Chemical remains of 150-mn-year-old ‘dino-bird’ isolated

LONDON - A 150-million-year-old ‘dino-bird’ fossil, long thought to contain nothing but fossilised bone and rock, has been hiding remnants of the animal’s original chemistry, according to a new research.

The sensational discovery by an international team of palaeontologists, geochemists and physicists was made after carrying out state-of-the-art analysis of one of the world’s most important fossils - the half-dinosaur/half-bird species called Archaeopteryx.

The discovery could revolutionise the field of palaeontology says the team led by scientists at the University of Manchester and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Lab in the US.

By recording how ‘bright X-rays’ interacted with the fossil, the team have created maps showing chemical elements which were part of the living animal itself.

The maps show that portions of the feathers are not merely impressions of long-decomposed organic material — as was previously believed.

Instead, they include fossilised fragments of actual feathers containing phosphorous and sulphur, elements that compose modern bird feathers.

Trace amounts of copper and zinc were also found in the dinobird’s bones: like birds today, the Archaeopteryx may have required those elements to stay healthy, said a Manchester release.

University of Manchester palaeontologist Phil Manning said: “Archaeopteryx is to palaeontology what Tutankhamen is to archaeology. It’s simply one of the icons of our field.

“You would think after 150 years of study, we’d know everything we need to know about this animal. But guess what — we were wrong.”

Lead author geochemist Roy Wogelius from the University of Manchester said: “We talk about the physical link between birds and dinosaurs, and now we have found a chemical link between them.

“In the fields of palaeontology and geology, people have studied bones for decades. But this whole idea of the preservation of trace metals and the chemical remains of soft tissue is quite exciting.”

The researchers found significantly different concentrations of elements in the fossil than in the surrounding rock, confirming they are remnants of the dinobird and not leached from the surrounding rock into the fossil.

SLAC physicist Uwe Bergmann, who led the X-ray scanning experiment, said: “People have never used a technique this sensitive on Archaeopteryx before.”

These findings were published in the Proceedings of National Academy of Science.