A team of Polish scientists discovered, investigated and described the fossilized blood vessels with preserved chemical traces of proteins in the bones of Triassic reptiles, with nearly two hundred and fifty million years. Used to study fossils were found in Silesia and Opole. It is opening new doors in science – say the authors.
/ Andrzej Grygiel / PAP
Ono (discovery – ed. Ed.) Shows the new direction of research that will enable us to learn something more than itself shows the morphology of the bones. We are contemplating inside the organic matter, building the once these organisms. This is definitely a milestone. Open the door, what’s behind them – still do not fully understand – said Dr. Andrew Boczarowski from the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Silesia.
The petrified blood vessels with preserved chemical traces of proteins sensation among excavations. This is the oldest such identified material in the world and inside structurally preserved blood vessels detected amino acids and protein fragments – including collagen.
The remains of which came from research material were found in a quarry in Gogolin Opole region and district towns of Silesia – Żyglinie, near Tarnowskie Gory (Slaskie).
Research bones lasted six years.
We prove that such molecules can behave in a fossil state, regardless of age – whether the remains they have 80, 100 or 245 million years, as in our case. Time seems not to play the main role – is crucial to their consolidation after the death – added David Surmik of Science Park and Human Evolution in Krasiejów.
The remains of Triassic reptiles – notozaura and Tanystropheus, which came from research material were found in a quarry in Gogolin Opole region and district towns of Silesia – Żyglinie, near Tarnowskie Gory (Slaskie).
on the border of the early and middle Triassic today Silesia was flooded with very shallow seas, it was heat and no shortage of food, especially fish. Notozaur a marine reptile, who liked to bask on the sandbanks of sand. Tanystropheus was an animal przybrzeżnomorskim with a long neck, which grazed on the beach, eat the fish and shellfish from the recesses flooded.
The researchers speculate that after the death of their bodies were quickly buried in the sediment, which not only saved the remains before eating by other animals, but also hindered the distribution.
If these animals died on land, their bodies from the river and the rain were delivered to the marine environment, where there has been a fairly rapid degradation. The bodies were preserved by the very rapid mineralization which might lasted days, if not hours. Most likely, this mineralization has caused somewhat bound by the original organic matter, which in the soft tissues of the mineral form and therefore these signals proteins, chemical were recorded in blood vessels, which we investigated – said David Surmik.
it was he, studying the bones and notozaura Tanystropheus saw in them a strange structure, which has been identified as a fossilized blood vessels. The study Triassic bones were used innovative methods, including drawn of molecular physics and solid state physics.
The discovery opens a new field of research
As emphasized Andrzej Boczarowski and David Surmik, the study will provide not only information about notozaurze and tanystrofie – which eat these animals, the environment in which the vein. Also open up new fields of research.
If the twentieth century was the century of physics, the twenty-first century will be the century of biology, especially genetics. The excavations will be carried out in the genetic material, and not in the open air. There is written the whole truth about our history – said Dr. Boczarowski.
An interdisciplinary team that made the discovery, established scientists from the Silesian University, Jagiellonian University, Polish Academy of Sciences and the Science Park and Human Evolution Krasiejów (Opole). They were in the paleontologists: David M. Surmik and Andrzej Boczarowski; physicists solid: prof. Jacek Szade and Dr. Catherine Balin; molecular physicist Dr. Matthew Dulski; biogeolog PhD. Barbara Kremer and histologist and morfolog prof. Roman Pawlicki.
Boczarowski stressed the fact that the author of the first publication concerning. the behavior of organic structures in the fossil record was a member of the current research team, Professor. Pawlicki of the Jagiellonian University Medical College. In 1966, in the journal “Nature” describes it perfectly preserved fossilized soft tissue – collagen fibers, blood vessels and bone cells, which survived in the bones of dinosaurs from 80 million years before. They were then found by Polish-Mongolian paleontological expedition to the Gobi Desert (Mongolia).
in the walls of blood vessels originating from the bodies of Triassic reptiles discovered in Silesia, which we have studied, the preserved collagen. But they are three times older than those described by prof. Pawlicki – says Dr. Boczarowski.
(MPW)
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