A team of scientists have discovered what appears to be DNA in a dinosaur fossil dating back 125 million years, though some experts have advised caution when reviewing the findings.
Palaeontologist researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences published a paper on Communications Biology detailing the DNA discovery, which was found within a portion of cartilage from a Caudipteryx specimen. This peacock-sized theropod dinosaur inhabited the Jehol Biota – in what is now Liaoning in northeast China – during the Early Cretaceous period.
The team extracted a piece of cartilage from the right femur of the specimen, then, under a microscope, they treated the cells with chemicals called hematoxylin and eosin, which are used to stain and light up different tissue structures. The same staining method was applied to cartilage cells from a chicken to compare results between the two samples.
Both specimens reacted to the dyes in the exact same way, with one dinosaur chondrocyte revealing a nucleus with fossilized threads of chromatin — a complex of DNA and protein. However, Chemistry World says some experts think the staining technique is "not precise enough to indicate whether certain compounds are present."
"We are obviously interested in fossilized cell nuclei because this is where most of the DNA should be if DNA was preserved," Alida Bailleul, corresponding author of the study, said in a press release. "So, we have good preliminary data, very exciting data, but we are just starting to understand cellular biochemistry in very old fossils. At this point, we need to work more."
Bailleul recognizes that the data from this most recent study is just a "starting" point to strengthen their understanding of DNA preservation, with further research needed to support their findings. Whatever comes from any future research, Bailleul says dinosaur cloning will always remain a fantasy, even if scientists end up having "their entire genome sequenced."
This isn't the first time that scientists have recorded finding biomolecules in ancient dino fossils. Last year, a group from the same academy discovered organic material within 75-million-year-old dinosaur fossils, including cartilage cells, proteins, chromosomes, and DNA. A few years before that, Imperial College London found blood cells in a fossilized dinosaur claw.
Adele Ankers is a freelance writer for IGN. Follow her on Twitter.