How Old is T-Rex?

In 1993, a report surfaced in the journal Science that a T-rex fossil found in the United States contained fresh bone tissue with nucleated blood cells. Since organic molecules of this type can only be preserved (even in the best circumstances) for a few thousand years, this becomes compelling evidence that this animal was possibly alive when Noah was building the ark.

A graduate student named Mary Schweitzer from the Museum of the Rockies in Montana found the fresh bone tissue; upon thorough microscopic investigation, she reportedly discovered nucleated blood cells still present in the tissue. She said that “it was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But of course, I couldn’t believe it…the bones, after all, are 65 million years old. How could blood cells survive that long?”

She showed the slide to her boss, paleontologist Jack Horner, and he told her to prove that they were not blood cells. She worked on this research for nearly seven years, and reported in Earth Magazine (June 1997, Vol. 6, No. 3, pp 54-58) that “so far, we haven’t been able to.” Dr. Horner and Edwin Dobbs, who co-authored Dinosaur Lives that same year (1997), reported that, “under the microscope there appeared to be blood cells preserved within the bone tissue. Mary conducted a number of tests in an attempt to rule out the possibility that what she’d discovered where in fact blood cells. The tests instead confirmed her initial interpretation.