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 ...
