Living World / Dinosaurs

Schweitzer published her findings in reverse order—soft tissue first, then the medullary bone—in the journal Science last year. The ensuing avalanche of publicity, sometimes couched in breathless hyperbole ("Jurassic Park-type find could be first step in re-creating T. rex," huffed a story in the Ottawa Citizen), made her squeamish. She tried to ignore the media, but to no avail. Since the articles appeared, she has become one of the world's best-known paleontologists. Her findings challenge such basic assumptions about animal preservation that her colleagues have put her research—and the woman herself—under the microscope.
 
If soft tissue can last 65 million years, Horner says, "there may be a lot of things out there that we've missed because of our assumption of how preservation works." James Farlow, a paleontologist at Indiana University–Purdue University at Fort Wayne, adds, "If you can preserve soft tissue under these circumstances, all bets are off."
 
Schweitzer's work opens the possibility of comparing dinosaur tissue with the tissue of living animals. It could also allow scientists to reconstruct ancient biology, such as prehistoric disease. If paleontologists encounter vascular channels in dinosaur fossils, they might also find nematodes, or roundworms, that lived off the animals' internal organs. "I'll bet you a six-pack of Coors that pretty soon people will be discovering Cretaceous parasites inside Cretaceous bones," says Bakker. "The possibility of looking into epidemiology and pathology is pretty cool."
 

On the flip side, Jeffrey Bada, an organic geochemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, cannot imagine soft tissue surviving millions of years. He says the cellular material Schweitzer found must be contamination from outside sources. Even if the T. rex had died in a colder, drier climate than Hell Creek, environmental radiation would have degraded its body, Bada says: "Bones absorb uranium and thorium like crazy. You've got an internal dose that will wipe out biomolecules."
 
Others question Schweitzer's thoroughness. "The pictures were stunning, but the paper fell quite short," says Hendrik Poinar, a molecular evolutionary geneticist at McMaster University in Ontario. Schweitzer has not proved that the elastic tissue she found actually consists of molecules from the original dinosaur. Poinar ticks off a list of tests Schweitzer could have conducted, including searching for the building blocks of proteins and then sequencing them to determine their origin. "I understand you want to get your papers out quick and flashy," Poinar says, "but I'm more in favor of longer work with slam-dunk authenticity."
 
Schweitzer agrees. "I am a slam-dunk scientist," she says. "I would have much rather held the paper back until we had reams and reams of data." But without publishing a journal article, she says, she could never have hoped for funding. "Without the papers in Science, I didn't stand a chance," she says. "That's the saddest part about doing science in America: You are totally driven by what gets you funding." Since publishing, Schweitzer has conducted many of the analyses Poinar suggests, with initially promising results.
 
For a scientist, the ultimate test is having independent researchers replicate your results. So far, there hasn't been a mad rush to do so—few have expertise in both molecular biology and paleontology, not to mention the passion needed to carry out such work. But there is activity. Patrick Orr at University College Dublin is bringing together geologists and organic geochemists to look for soft tissue in a 10-million-year-old frog fossil. Paleontologists at the University of Chicago are setting up a laboratory to look for similar tissue in more T. rex remains; Horner is starting to decalcify other dinosaur bones. In the dinosaur lab at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis, Bakker has taken some peeks. "I haven't found anything yet," he says, "but wouldn't be a bit surprised if soon somebody comes up with more sticky, bouncy stuff."
 
 
While scientists struggled to make sense of the bones, another community had no doubt about how to interpret the results. The reports were quickly embraced by biblical literalists who believe God created life on Earth less than 10,000 years ago. For decades they have been working to place a scientific patina on their ideas. The Institute for Creation Research runs a graduate school near San Diego with 11 instructors who hold doctorates in biochemistry, geology, and other sciences. Conferences offer papers on topics like the physics of the Genesis flood. "Any time there's empirical evidence, that's gold for them," says Ronald Numbers, a professor of the history of science and medicine at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
 
To Schweitzer, trying to prove your religious beliefs through empirical evidence is absurd, if not sacrilegious. "If God is who He says He is, He doesn't need us to twist and contort scientific data," she says. "The thing that's most important to God is our faith. Therefore, He's not going to allow Himself to be proven by scientific methodologies."
 
Some creationists, noting Schweitzer's evangelical faith, have tried to pressure her into siding with them. "It is high time that the 'Scientific' community comes clean: meaning that the public is going to hold them ACCOUNTABLE when they find out that they have been misled," reads a recent e-mail message Schweitzer received. She has received dozens of similar notes, a few of them outright menacing.
 
These religious attacks wound her far more than the scientific ones. "It rips my guts out," she says. "These people are claiming to represent the Christ that I love. They're not doing a very good job. It's no wonder that a lot of my colleagues are atheists." She told one zealot, "You know, if the only picture of Christ I had was your attitude towards me, I'd run."
 
Ironically, the insides of Cretaceous-era dinosaur bones have only deepened Schweitzer's faith. "My God has gotten so much bigger since I've been a scientist," she says. "He doesn't stay in my boxes."
 
 
Schweitzer's research doesn't stay within familiar boundaries either. Now there is no clear limit to how far science can go in bringing back the past. In particular, the letters DNA are never far from anyone's lips. "If there's preservation of cells, maybe there's preservation of the constituents of the cells," anatomist Lawrence Witmer says. "It could allow some of the molecular and genetic studies done on modern animals to be potentially used on dinosaur samples." Although scientists consider DNA unstable, in 2003 Schweitzer published a paper outlining several proposed ways the molecule might be preserved. For example, the degradation process itself might produce complex polymers that slow the DNA's further destruction.
 
At the mention of DNA, minds race to science fiction depictions of cloned dinosaurs. In 2005 a Scottish newspaper announced that, thanks to Schweitzer's work, "scientists are a step closer to . . . bringing the most savage predator ever to walk the earth back from extinction." Even the National Science Foundation blurred the line. When it awarded Horner a grant to study T. rex blood cells years ago, the agency timed the announcement to coincide with the theatrical release of Jurassic Park.
 
Schweitzer scoffs at visions of dinosaur parks. If anyone ever finds dinosaur DNA, she says, it will be fragmented and incomplete. In the unlikely event that scientists could reconstruct a complete dinosaur genome, she doubts that any modern animal could produce an egg capable of growing a dinosaur embryo. And even if that hurdle could be crossed, a viable dinosaur might not last long in 2006: "As far as we know, the way the lung tissue functioned, the way the hemoglobin functioned, was designed for an atmosphere that's very different than today's."
 
Truth is, Schweitzer hasn't even bothered to look for DNA. She has simply hunkered down to work in her characteristic way: keeping her eyes and her attitude wide open. "So many things are coming together that suggest preservation is far better than we've ever given it credit for," she says. "I think it's stupid to say, 'You're never going to get DNA out of dinosaur bone, you're never going to get proteins out of dinosaur bone, you're never going to do this, you're never going to do that.' As a scientist, I don't think you should ever use the word never."