Fossilized Dino Bones Are Home to Diverse Microbial Communities

A study fails to detect ancient proteins among the microbes, adding to the debate about whether peptides can survive tens of millions of years underground.

Written byCatherine Offord

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ABOVE: The team collected fresh fossil samples from Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta, Canada.
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Fossilized dinosaur bones host a diverse community of microbes but probably not ancient proteins, according to a study published last week (June 18) in eLife. The work, based on analyses of Cretaceous-age samples, supports the idea of fossilized bones as open systems that interact with the sediment around them and adds fuel to an ongoing debate about how long proteins and other biomolecules can resist degradation.

“It confirmed what I thought,” says David Martill, a paleobiologist at the University of Portsmouth in the UK who was not involved in the study. “Bones are such porous things. . . . They’re not a barrier to bacteria or fungi or any other microscopic organism—they’re open to being invaded.”

Some of the most widely publicized reports of ancient proteins have been based on samples that are tens ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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