Soft tissue discovered in dinosaurs undoubtedly kick-started the quest for more and more samples and data largely due to their size and popularity. I mean, who wouldn’t want to find their very own T-Rex tooth, triceratops horn or a velociraptor claw? However, there are plenty of ‘less glamorous’ deep time and non-deep time remains in collections, storage or still buried in the ground.
From giant kangaroos (procoptodon goliah), mastodons and other megafauna to pterosaurs, turtles, plesiosaurs and flora, there are opportunities to further investigate soft tissue presence and the decay processes of other species, even if they are not considered to be ‘deep time’ fossils.
There are now more than 120 papers in peer-reviewed journal articles reporting soft tissues in dinosaur and other deep-time organic remains. These scientific papers describe biological material, including tissue and DNA, remaining inside fossils. A full list, which is being continually updated, is provided here: *List of Biomaterial Fossil Papers
Example papers for this topic:
(122) Turtle blood vessels and osteocytes 2022
(118) Mongolemys osteocytes, blood vessels 2020
(113) Permian marker plant's lignin biopolymers 2019
(99) Bird preening (sebaceous) gland still containing oil 2017
(84) A pterosaur's orange claw material 2015
(67) Type 1 Collagen in Cretaceous mosasaur humerus 2011
*This list of biomaterial papers can provide useful information for research and posting on topics within the Dinosaur Project Community. Thanks to researchgate.net for making this list freely available.