Age, burial environment don’t hinder soft tissue preservation in dinosaurs

 News Release 10-Feb-2025

North Carolina State University

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Soft tissue preservation in fossils does not seem to depend upon the species, age or burial environment of the fossils in question, according to new research from North Carolina State University. The work provides further evidence for the preservation of soft tissues and structures through deep time and could also serve as a methodological framework for other researchers interested in pursuing these questions.

“We wanted to test several hypotheses with this work – the first one being whether we would be able to retrieve these tissues from different dinosaur species,” says Mary Schweitzer, professor of biology emeritus at North Carolina State University. “The other questions followed from that one – do the age or the depositional environment make a difference in our ability to retrieve soft tissue from these specimens?”

The research team began by demineralizing bone fragments from six fossils – four Tyrannosaurus rex specimens, one Brachylophosaurus canadensis and one ceratopsian. The specimens ranged in age from around 65 to 80 million years old.

“Some of the enduring questions around this work are how to distinguish actual tissues, like blood vessels, from bacteria, fungus or potential contaminants,” Schweitzer says. “Over the years we’ve developed a suite of analytical tools that are best suited to helping us answer these questions.”

The researchers began by imaging – using transmitted light microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and nano computed tomography to obtain extremely high-resolution images of the vessels.

Next, they used several analytical techniques to characterize these tissues at different levels, including immunofluorescence, immunogold labeling, lactophenol cotton blue staining and time-of-flight ion mass spectrometry to identify what the molecules were.

“It’s like starting with a big funnel and working your way down, eliminating and identifying everything we see so that we can distinguish original structures and molecules from bacterial or fungal growth,” Schweitzer says. “And since we don’t have a living control to compare the results to, we use ostriches, which are dinosaurs’ closest living relative, to get an idea of how these tissues should respond to our analyses if they are endogenous.”

The researchers were able to retrieve vessels from all six specimens, though they varied in quality. They also found evidence of peptides and proteins that were not microbial in origin, suggesting that they could be original preserved molecules.

Overall, they found that the depositional environment – where the fossils fossilized, in other words – did not seem to have much impact on their ability to retrieve the vessels, although the sample from one T. rex found in mudstone was not as pristine as the others, which were retrieved from both mudstone and sandstone.

“It seems as though the preservation of vessels through deep time is not that uncommon,” Schweitzer says. “But the work still must be done on a case-by-case basis, because so far there isn’t any evidence that a particular preservation environment is best. So don’t rule out a fossil because of depositional environment or age. Those factors don’t seem to matter.

“We also hope that our techniques can be used to establish a methodological framework for this research going forward, so that we can give better answers to the ongoing question of what may preserve through deep time.”

The research appears in Scientific Reports and was supported by Lynn and Susan Orr, Vance and Gayle Mullis (Mullis Analytics), and the Swedish Research Council. Adam Hartstone-Rose, professor of biology at NC State, along with former lab manager Wenxia Zheng and former post-doc Edwin Dickinson, are NC State co-authors. Peter Sjövall of RISE Institutes of Sweden and Johan Lindgren of Lund University, Sweden, also co-authored the work.

-peake-

Note to editors: An abstract follows.

“Taphonomic variation in vascular remains from Mesozoic non-avian dinosaurs”

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-85497-y

Authors: M. Schweitzer, W. Zheng, E. Dickinson, A. Hartstone-Rose, North Carolina State University; J. Scannella, Museum of the Rockies and Montana State University; P. Sjövall, RISE Institutes of Sweden; J. Lindgren, Lund University, Sweden
Published: Feb. 4, 2025 in Scientific Reports

Abstract:
The identity and source of flexible, semi-transparent, vascular-like components recovered from non-avian dinosaur bone are debated, because: (1) such preservation is not predicted by degradation models; (2) taphonomic mechanisms for this type of preservation are not well defined; and (3) although support for molecular endogeneity has been demonstrated in select specimens, comparable data are lacking on a broader scale. Here, we use a suite of micromorphological and molecular techniques to examine vessel-like material recovered from the skeletal remains of six non-avian dinosaurs, representing different taxa, depositional environments and geological ages, and we compare the data obtained from our analyses against vessels liberated from extant ostrich bone. The results of this in-depth, multi-faceted study present strong support for endogeneity of the fossil-derived vessels, although we also detect evidence of invasive microorganisms.

