大象传媒

It used to be said of superb fossilised bones like this T-rex jaw bone that in some miraculous way minerals had replaced the bone, molecule by molecule. But scientists in the New Mexico Museum of Natural History have had this bone analysed chemically. The spaces in the bone have indeed been filled with silica, but the substance of the bone itself is chemically almost identical with modern bone. Not only that, the scientists have also taken sections from the bone - and when you look at these under the microscope you see grains of the mineral filling - quartz, or silica. But here are bone cells - with cell walls and central spaces almost identical in appearance with the bone cells of living reptiles. This is the actual substance of a dinosaur.