A joint research project by Okayama University of Science, Okayama University, University of Manitoba, Kurashiki City Museum of Natural History, Hokkaido University, and Tanba Dinosaur Museum has developed a method to visualize and detect proteins in fossils without destroying the morphology of the fossils, using elephant fossils tens of thousands of years old from the seabed of the Seto Inland Sea (Bisan Seto) straddling Okayama and Kagawa prefectures. They have developed a method to visualize and detect proteins present in the fossil without destroying the tissue morphology of the fossil.

Even with fossils that are difficult to identify by appearance alone, such as bone fragments stored in museums, this technology has enabled highly accurate species identification by confirming that proteins remain and analyzing their sequences.
By applying this technology to fossils from older periods, it may be possible to extract proteins from fossils of extinct animals such as dinosaurs.

In recent years, the field of “paleoproteomics,” which explores the evolution of extinct organisms by analyzing proteins left in fossils, has been attracting attention.
However, since the amount of proteins remaining in fossils is very small and always involves the risk of external contamination (contamination), a major challenge has been to prove whether the analyzed proteins are truly of fossil origin (endogenous) or not.

We applied a special staining method that specifically stains collagen, the main component of bone, to “polished specimens,” which are thinly sliced fossils.
As a result, we succeeded for the first time in the world in directly “seeing” the presence of proteins and their distribution locations while preserving the microstructural structure of the fossil.
Furthermore, by combining quantitative protein analysis and mass spectrometry, we have multifacetedly proved that the stained proteins are endogenous, originating from elephants tens of thousands of years ago.

This method is expected to make a significant contribution to the future development of paleoproteomics as a simple and reliable screening technique for selecting fossils with well-preserved proteins prior to expensive and complex analyses.