Amino Acid Components in Fossil Tortoiseshell from the Oligocene of the Isle of Wight

FOSSIL bones and teeth from Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Tertiary rocks have yielded amino acid analyses which indicate the survival of collagenous material over hundreds of millions of years 1 . In contrast, fossil keratinous tissues have until now only been recorded in such Pleistocene animals as the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 1973-01, Vol.244 (5412), p.182-182
Main Authors: HALSTEAD, L. B, WOOD, LILIANA
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Brackish
Freshwater
Humanities and Social Sciences
letter
Marine
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
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Summary:FOSSIL bones and teeth from Palaeozoic, Mesozoic and Tertiary rocks have yielded amino acid analyses which indicate the survival of collagenous material over hundreds of millions of years 1 . In contrast, fossil keratinous tissues have until now only been recorded in such Pleistocene animals as the South American giant ground sloth and the woolly mammoth 2 . We are not aware of any earlier records. Ostrom 3 in his account of the Dutch Archaeopteryx noted that “the actual horny claws are preserved”, but he has since written that he “did not claim that the original keratin or horny tissues were preserved”. He was “quite confident that the original organic material has been completely replaced by calcite” (private communication).
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/244182a0