Back to the future: bone proteins discovered in 100 million year old fossil

Mosasaur - Back to the Future

Exciting research published this week in PloS ONE suggests that biomolecular structures may persist in fossils far more abundantly and steadily as previously thought. Before this publication, two options were thought to exist for specifically identifying biomolecular structures: (1) you can find it in large bones buried in fluvial sandstone; or (2) you’re S.O.L. All of this has now gone out the window.

A research team headed by Johan Lindgren at Lund University in Sweden used mass spectrometry, immunfluorescence, amino acid composition in synchrotron radiation-based infrared microspectroscopy to identify type I collagen fibers in a humerus from the mosasaur, an extent giant marine lizard from the Late Cretaceous (and the closest relative to modern snakes). Further, the team went on to show that these are not only type I collagen based on their fibrillar appearance, but they contain the proper 67 nm D-periodicity, have the right amino acid composition, sensitive antibody binding to anti-collagen and have been confirmed to not be due to recent bacterial contamination.

The paper is a veritable tome of joy for those who get their kicks from paleobiology.  Read the full paper at PLoS ONE: Microspectroscopic Evidence of Cretaceous Bone Proteins

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This entry was posted in Biology, Evolutionary Biology, Microscopy, Paleobiology, Proteomics, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , . Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

135 Comments

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    Fascinating result. Hopefully this allows us to find out even more information about the past. It’s really amazing that they can find proteins as old as those.

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  9. Posted October 28, 2011 at 3:26 am | Permalink

    nice post, how cool would it be to be in that research team. The boom of life – not too suprised we know so little.

  10. Posted November 14, 2011 at 10:44 pm | Permalink

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  15. Posted February 15, 2012 at 2:30 am | Permalink

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