| 28 March 2005 Soft Tissue It is Monday, and we have collectively decided to hold our weekly meeting at 0800 sharp in the large conference room in the office suite at the Greyhound Bus Station. It is the only time we can all get together, or try. So it is time to get the soft tissue moving through the morning routine at Big Pink and get on down the road. It will be useful to get ahead of the traffic, since there are flood warnings posted through the afternoon. I am a bit fuzzy from all the basketball. I don't watch much of it during the season, since the games don't mean much, even the conference championships. My team has not amounted to much since the scandal, so I have a certain disinterest. Then comes March Madness, and the mandarins of the National Collegiate Athletic Association select 64 teams to play in four regional tournaments, leading to a national championship. It is a remarkable functional event in the rhythm of the seasons, since it starts at the dog-end of winter and concludes in time to watch the magnolias bloom at the Masters golf tournament at Augusta, Georgia. It is a perfect distraction to the end of the cold weather. After the first two rounds, as the 64 teams are winnowed down to 32, the magic begins. Favorites are knocked off, teams with kids I never heard of light up with neon, every game a sudden death one-time shot at greatness. Then 32 narrows abruptly to the Sweet Sixteen, and there is magic on the court, spirits willing in some cases, but the flesh weak. ''Great Eight'' never caught on. Dumb term, I suppose. The commentators appear to have settled on ''Elite Eight,'' and that is what was settled over the weekend. It was perhaps the most extraordinary tournament I have ever seen, since three of the four games were determined in overtime. I actually have a dog in the fight, I am gratified to say, since my younger boy is a Spartan. Last night, I gripped the arms of my big brown chair in excitement as the gritty kids from East Lansing clawed their way past Kentucky in double overtime to make the Final Four. They proved that sometimes soft tissue can assume a steely resolve. Consequently, I have little desire to start the week. I feel fuzzy. Before I jump in the shower I scan the news quickly to see if anything of significance has happened elsewhere. Flood later today, warm air coming up from the Gulf. Wear raincoat. Right-to-life protesters rioted in Florida, during the basketball game, rushing the nursing home where poor Terry Schiavo is expiring with cups of water. There is confusion reported in a Central Asian land whose name contains no vowels in central Asia. The usual. I was logging off the computer when I saw something that gave me a start, and actually sent chills down my spine. Out in Montana there is a formation of rock that is rich in dinosaur bones about seventy million years old. For whatever reason, the plastic flesh of the earth has upthrust this era to the surface, and the ancient place the upthrust has brought that sedimentary level near the surface. There have been rich finds, including some remarkably well fossilized remains of the Thunder lizard, Tyrannosaurus rex. There are no roads out of the site, and consequently the fossils are being helicoptered out for further examination. One enormous thighbone was too big to be carried in one lift, so it was broken in half for the flight out. When the bone was re-united back in the lab, scientists were startled to discover something very strange. In the seventy-million year old material there was soft tissue. Not stone, minerals replacing the ancient bone, but actual soft tissue. There may be blood vessels and other cells that can be examined. There may be some surviving DNA. I don't have to tell you how significant this might be. The idea that fragile genetic material may have come down the millennia unchanged is so fantastic that I cannot begin to contemplate the consequences. Certainly, we will gain new insight into how the dinosaurs lived, and perhaps why they died out. The historic vistas beckon, whole new worlds of paleo-biology might be opening up. Scientists will be looking with new eyes at all the old bones. As I slog off to work in the rain, I am infused with a sense of wonder. Just think what the consequences might be for what is in the back of my refrigerator. There is soft stuff in there that must be at least that old. Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra |