From DISCOVER Magazine.
When this shy paleontologist found soft, fresh-looking tissue inside a T.rex femur, she erased a line between past and present. Then all hell broke loose.
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Schweitzer scoffs at visions of dinosaur parks. If anyone ever finds dinosaur DNA, she says, it will be fragmented and incomplete. In the unlikely event that scientists could reconstruct a complete dinosaur genome, she doubts that any modern animal could produce an egg capable of growing a dinosaur embryo. And even if that hurdle could be crossed, a viable dinosaur might not last long in 2006: "As far as we know, the way the lung tissue functioned, the way the hemoglobin functioned, was designed for an atmosphere that's very different than today's."
Truth is, Schweitzer hasn't even bothered to look for DNA. She has simply hunkered down to work in her characteristic way: keeping her eyes and her attitude wide open. "So many things are coming together that suggest preservation is far better than we've ever given it credit for," she says. "I think it's stupid to say, 'You're never going to get DNA out of dinosaur bone, you're never going to get proteins out of dinosaur bone, you're never going to do this, you're never going to do that.' As a scientist, I don't think you should ever use the word never."
