Blood vessels and red blood cells preserved in dinosaur bones

Abstract

Dinosaur bones, 80 million years old, were studied in the scanning electron microscope, and subjected to X-ray microanalysis. Samples for the investigations were prepared according to specially elaborated, and simultaneously described methods. Analysed were (a) the morphological structure of the blood vessels and (b) the remains of their contents. The walls of the blood vessels were found to be morphologically identical with those in present-day reptiles. Bodies were found at several places inside the vessels which strongly remind one of erythrocytes in modern bones. X-ray microanalysis of places where these bodies were accumulated revealed much higher levels of iron, than at any other regions of the blood-vessel wall. Further analysis of the "dinosaur erythrocyte" iron content could be a starting point for the possible determination of oxygen in the earth's atmosphere, 80 million years ago.