Jack Horner - How to Build a Dinosaur

Molecules can become fossils just as bones can, Peggy Ostrom, a biochemist at Michigan State University. Biochemicals within bones can be extracted and then crystallized. This is called mass spectrometry, and has been used to determine many things, like that horses are exactly the same as they were 42,000 years ago. This process does seem useful, but i believe it is also one-sided and can only tell whether genes of animals now are the same as genes of animals long ago or not.

Pages 100-120
(This entry was to be written on Sunday, but was not)

Jack Horner - How to Build a Dinosaur

These cells found inside the T. Rex fossil were still flexible, meaning they were not fully fossilized. The red blood cells allow scientists to learn a lot about how the blood of a T. Rex flowed throughout its body. Also, polymerase chain reaction, a process of turning a fragment of a fossil into dust, allows scientists to gather chains of DNA from the dinosaur. This is all very strange, because it makes movies like Jurassic Park seem very possible, with preserved dinosaur DNA and recent advances in cloning.

Pages 80-100

Jack Horner - How to Build a Dinosaur

At the dig, the scientists are using methods that allow them to determine that one of the T Rex fossils that they found was a female, and pregnant. The processes used to do this were part of the Paleohistology branch of science, or the study of ancient tissue. Similar processes were also used to determine that many dinosaurs are actually warm-blooded. In certain bones of dinosaurs, red blood cells and hemoglobin are still present. I find all of this very interesting, because i did not know that most dinosaurs were warm-blooded, I have never even heard of Paleohistology before, and i never would have thought that red blood cells and hemoglobin could still be present in a bone millions and millions of years old

Pages 60-80

Jack Horner - How to Build a Dinosaur

Mammals all began as small, mouse-like creatures. But, as time went on, mammals became more and more diverse, from quick, deer-like creatures, to slow great sloths. Many of these mammals were wiped out by hunting more than 13,000 years ago, mostly by the Clovis people. During the year 2000, Jack and a team of other experts began digging at the Hell Creek formation. That year alone, they found five T Rex skeletons. I am now enjoying this book slightly more, as it is actually beginning to describe the digging and fossils.

Pages 40-60