Bertazzo et al., 2015 (Protein preservation)

Question 1

… … dinosaur bone samples were examined using …-… techniques. The bones are not … … and show no indication of soft tissue

Answer 1

Eight Cretaceous (~75 Ma), nano-analytical (e.g. electron microscopy and a focused ion beam), exceptionally preserved

Question 2

In one sample, structures consistent with banded … … … remains, indicating the possible preservation of the original … structure.

Answer 2

endogenous collagen fibre, quaternary (subunit complex)

Question 3

…-… fragments typical of collagen fibrils were identified

Answer 3

amino acid

Question 4

Additionally, structures consistent with putative … remains exhibit mass … similar to emu whole …

Answer 4

erythrocyte, spectra, blood

Question 5

Study found that putative biological structures can be…

Answer 5

well-preserved over geological timescales and their preservation is more common than previously thought. Advanced material characterisation approaches can be used to observe these structures.

Question 6

The preservation of … over geological timescales offers the opportunity to investigate relationships, … and behaviour of long … animals, previously inaccessible to palaeontologists.

Answer 6

proteins, physiology, extinct

Question 7

It has been long accepted that protein molecules decay in relatively short periods of time and cannot be preserved for longer than … million years. Therefore, even in cases where organic material is preserved, it is generally accepted that only parts of original proteins are preserved and the full tertiary or quarternary structure has been lost.

Answer 7

4

Question 8

In four different samples, structures resembling … … fibres from bone were observed and in two samples structures resembling … from …

Answer 8

calcified collagen, erythrocytes, birds

Question 9

Mass spectrometry found … consistent with fragments of … … present in ….

Answer 9

peaks, amino acids, collagen

Question 10

And the spectra obtained from the erythrocyte-like structure were similar to the spectra obtained from the whole blood of an extant …

Answer 10

emu

Question 11

Reference?

Answer 11

Bertazzo et al. (2015)

Question 12

A TEM observed that the fibres of the collagen-like structures showed ~… banding, which could be collagen fibre remains.

Answer 12

67nm

Question 13

The erythrocyte-like structures were measured at, on average, around 2nm in the dinosaur samples. This is much smaller than those found in modern birds, although the structures may have undergone … and other forms of deformation during fossilisation. However, RBC size is known to correlate with … … in many clades of modern reptiles and birds, so discoveries of erythrocytes in different dinosaur taxa could allow scientists to determine the relative … … of different dinosaurs and perhaps determine whether they were … or …

Answer 13

shrinkage, metabolic rate, metabolic rates, ectothermic, endothermic (i.e. determine where the transition from ectothermy to endothermy took place on the avian stem lineage).