These cells look like fairly typical bone cells

But it's not their appearance that singles out these extraordinary cells - it's their source. You're looking at the bone cells of a dinosaur

They come from an animal called Brachylophosaurus, a duck-billed dinosaur that lived over 80 million years ago

North Carolina State University has managed to recover not just bone cells, but possible blood vessels and collagen protein too. Their presence in the modern day is incredible

Time usually isn't kind to such tissues, which decay and degrade long before harder structures like bones, teeth and armour are fossilised

This is the second time that Schweitzer's team have recovered ancient protein from dinosaur bones

protein from the bones of Tyrannosaurus rex. That discovery was a controversial one

her Tyrannnosaurus discovery was far from a one-hit wonder

proteins can be preserved at least since the late Cretaceous period. How is that even possible?

Well that's the real interesting question, isn't it?