3 Dinosaur Fossils That Preserve Internal Organs

the fossil record is an astonishing window into our planet's deep past although much of it remains incomplete every now and then a truly extraordinary Discovery has made that provides us with a tantalizing glimpse of the biology of long dead animals despite all the incredible fossils found of dinosaurs hard Parts such as their skeletons teeth and armor fossilized remains of dinosaurs softer parts are still rare discoveries impressions of dinosaur scales traces of feathery plumage and sometimes mineralized skin itself have all been found and tell scientists a great deal about the exterior appearance of these wondrous beasts

in life but sometimes even rarer dinosaur fossils are found those that preserve the structures of internal organs such discoveries are few and far between but they are among the most stunning of all prehistoric Revelations so let's take a look at three such astonishing and exceptional finds here are three dinosaur fossils that preserve internal organs first of all one of the most breathtaking dinosaur fossils to ever be found is that of a baby meat eating therapod uncovered from approximately 113 milliony old rocks in Italy this juvenile dinosaur is named ship onic salticus and within its rib

cage the remains of this tiny animal's heart stomach intestines windpipe and other internal soft tissues can still be seen all this time after its death it's no understatement to say that ship onic is a one-of-kind fossil no other dinosaur has been found with such extensive preservation of the internal organs and this discovery sent waves through the scientific Community when it was officially announced to the world in 1998 ship onic was originally found by a fossil collector in 1981 in a small Quarry located some 30 Mi Northeast of Naples but for a long time this collector

didn't realize quite what it was he discovered apparently he thought these bones belonged to a kind of prehistoric bird and he started preparing the fossil in his own home he tried to strengthen the fossil by taking away parts of the rock overlaying it and putting vinyl glue onto the bones he even went as far as to place some extra slabs of rock around the outsides including one slab which he added a fake tail onto to complete the missing part but then in 1993 Apparently after he just watched Jurassic Park he realized he might have something

quite significant as such he took the fossil to paleontologists at the Milan Natural History Museum where they identified the animal as a non-bird dinosaur making it the first non-bird dinosaur to be found in all of Italy between 1993 and its official naming in 1998 Museum scientists cleaned up the fossil removing the fake tail and exposing more of the real bone underneath the rock it was during this preparation process that they realized the fossil's true importance as more of the skeleton was uncovered beneath the rock that the collector had not previously removed the museum preparator revealed

mineralized remains of internal organs still in place within the dinosaur's body cavity after more than 100 million years due to its extraordinary nature the ship onics fossil has been the subject of intense study by paleontologists who have described in minute detail all the structures of the residual organs as preserved the skeleton measures 237 mm long or about 9 in though its total body length in life was probably around 461 mm or 18 in going by the tiny size as well as other evidence from the structure of the bones this ship onic baby was probably not

even 3 weeks old when it died the classification of exactly what kind of dinosaur ship onic is has recently become an interesting point of discussion that I won't go into too much detail about here but it was initially thought to be a consign therapod a family of small-bodied carnivorous dinosaurs the most well-known of which is comus itself however in the last few years it's been proposed that ship onic May in fact present a hatchling carodon assaid or alternatively that it might even be related to the spinosaurs scientists have identified various internal organs within this animal's

remarkably well-preserved skeleton incredibly many of these are not simply the traces of the organs but the actual three-dimensional preserved organs themselves as they were directly mineralized during the fossilization process the organ remains are phosphatized meaning the original organic material has been replaced by calcium I phosphate minerals a mode of preservation that conserves extraordinary detail and indicates that this animal was very rapidly buried after its death one of these organ remains can be seen in the region around the base of the neck 8 to 10 very small c-shaped rings can be seen partially embedded within preserved

connective tissue these rings are evenly spaced from one another and look to be the traul Rings cartilaginous structures found in the windpipe that maintain the shape of the tube while also retaining some flexibility the most obvious of the internal organs are the intestines preserved in astonishing detail and still retaining a three-dimensional structure the paleontologist who described ship onics wrote that the loops of the intestines are lumpy and shiny reminiscent of the aspect one would see after dissecting a modern animal this really is just mind-blowing we can literally see the tiniest details and actual texture of

