...