Dinosaur Cells, or Just More Germ Crumbs?

Research pointing to the preservation of actual dinosaur tissues caused a sensation in 2005. It was another triumph in the long quest to find ever more ancient remains of living things—the "Jurassic Park" scenario. Now another research team has published its work, and while the lead author says he isn't naysaying what Mary Schweitzer reported in 2005, the team's examination of its own dinosaur bone found nothing but fossilized bacterial slime. Unlike Schweitzer's 2005 paper, which was behind the paywall in Science, you can read and discuss the new paper by Thomas Kaye and coauthors in PLoS ONE, the open-access, peer-reviewed science journal. Kaye's team took an extra precaution: before dissolving their fossil bone in acid, they examined it under the electron microscope. What they saw in their specimen looked more like bacterial breakdown—the same biofilms found on human teeth, acid caves and rotting food—than pristine Tyrannosaurus meat. Knowing that in advance, the acid-etched remnants were better explained as the remains of decay germs.

To me this is a rich event, contrasting the high-prestige Science story typical of the traditional science media with the open-source, down-off-their-pedestals approach of the Public Library of Science (although press releases by the author's institution are still in style). It also exemplifies the inexorable process by which science is critiqued, no matter how much initial sense it appears to make. And it reminds me of the comeuppance of the cherished "nannobacteria" hypothesis by an experiment that reproduced the phenomenon by simply letting beans rot. When bacteria are the most dominant form of life on Earth, we need to always give them their due, even over T. rex. But with that said, it may be that Schweitzer really did have a better bone.