113 milliony old guts interestingly the preservation of the intestines showed that this organ was actually positioned much further forward in the body cavity than had been previously assumed for non-bird dinosaurs and the researchers have even been able to distinguish the various sections of the organ such as the duodenum the junam and the ilium following the intestine back along the body a rectum can also be located in this dinosaur just beyond the rectum a fecal pellet the scientific way of saying fossil poop is also preserved containing various small fish scales and as if all this detail

wasn't all already incredible enough looking very closely at the surfaces of the intestines and rectum you can even see the faint branching traces of blood vessels that would have crisscrossed the tissues paleontologists have even been able to work out the order in which this tiny baby dinosaur ate its last meals near the traal Rings at the base of the neck various tiny fragments of Bones and scales run parallel to the windpipe this likely shows where the esophagus was the tube that carries food down the neck then just in front of where the intestine start a

cluster of tiny lizard bones including a partial lizard's foot indicates the likely position of the stomach the stomach itself wasn't directly preserved since the highly acidic nature of the organ probably sped up its Decay compared to the surrounding ones within the intestines some lizard scales and Fishbones are visible and then of course there are the fish scales in the fecal pellet as well so the last few meals of this baby dinosaur were as follows first it consumed a fish then a second fish followed by a lizard then a second lizard and finally either another lizard

or another fish the discovery of these last meals may also hint at some evidence of Parental care among these dinosaurs as paleontologists suggest that the very young hatchling would not have been fast enough to hunt fish and lizards by itself just in front of the intestines and stomach of the little dinosaur there's also a distinct reddish Halo staining the sediment and some of the surrounding bones considering the color of the Halo and the position within the body it's been hypothesized to be composed of iron rich minerals resulting from the decay of the liver analysis of

the elemental composition of this red stain has since confirmed that the ion indeed comes from the degradation of the dinosaurs hemoglobin in the blood the protein that transports oxygen in red blood cells so the red mass is most likely what's left of the liver but it might also be the remains of the dinosaurs heart too in modern birds and crocodilians the liver and heart are very close together so it makes sense to infer that they would have been close in non-bird dinosaurs as well in addition to the heart the spleen is another organ that could

have contributed to the blood in this region since this Blood storing organ is also found close to the liver in birds and Crocs so although there are no direct remains of the heart left in terms of its muscular tissue it's pretty astonishing that after 113 million years there do seem to be traces of the blood from the heart preserved in this extraordinary fossil some absolutely marvelous patches of three-dimensional preserved muscles are visible in the specimen as well at several locations across the body unbelievably detailed bundles of muscle fibers can be seen even sometimes showing the

individual bandings of the fibers when examined under a scanning electron microscope these bandings are likely related to the sarir the subcellular units involved in Contracting muscles some of the muscle fibers at the base of the neck show this exceptional preservation of detail thanks thanks to them having been replaced by calcium phosphate minerals very quickly after the animal's death another patch of preserved musculature that's very clear in the ship onics fossil is located at the base of the tail and muscle fibers are again visible here incredibly this region represents at least three distinct muscles associated with

the pelvic region and hind limb including the main muscle that would have driven the movement of the upper legs enabling the paleontologists to examine in neverbe seen detail how this musculature would have functioned in non-bird dinosaurs something that's also worth noting about the ship onics fossil is the fact that on every one of the baby dinosaurs little fingers you can actually distinguish the horny sheaths that would have covered the Bony claw cores and would have been composed of keratin in life it's rather incredible to see the extent to which these horny coverings would have extended

the length of the talons and it's a good reminder that when you see the claws of dinosaur fossils they would have been even longer when the animal was alive the insane level of detail that's visible in the ship onics fossil is truly invaluable for learning more about the soft tissue anatomy of these long dead animals and this baby therapod has taught us so many interesting new things about dinosaur biology that we would never have been able to determine from preserved hard Parts alone next up there's an astonishing fossil of a Raptor that also preserves some

