Flim flam? Flash in the pan? Paleontologists find “possible” dinosaur DNA from 125 million years ago

Almost Jurassic:

A team has extracted what could be DNA molecules from a 125-million-year-old fossil dinosaur, according to a study published last month (September 24) in Communications Biology. But other experts have voiced caution or outright skepticism about the findings…

In the new study, paleontologists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature extracted and decalcified femur cartilage from a 125-million-year-old Caudipteryx dinosaur, which lived in the Jehol Biota—in what is now the coastal province of Liaoning in northeast China—during the Early Cretaceous period.

Chloe Tenn, “ Paleontologists Find Possible Dinosaur DNA” at The Scientist (October 26, 2021)

The oldest extant DNA is from a 1 million-year-old woolly mammoth.

Paleogeneticist Love Dalén from the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Sweden was part of the team that extracted million-year-old mammoth DNA. He calls the notion of DNA enduring in dinosaur remains almost “impossible,” adding in an email to Gizmodo, “We know from both massive empirical studies and theoretical models that even under completely frozen conditions, DNA molecules will not survive more than ca 3 million years.”

Chloe Tenn, “ Paleontologists Find Possible Dinosaur DNA” at The Scientist (October 26, 2021)

Maybe file under: Wouldn’t THAT be fun?

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