Photography by Anton Oleinik, Ph.D., associate professor,
Charles E. Schmidt College of Science
This is an image of an approximately 30-micrometer thick slice of rock — bone in that case — attached to a glass slide with epoxy, which is a widespread method of studying rocks and fossils. Pictured is a section of a leg bone, which is peripheral, closer to the edge of the bone and both contain different, denser bone tissue, and is somewhat altered by erosion. Portions of the slide have visible haversian canals, which are minute tubes inside a bone and contain blood vessels from a specimen of the Triceratops horridus Marsch, 1889, found in North Dakota. Remains of the triceratops are located at the site that represents a deposit of seismically induced waves from the giant asteroid that struck the Earth 65 million years ago. Although the triceratops probably died shortly before the impact, it is probably one of the last dinosaurs that ever walked in North America. More details about the research on the Tanis site in North Dakota can be found here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6486721/