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Journal

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-025-85497-y 

Method of Research

Imaging analysis

Subject of Research

Animal tissue samples

Article Title

Taphonomic variation in vascular remains from Mesozoic non-avian dinosaurs

Article Publication Date

5-Feb-2025

COI Statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

 

Purdue biochemists discover self-repair function in key photosynthetic protein complex

Ongoing work could lead to more efficient photosynthetic light energy conversion in plants

Purdue University

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Sujith Puthiyaveetil (left) and Steven McKenzie look at a plant thylakoid preparation in the lab at Purdue University's Biochemistry Building.

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Credit: Purdue Agricultural Communications/Joshua Clark

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Cyanobacteria began contributing oxygen to Earth’s mostly noxious atmosphere more than 2 billion years ago. The photosystem II protein complex now shared by various lineages of cyanobacteria, algae and land plants has served as a major site of oxygen production throughout the history of life on Earth ever since.

Ironically, receiving too much light can damage photosystem II and erode the photosynthetic efficiency of plants. Purdue University biochemists Steven McKenzie and Sujith Puthiyaveetil have gleaned new, long-hidden details about how photosystem II repairs itself. McKenzie and Puthiyaveetil’s findings have been published in the journal Plant Communications.

“The photosystem II splits water and extracts electrons and protons, leaving oxygen as a by-product. Photosystem II thereby powers life on Earth,” said Puthiyaveetil, associate professor of biochemistry. Even so, “it’s still fairly poorly understood how these huge protein complexes that use light energy to produce oxygen are able to be repaired and maintained so efficiently across different lineages of plants, algae and cyanobacteria.”

The long-term goal of the project is to learn how to engineer plants to have better photosynthetic efficiency, said McKenzie, a postdoctoral scholar in biochemistry.

“The repair of photosystem II is an energetically expensive process,” said McKenzie, who completed his PhD at Purdue in 2024. “You have to disassemble photosystem II, degrade the damaged proteins, resynthesize new proteins and reassemble new photosystems. That’s energetically costly to the chloroplast.”

The repair of photosystem II in chloroplasts — the sites of photosynthesis in plants and algae — is already fairly efficient, McKenzie said. “But you could make it more efficient by speeding up the repair process or making it less energy intensive.”     

Recent efforts to manipulate the photoprotective pathways of plant photosynthesis have led to increased photosynthetic efficiency in crop plants. Genetic engineering of different aspects of the photosystem II repair cycle similarly holds potential for improvement of photosynthetic efficiency.     

Inhibiting the repair cycle can lower the efficiency of photosynthesis drastically, Puthiyaveetil said.

“This is a key process that’s happening all the time. Even in low light, photosystem II is turning over. In high light, the rate of damage and repair really goes up. But sometimes the rate of repair cannot keep up with the rate of damage, especially under a combination of high light and other stressors such as drought, salinity and high temperature. This leads to a light-induced loss of photosynthesis,” said Puthiyaveetil, who is also a member of Purdue’s Center for Plant Biology.

As photosystem II undertakes the formidable job of splitting water using energy from sunlight, it suffers photodamage. For every 10 million photons — light particles — absorbed by leaves, one photosystem II gets damaged. On a sunny day, a plant leaf intercepts as many as 10 quadrillion photons per second.

How this protein complex gets taken apart to remove and replace the damaged protein for maintaining efficient photosynthesis has long persisted as an unresolved question. Photosystem II is huge by molecular standards, consisting of around 25 protein subunits, a few metallic centers, and scores of chlorophylls and other pigment molecules.

The new Plant Communications paper shows how the chemical process of adding phosphate groups to proteins — “protein phosphorylation” — drives some of the photosystem II disassembly steps in Arabidopsis plants. Scientists have known since 1977 about the phosphorylation of photosystem II. What role it played in the photosystem II repair cycle, however, had remained unclear.

The Purdue scientists originally suspected that phosphorylation was solely responsible for photosystem II disassembly. Then McKenzie suggested that oxidative protein modification may also play a part.

“Steve thought that maybe the protein oxidative damage could also be a disassembly mechanism,” Puthiyaveetil said. Further experimentation revealed that oxidative protein damage serves as a key mechanism that helps drive photosystem II disassembly, especially at the later stages. “We were quite surprised by the extent of it. Full credit to Steve.”

Cyanobacteria, red and brown algae, and land plants all share the photosystem II repair mechanism, McKenzie said. What gave him the idea is that cyanobacteria and non-green algae lack photosystem II phosphorylation and yet are able to disassemble and repair their photosystems.

“We were interested to know whether there was an alternative mechanism that could be responsible for driving photosystem II disassembly,” McKenzie said. “That’s why we thought perhaps the damage to photosystem II itself could be driving disassembly of the complex.”