internal organs and this specman is even older than ship onic dated to about 121 million years ago this this Raptor a name that refers to the family of dinosaurs technically called the dromeosaur is known from an almost completely preserved Skeleton on a slab of rock that was Unearthed in northern China in 2022 this specimen was scientifically described and recognized as belonging to a new species which was given the name daong wangai this was a relatively small dromeosaur measuring about a meter and a half or 4.9 ft in length it would have been covered in a

fluffy coat of feathers and some of these feathers can even be seen preserved alongside the skeleton plumage can be seen down the head neck and back plus there are more traces of some short feathers along the tail I should also note that there's a small frog skeleton preserved next to the foot of the da long skeleton so that's a neat little bonus fossil I like to think they were friends but the really spectacular preservation of soft tissue structures is seen within da Long's body cavity within the back half of this Raptor's abdomen a bluish colored

layer is visible which the pists noted as closely matching the layout of the intestines that are preserved in ship onics extending forward to the exact same point in the body as in the other fossil the texture of the bluish layer in da along is also strikingly similar to that of ship onic examining the layer under a scanning electron microscope the scientists observed that it was composed of many tightly packed micr crystals just like the intestine of ship onics this micro structure therefore indicates that the layer does indeed represent the intestines of of this Raptor the

activity of Decay bacteria operating just after the death of the dinosaur would have driven the mineralization of the tissue causing all these tiny micr crystals to form and replicate the overall shape and extent of a part of the ancient animal's guts once again it's also interesting that da along doesn't preserve any remnant of the stomach despite the intestines being here it seems likely that similar to ship onics the region of the stomach was very acidic even after death probably speeding up the decay of the organ the fact that the intestine of Da long is so

similar in structure and placement to ship onic is rather intriguing too ship onic was quite distantly related to Da long especially if ship onic turns out to indeed be a close relative of the kronosaur or spinosaurs da long as a dromeosaur was much closer to birds on the dinosaur evolutionary tree and so the similarities observed between the internal organs of these two different dinosaurs suggest that a a lot of meat eating therapod dinosaurs probably had quite conservative digestive systems if these two somewhat distantly related species had intestinal layouts that can be compared this closely it's

an interesting bit of soft tissue biology that we would never have been able to confirm if it wasn't for remarkable fossil discoveries such as this so far we've looked at some extraordinary fossils that preserve the internal organs of the body but I'd also like to show you a spectacular fossil that retains some traces of a dinosaur's brain this is a very exciting Discovery because brain tissues are particularly easily broken down after death and so are almost never found as fossils usually when paleontologists study the structure of prehistoric animal brains they use what are known as

endocasts essentially natural casts that are made of the space within the brain case alternatively they might scan the brain case and create a digital reconstruction of the cavity where the brain would have sat during life but in this exceptional fossil some remains of the actual brain tissue were discovered attached to the sides of a dinosaur endocast the fossil was discovered along a beach on the southern coast of England it comes from a geological formation that dates back to around 133 million years ago and belongs to an iguanodontian dinosaur these were large robust herbivores and the

astonishing discovery of a part of one of these ancient reptiles brains has enabled paleontologists an unprecedented insight into the lives of these long-lost animals the fossil itself looks rather unassuming at first in fact it's sort of just looks like a brown Pebble but once you realize what we're looking at here it's really quite astounding it's a partial brain endocast formed from sediment infilling the Gap in the skull where the brain would have been but across the surface the mineralized remains of the outer membranes that enveloped the brain during life are present not only that but

individual blood vessels can also be seen in scanning electron microscope images of the specimen plus there may even be some partially preserved pieces of the outer cortical layer of the brain the actual gray matter of the organ itself the figures within the paper describing the specimen help a great deal in making sense of what we're looking at here paleontologists already know what the shape of an Iguanodon brain looks like thanks to more complete discoveries of other endocasts so here we can see what the shape of the brain would be expected to look like like housed

