Fossilized dinosaur eggshells can preserve amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, over millions of years

By Evan Thomas Saitta, Postdoctoral Scholar in Paleontology, University of Chicago

As a scientist, lab work can sometimes get monotonous. But in 2017, while a Ph.D. student of paleobiology at the University of Bristol in the U.K., I heard a gleeful exclamation from across the room. Kirsty Penkman, head of the North East Amino Acid Racemization lab at the University of York, had just read the data printed off the chromatograms and was practically jumping up and down.

The instrument had detected telltale signatures…

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