![]() Dinosaurs weren't shy about sexual signaling, all those bells and whistles, horns, crests, and frills, and yet we just haven't had a reliable way to tell males from females," Zanno said in the statement. "It's a dirty secret, but we know next to nothing about sex-linked traits in extinct dinosaurs. Moreover, once the presence of medullary bone confirms that a dinosaur is a female, researchers can look for other clues that might help determine whether it's a boy or a girl dinosaur. This technique could help researchers find more medullary bone, said study co-author Lindsay Zanno, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University. But the researchers found that doing an initial computed tomography (CT) scan of dinosaur bone can help determine whether a fossil is worth investigating, Schweitzer said. Even when present, it can be difficult to identify without cutting off a sample of dinosaur bone and examining it under a microscope or with a chemical test. "This analysis allows us to determine the gender of this fossil, and gives us a window into the evolution of egg laying in modern birds," Schweitzer said in a statement.īecause medullary bone is present only in females during egg-laying periods, it's relatively rare in fossils. rex had medullary bone and was likely pregnant when she died, Schweitzer said. The results confirmed those from the 2005 study, that the T. The researchers also used the antibodies to analyze medullary bone from an ostrich and chicken. ![]() The researchers found that the ancient bone still contained some keratan sulfate. Schweitzer and her colleagues tested for the compound using different chemicals, including monoclonal antibodies ( immune cells that bind only to a specific agent - in this case, keratan sulfate). Medullary bone contains the organic compound keratan sulfate, and bone with osteopetrosis does not. However, the two are chemically different. Under the microscope, medullary bone and bone with osteopetrosis look remarkably similar, Schweitzer said. Such a test would show whether the fossil had medullary bone, or whether it actually had osteopetrosis, a condition that makes bones unusually dense. So, she decided to check the chemistry of the T. "I think good scientists should always be second-guessing themselves," Schweitzer said.
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