Phosphorylation seems to serve two functions. “It can drive disassembly, but also it could ensure a quality control mechanism for the repair,” Puthiyaveetil said. “We say that because once you disassemble the complex you have to repair the complex.” And plants don’t repair their photosystems under persistent high light. “They wait for the high light to go away. There’s some kind of molecular mechanism behind the delay between damage and repair.”

Then once light levels return to normal repair and reassembly of the damaged protein begin. “That’s the quality control,” Puthiyaveetil noted. “Maybe phosphorylation will prevent the degradation of damaged proteins until they have been dephosphorylated as dephosphorylation has been shown to be a prerequisite for degradation.”

In his experiments, McKenzie used genetically altered plants with varying levels of photosystem II phosphorylation. He also manipulated phosphorylation levels by altering light and the source of phosphate groups. By doing so, “we can see what changing the levels of phosphorylation on photosystem II do to the disassembly and repair cycle,” he said.

This research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

About Purdue Agriculture

Purdue University’s College of Agriculture is one of the world’s leading colleges of agricultural, food, life and natural resource sciences. The college is committed to preparing students to make a difference in whatever careers they pursue; stretching the frontiers of science to discover solutions to some of our most pressing global, regional and local challenges; and, through Purdue Extension and other engagement programs, educating the people of Indiana, the nation and the world to improve their lives and livelihoods. To learn more about Purdue Agriculture, visit this site.

About Purdue University  

Purdue University is a public research university leading with excellence at scale. Ranked among top 10 public universities in the United States, Purdue discovers, disseminates and deploys knowledge with a quality and at a scale second to none. More than 107,000 students study at Purdue across multiple campuses, locations and modalities, including more than 58,000 at our main campus in West Lafayette and Indianapolis. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue’s main campus has frozen tuition 13 years in a row. See how Purdue never stops in the persistent pursuit of the next giant leap — including its comprehensive urban expansion, the Mitch Daniels School of Business, Purdue Computes and the One Health initiative — at https://www.purdue.edu/president/strategic-initiatives.

Writer: Steve Koppes

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Journal

Plant Communications

DOI

10.1016/j.xplc.2024.101202 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Article Title

Protein phosphorylation and oxidative protein modification promote plant photosystem II disassembly for repair

SPACE/COSMOS

Euclid discovers a stunning Einstein ring

European Space Agency

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The ring of light surrounding the centre of the galaxy NGC 6505, captured by ESA’s Euclid telescope, is a stunning example of an Einstein ring. NGC 6505 is acting as a gravitational lens, bending light from a galaxy far behind it. The almost perfect alignment of NGC 6505 and the background galaxy has bent and magnified the light from the background galaxy into a spectacular ring. This rare phenomenon was first theorised to exist by Einstein in his general theory of relativity.

This wide field shows the extended stellar halo of NGC 6505 and showcases the Einstein ring, surrounded by colourful foreground stars and background galaxies.

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Credit: ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, T. Li

Euclid blasted off on its six-year mission to explore the dark Universe on 1 July 2023. Before the spacecraft could begin its survey, the team of scientists and engineers on Earth had to make sure everything was working properly. During this early testing phase, in September 2023, Euclid sent some images back to Earth. They were deliberately out of focus, but in one fuzzy image Euclid Archive Scientist Bruno Altieri saw a hint of a very special phenomenon and decided to take a closer look.

“I look at the data from Euclid as it comes in,” explains Bruno. “Even from that first observation, I could see it, but after Euclid made more observations of the area, we could see a perfect Einstein ring. For me, with a lifelong interest in gravitational lensing, that was amazing.”

The Einstein Ring, an extremely rare phenomenon, turned out to be hiding in plain sight in a galaxy not far away. The galaxy, called NGC 6505, is around 590 million light-years from Earth, a stone’s throw away in cosmic terms. But this is the first time that the ring of light surrounding its centre is detected, thanks to Euclid’s high-resolution instruments.

The ring around the foreground galaxy is made up of light from a farther out bright galaxy. This background galaxy is 4.42 billion light-years away, and its light has been distorted by gravity on its way to us. The far-away galaxy hasn’t been observed before and doesn’t yet have a name.

“An Einstein ring is an example of strong gravitational lensing,” explains Conor O’Riordan, of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany, and lead author of the first scientific paper analysing the ring. “All strong lenses are special, because they're so rare, and they're incredibly useful scientifically. This one is particularly special, because it’s so close to Earth and the alignment makes it very beautiful.”

Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that light will bend around objects in space, so that they focus the light like a giant lens. This gravitational lensing effect is bigger for more massive objects – galaxies and clusters of galaxies. It means we can sometimes see the light from distant galaxies that would otherwise be hidden.

