Show Date: March 30, 2005

WHEN IS A FOSSIL NOT A FOSSIL?
AND
CORAL REEFS AND TSUNAMIS
Pam Eastlick for the Marianas Variety

Greetings and welcome to The Deep column and the deepest radio show on Earth. The Deep is the science talk radio program that takes you from the depths of the ocean to the farthest reaches of the universe. This week on The Deep hosted by Jim Sullivan and aired at 6:00 this evening on K-57, we’ll talk about fossils, making them and not making them. Then we’ll talk about the tsunami-damaged coral reefs in the Indian Ocean. We may have some expedition calls and, of course, our science news updates. We’ll also be taking your phone calls. Tune in tonight! Log on to www.thedeepradioshow.com for all the latest and deepest news!

A PRESENT FROM T-REX?
Jurassic Park may be much closer to reality than it was last week. In a dramatic new turn of events, scientists think they have found soft tissue and not rocks in the femur (thighbone) of a Tyrannosaurus rex.
If you want to become a fossil, scientists have discovered that you must meet several specific conditions. First, you must be dead (which prevents me from wanting to be a fossil anytime soon). Second, you must die in a place where you will be rapidly buried (this protects you from higher food chain organisms with bad intentions and from the general environment - against mechanical (abrasion and break-up) and chemical processes (decay and disintegration).

If you’re really serious about leaving a beautiful corpse, you also need to die in an anoxic environment (one without oxygen). Oxidation is the true destroyer of an organism once it has died. And since all animals and plants need oxygen to survive, finding an anoxic environment in which to expire can be a real problem. The tar pits in Los Angeles and the peat bogs of England and Ireland are good examples of anoxic environments.

And, scientists have apparently discovered, so are the insides of large fossilized bones. Paleontologists discovered MOR 1125, the fossilized remains of an 18-year-old T-rex, in a sandstone bank in Montana. Sandstone is laid down in the bottom of shallow lakes or seas and MOR 1125 probably was pursuing some prey into the water and got in over his head. He could have even had the great misfortune to stumble into quicksand.

So, MOR 1125 fulfilled the first two requirements to survive the ages. He died and he was buried quickly. But MOR 1125 also was a Tyrannosaurus rex and this means that he was a very BIG boy (or girl). He was probably 40 feet long and stood 16 feet tall. This means that if you live in a typical 2-bedroom one-story home, MOR 1125 could NOT come to visit. Sue, the most famous T-rex (up to now at least) had a femur length of 54 inches.

And this explains why the scientists who found this gigantic skeleton had a problem. MOR 1125 was discovered far from any road and his bones had to go out by helicopter. And, the femur wouldn’t’ fit. So, they broke it. And that was when they found the delicious surprise inside.

When Dr. Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina University and her team examined the broken bone, they noticed tissue fragments lining the marrow cavity of the animal's femur. When they dissolved mineral deposits in the tissues, a flexible, stretchy material was left behind.

These flexible filaments resemble blood vessels. There were also traces of what look like red blood cells; and others that look like osteocytes, cells that build and maintain bone.

Dr. Schweitzer told the BBC, "This is fossilized bone in the sense that it's from an extinct animal but it doesn't have a lot of the characteristics of what people would call a fossil,"

"It still has places where there are no secondary minerals, and it's not any more dense than modern bone; it's bone more than anything. The vessels and contents are similar in all respects to blood vessels recovered from ... ostrich bone."
Apparently, the anoxic environment inside a big dense bone is an excellent place to preserve this kind of tissue. Dir. Schweitzer and her team found similar tissue in at least three other well-preserved dinosaur specimens: one 80-million-year-old hadrosaur and two 65-million-year-old tyrannosaurs.
We may someday hear the PITTER PATTER of dinosaur feet after all.

TSUNAMIS AND CORAL
Divers are still assessing the damage caused to many coral reefs by the 26 December tsunami. They’re pulling mattresses and metal fragments from the bottom and hold out hope that the monsoons, which will start in May, will stir the water and wash sediment from the coral.

Scientists say that much slow-growing coral was broken by the massive waves. It will take hundreds of years for them to reach their normal size again. The reefs of the Andaman and Nicobar island chains were particularly hard hit.

	A volunteer diver ties debris to be lifted out of a coral bed off Thailand's Koh Phi Phi Island in the Andaman Sea.
Stringer/Thailand/Reuters file

Whether we’re walking with the dinosaurs or cleaning tsunami-damaged reefs, The Deep is the place to be on K-57 tonight at 6:00 p.m. We’ll have some expedition calls and take your phone calls. Don’t miss it!