Paleoproteomics Opens a Window into the Past

Researchers are looking to proteins to explore the biology of ancient organisms, from medieval humans all the way back to dinosaurs.

Written byCatherine Offord

| 13 min read

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SOMETHING TO CHEW ON: Proteins extracted from dinosaur fossils could offer unprecedented insight into these animals’ biology. Their ability to survive the test of time is hotly debated.© ISTOCK.COM/KICKERS

Elena Schroeter is accustomed to being economical with her samples. A postdoctoral researcher at North Carolina State University, Schroeter analyzes pieces of ancient bone that have been preserved in the ground for millions of years—and in doing so, destroys them. So her collaborators rarely give her more than a gram or two of material to work with. “People don’t want you to grind up their dinosaurs,” she explains. “You have to learn how to do a lot with a little.”

But even just a pinch of dinosaur bone dust could help reveal the ancient animal’s secrets. In one recent project, for example, Schroeter and her advisor Mary Schweitzer extracted and analyzed collagen peptides from just 200 mg of an 80-million-year-old fossil of a Cretaceous-era herbivore, ...

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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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