If the alignment is just right, the light from the distant source galaxy bends to form a spectacular ring around the foreground object. These Einstein rings are a rich laboratory for scientists. Studying their gravitational effects can help us learn about the expansion of the Universe, detect the effects of invisible dark matter and dark energy, and investigate the background source whose light is bent by dark matter in between us and the source.

“I find it very intriguing that this ring was observed within a well-known galaxy, which was first discovered in 1884,” says Valeria Pettorino, ESA Euclid Project Scientist. “The galaxy has been known to astronomers for a very long time. And yet this ring was never observed before. This demonstrates how powerful Euclid is, finding new things even in places we thought we knew well. This discovery is very encouraging for the future of the Euclid mission and demonstrates its fantastic capabilities.”

By exploring how the Universe has expanded and formed over its cosmic history, Euclid will reveal more about the role of gravity and the nature of dark energy and dark matter. The space telescope will map more than a third of the sky, observing billions of galaxies out to 10 billion light-years. It is expected to find around 100 000 strong lenses, but to find one that’s so spectacular – and so close to home – is astonishing. Until now, less than 1000 strong lenses were known, and even fewer were imaged at high resolution.

“Euclid is going to revolutionise the field, with all this data we've never had before,” adds Conor.

Although this Einstein ring is stunning, Euclid’s main job is searching for the more subtle effects of weak gravitational lensing, where background galaxies appear only mildly stretched or displaced. To detect this effect, scientists will need to analyse billions of galaxies. Euclid began its detailed survey of the sky on 14 February 2024 and is gradually creating the most extensive 3D map of the Universe yet. Such an amazing find, so early in its mission, means Euclid is on course to uncover many more hidden secrets.

Close-up of the Einstein ring around galaxy NGC 6505

 

A close-up view of the centre of the NGC 6505 galaxy, with the bright Einstein ring around its nucleus, captured by ESA’s Euclid space telescope.

The Einstein ring is formed by gravitational lensing, with the mass of galaxy NGC 6505 bending and magnifying the light from a more distant galaxy into a ring. NGC 6505 is a well-known galaxy only around 590 million light-years from Earth, and Euclid’s discovery of a spectacular Einstein ring here was unexpected.

Credit

ESA/Euclid/Euclid Consortium/NASA, image processing by J.-C. Cuillandre, T. Li

When we observe a distant galaxy with our telescope, its light may encounter another galaxy on its way to us. The foreground galaxy acts like a magnifying lens, bending the travelling light rays due to its gravity. This is called gravitational lensing. If the background galaxy, the lensing galaxy, and the telescope are perfectly aligned, the image appears as a ring – called an Einstein ring. Einstein rings were first theorised to exist by Einstein in his general theory of relativity.

Credit

ESA

Journal

Astronomy and Astrophysics

DOI

10.1051/0004-6361/202453014 

Article Title

Euclid: A complete Einstein ring in NGC 6505

Article Publication Date

10-Feb-2025

NASA scientists spot candidate for speediest exoplanet system

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

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This artist's concept visualizes a super-Neptune world orbiting a low-mass star near the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists recently discovered such a system that may break the current record for fastest exoplanet system, traveling at least 1.2 million miles per hour, or 540 kilometers per second.

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Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC)

Astronomers may have discovered a scrawny star bolting through the middle of our galaxy with a planet in tow. If confirmed, the pair sets a new record for the fastest-moving exoplanet system, nearly double our solar system’s speed through the Milky Way.

The planetary system is thought to move at least 1.2 million miles per hour, or 540 kilometers per second.

“We think this is a so-called super-Neptune world orbiting a low-mass star at a distance that would lie between the orbits of Venus and Earth if it were in our solar system,” said Sean Terry, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Since the star is so feeble, that’s well outside its habitable zone. “If so, it will be the first planet ever found orbiting a hypervelocity star.”

A paper describing the results, led by Terry, was published in The Astronomical Journal on February 10.

A Star on the Move

The pair of objects was first spotted indirectly in 2011 thanks to a chance alignment. A team of scientists combed through archived data from MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) – a collaborative project focused on a microlensing survey conducted using the University of Canterbury Mount John Observatory in New Zealand — in search of light signals that betray the presence of exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system.

Microlensing occurs because the presence of mass warps the fabric of space-time. Any time an intervening object appears to drift near a background star, light from the star curves as it travels through the warped space-time around the nearer object. If the alignment is especially close, the warping around the object can act like a natural lens, amplifying the background star’s light.

In this case, microlensing signals revealed a pair of celestial bodies. Scientists determined their relative masses (one is about 2,300 times heavier than the other), but their exact masses depend on how far away they are from Earth. It’s sort of like how the magnification changes if you hold a magnifying glass over a page and move it up and down.