within the skull of this kind of dinosaur this blue shape is an enlarged view of the overall brain structure showing the anatomy of these dinosaurs brains the Roman numerals here indicate where the major cranial nerve canals would be located the lighter blue color across the brain shows which part of the organ is preserved in the actual fossil we're talking about looking at the shape of the fossil itself you can easily see the expected structures such as the pineal and Dural Peaks which line up nicely with a complete picture of the aan on brain the green

color here represents the extent of the preserved outer layer of brain tissue across the endocast meanwhile the red represents layers of a mineral called cerite and the blue marks fragments of Bones either these bones might have been part of the Bony brain case or they could have come from another source and just been mixed in with the sediment as it infilled the cavity where the soft brain once was this Iguanodon likely died near a shallow body of stagnant water and must have ended up with the top of its head submerged in sediment at the bottom

of the water the conditions of this water were likely very acidic and low in oxygen essentially pickling these soft tissues before all of them were lost to Decay however the rest of the dinosaur's body was not preserved so all we have left is this partial endocast the outer brain membranes called the meninges and the associated blood vessels would have been preserved as Tiny crystals of the mineral calcium phosphate very quickly grew and replaced the original biological components this process of phosphatization similar to how ship onics was preserved was only possible due to the specific conditions

in the stagnant water the dinosaur died in so what have paleontologists been able to tell about the brain anatomy of dinosaurs from this mindblowing Find Examining the fossil using a scanning electron microscope tiny mineralized ribbons made up of aligned fibers can be seen making up the layer of the outermost menial membrane indicated in this figure as DM the ribbon texture indicates that these are likely phosphatized collagen bundles the protein that makes up the protective outer layers around the brain in some parts of the fossil there are then bits that resemble the texture of the arachnoid

Mata another of the protective layers around the brain in modern Crocs it's the arachnoid Mata that directly overlays the brain unlike in mammals which have some extra layers the Iguanodon has a more Croc like condition here as within the preserved aroid Mata there seem to be convolutions Impressions from the actual ridges and folds of the underlying gray matter in a few bits that preserve deeper levels of the endocast it's also possible to see Parts with remarkably complex textures at the fine scale these sections lack any of the textures associated with the protective layers and so

they very well might be mineralized pieces of the gray matter the actual cortical tissue from this dinosaur's brain a literally mindblowing revelation the fossilized brain tissues have some fascinating implications for our understanding of dinosaur intelligence as well in most modern reptiles the brains of these animals only take up about half of the volume of the cranial cavity this is because the brain is surrounded by layers of blood vessels and sinuses that make up a blood drainage system so it's generally been thought that in the case of most dinosaur endocasts a lot of this space would

not actually have been brain tissue but in this Iguanodon brain fossil the actual brain tissue appears to be very close to the side of the brain case lying less than a millimeter beneath the menial tissues it's tempting to take this as evidence that we have been greatly underestimating dinosaur intelligence as the way it's preserved it looks as though the brain tissue was tightly packed into the brain case and took up a lot more of the volume than previously suspected but it's more likely that this represents an artifact of how the fossil became preserved it might

just be that the brain tissue became pressed up against the membranes as the organ decayed and collaps making it appear that the tissues were closer together than they really were as one of the paleontologists who studied the specimen explained as we can't see the lobes of the brain itself we can't say for sure how big this dinosaur's brain was it's entirely possible that dinosaurs had bigger brains than we give them credit for but we can't tell from the specimen alone but of course the fact that at least one dinosaur brain beats such extraordinary odds and

actually became partly fossilized does give us hope that we might one day find others preserved in a similar fashion so who knows perhaps it's just a matter of time before a dinosaur brain that reveals even more about the internal structure is discovered well that brings us to the end of this look at some of the most incredible dinosaur fossils we found so far the facts that these internal soft parts of dinosaurs have been able to fossilize and remain preserved for all this time after the animals died is truly incredible it fills me with hope that

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