Source for Dinosaur DNA

[aman]

Since a large asteroid smashed into the Yucatan Peninsula during the time of the dinosaurs, is it possible a good chunk of a dinosaur got tossed up into space and is floating around freeze dried? Maybe a large bone full of marrow could have made it up or some water critters.

Just aman

[wolfson]

Dreeeeeeeam Dreeeeeam Dreeeeam!!!!!!! Although in theory it might be, but your possibilities of finding the asteroid are well 10e9 that of winning the lottery.

[swansont]

aman said in post #1 :

Since a large asteroid smashed into the Yucatan Peninsula during the time of the dinosaurs, is it possible a good chunk of a dinosaur got tossed up into space and is floating around freeze dried? Maybe a large bone full of marrow could have made it up or some water critters.

Just aman

 

Consider that you need to give whatever chunk of material you want to eject the required escape velocity without frying it. "Unlikely" is an understatement.

[Skye]

If it did happen, and we were lucky enough to find it, the radiation in space would probably have made the DNA useless. Same problem for getting DNA out of stuff in amber I think, over that time without the cells DNA repair mechanisms working, the DNA would be very badly damaged.

[elfin vampire]

Since a large asteroid smashed into the Yucatan Peninsula during the time of the dinosaurs, is it possible a good chunk of a dinosaur got tossed up into space and is floating around freeze dried? Maybe a large bone full of marrow could have made it up or some water critters.

 

Now THIS I LIKE!

 

Embarressingly the lunar missions returned microbes which had been taken from Earth, mistakenly by the astronaughts, survived the journey and the moonlandings, plus their return back to Earth so there is little or no doubt some degree of genetic materiel could survive the most extreme circumstances.

Could a Yucatan sized cometary collision send ejecta into space? Almost certainly. Several Martian meteorites have been located by scientists in Antarctica, some locations considered relative 'fields' where one can simply walk along and pick up a million year old piece of martian crust. These have arrived due to the ejecta of asteroidal collisions upon Mars similar to the Yucatan event and travelled all the way through space to then arrive as meteors themselves, upon Earth. The identification of the potential for fossilized, primordeal Martian bacterial 'skeletons' a few years ago, beginning a new contraversy for the potential of life on Mars came from one such meteorite.

 

It is entirely possible that Jurassic genetic materiel is floating about space. And I'd never thought of it before now.

Good science!