“Determining the mass ratio is easy,” said David Bennett, a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA Goddard, who co-authored the new paper and led the original study in 2011. “It’s much more difficult to calculate their actual masses.”

The 2011 discovery team suspected the microlensed objects were either a star about 20 percent as massive as our Sun and a planet roughly 29 times heavier than Earth, or a nearer “rogue” planet about four times Jupiter’s mass with a moon smaller than Earth.

To figure out which explanation is more likely, astronomers searched through data from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii and ESA’s (European Space Agency’s) Gaia satellite. If the pair were a rogue planet and moon, they’d be effectively invisible – dark objects lost in the inky void of space. But scientists might be able to identify the star if the alternative explanation were correct (though the orbiting planet would be much too faint to see).

They found a strong suspect located about 24,000 light-years away, putting it within the Milky Way’s galactic bulge — the central hub where stars are more densely packed. By comparing the star’s location in 2011 and 2021, the team calculated its high speed.

But that’s just its 2D motion; if it’s also moving toward or away from us, it must be moving even faster. Its true speed may even be high enough to exceed the galaxy’s escape velocity of just over 1.3 million miles per hour, or about 600 kilometers per second. If so, the planetary system is destined to traverse intergalactic space many millions of years in the future.

“To be certain the newly identified star is part of the system that caused the 2011 signal, we’d like to look again in another year and see if it moves the right amount and in the right direction to confirm it came from the point where we detected the signal,” Bennett said.

“If high-resolution observations show that the star just stays in the same position, then we can tell for sure that it is not part of the system that caused the signal,” said Aparna Bhattacharya, a research scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA Goddard who co-authored the new paper. “That would mean the rogue planet and exomoon model is favored.”

NASA’s upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will help us find out how common planets are around such speedy stars, and may offer clues to how these systems are accelerated. The mission will conduct a survey of the galactic bulge, pairing a large view of space with crisp resolution.

“In this case we used MOA for its broad field of view and then followed up with Keck and Gaia for their sharper resolution, but thanks to Roman’s powerful view and planned survey strategy, we won’t need to rely on additional telescopes,” Terry said. “Roman will do it all.”

By Ashley Balzer

NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Star Trails 

This artist's concept visualizes stars near the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Each has a colorful trail indicating its speed –– the longer and redder the trail, the faster the star is moving. NASA scientists recently discovered a candidate for a particularly speedy star, visualized near the center of this image, with an orbiting planet. If confirmed, the pair sets a record for fastest known exoplanet system.

Credit

NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (Caltech-IPAC)

Bow Shock

This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a bow shock around a very young star called LL Ori. Named for the crescent-shaped wave made by a ship as it moves through water, a bow shock can be created in space when two streams of gas collide. Scientists think a similar feature may be present around a newfound star that could be traveling at least 1.2 million miles per hour, or 540 kilometers per second. Traveling at such a high velocity in the galactic bulge (the central part of the galaxy) where gas is denser could generate a bow shock.

Credit

NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment: C. R. O'Dell (Vanderbilt University)

Journal

The Astronomical Journal

DOI

10.3847/1538-3881/ad9b0f 

Article Title

A Candidate High-Velocity Exoplanet System in the Galactic Bulge

Article Publication Date

10-Feb-2025

China unveils ground-air dual-mode robot for Mars exploration

chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2025-02-1

A spherical version of the dual-mode robot. [Photo/CCTV News]

A research team from the Harbin Institute of Technology has developed a ground-air dual-mode robot prototype, opening new possibilities for planetary exploration. Weighing just 300 grams — about the same as an average apple — the robot features innovative mobility, capable of rolling on the ground and taking off to overcome obstacles, CCTV News reported.

Designed for extreme environments, the robot comes in multiple configurations, including dual-wheel and spherical designs, allowing it to adapt to diverse terrains. It can also be equipped with robotic arms for specialized tasks. With energy efficiency as a priority, the robot is particularly suited for Mars exploration, where minimal power consumption is crucial.

A dual-wheel version robot takes off from the water. [GIF/CCTV News]

The research team has developed multiple versions of the dual-mode robot, achieving an endurance time more than six times that of similar-sized devices. By rolling along the ground, the robot conserves energy, significantly extending its operational time. Its modular and lightweight structure allows for customization in tasks such as environmental monitoring, defect detection, and equipment maintenance.

Beyond space exploration, the technology has potential applications in underground environments, such as coal mines and subway systems, where it could aid in construction and exploration of unknown spaces, according to Professor Zhang Lixian from the institute. The prototype has fully achieved these desired features and is ready for broader deployment, Prof Zhang said.