I came to China in 2018 as a laureate of the CAS PIFI postdoctoral fellowship to work on ancient (Mesozoic) birds at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing. I had been invited by former IVPP Professor Jingmai O’Connor (now Curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum in Chicago in the United States) to work with her and Professor and Academician Zhou Zhonghe. The following two years of postdoctoral research were full of scientific discoveries and contributed so much to my career advancement that I wasn’t ready to leave China. Originally, I had planned to leave China in 2020, at the end of my postdoctoral contract. However, I applied for a Research Associate position and was awarded the CAS Young Staff Grant for three years (from 2020 to 2023). I decided to stay and pursue my research at IVPP for another three years.

CAS’s IVPP is an institute that is world-renown in paleontology for its scientific excellency. From 2020 to 2023, my institute, colleagues and supervisors supported my idea to pursue research that I had started in the United States during my PhD thesis. Back there, I worked on analyzing exceptionally-preserved fossilized cartilage cells in baby dinosaurs. These dinosaurs were found in 1988 in the American Northwest (in Montana) by Jack Horner, my former PhD advisor. Samples waited for about 20 years there, left untouched in the collection of the Museum of the Rockies, until I arrived as a PhD student in 2010. While analyzing some samples under the microscope, I discovered extremely beautifully preserved cartilage cells. Some of these cells even showed structures that looked like some potential remnants of cell nuclei and chromosomes.

Finding cell nuclei and chromosomes in fossils that are this old is not so common. Since cell nuclei and chromosomes are made of DNA molecules in living organisms, my discovery led me to wonder whether some remnants of DNA were still present in this dinosaur, despite DNA not being expected to survive for so long. By that, I mean that DNA is predicted to survive only in frozen animals of about one to two million years in age, but the dinosaur cartilage cells were about 75 million years old. It is quite a jump, but I still gave it a shot and teamed up with Professor Mary Schweitzer at North Carolina State University to do chemical tests on these cells. In early 2020, we published our research in a renowned Chinese journal (called National Science Review) and announced to the world that some of these fossilized cartilage cells still reacted with standard DNA stains, meaning that perhaps DNA could be preserved for much longer than originally thought.

This research was and is still very controversial. Nevertheless, my colleagues and supervisors at IVPP were supportive and willing to let me push this research even further. I noticed that my colleagues at IVPP have always been willing to do exploratory science since I arrived in 2018, and this is something I truly love.

Since 2020, I have been doing similar type research in other Chinese fossils: in a dinosaur called Caudipteryx and some birds called Confuciusornis and Yanornis, all found in the province of Liaoning. When I demineralized these samples in our chemical lab at IVPP, these fossils also revealed cartilage cells with remnants of cell nuclei, chromosomes, and one cell even reacted with a DNA stain, just as the American dinosaur had.

I am now trying to better understand the chemistry of these DNA stains. It is highly possible that dinosaur DNA is still preserved but is not found in a “perfect” form that can be read by all the machines that sequence DNA at present. This scientific pickle is something that is really dear to my heart. I feel like I have something to work on until I die. Science and exploratory research are one of the most exciting things I could ever have in my life. Exploratory research satisfies my endless curiosity; it keeps me going, it’s exciting and it also contributes to society. I am thankful to CAS for having awarded me the Young Staff grant, and am thankful for my institute, supervisors and colleagues here. I thank China for allowing me to do very controversial, exploratory research that has no guarantee of success.

Can we blame anyone for wanting to be an explorer? I don’t think so. This is how the most beautiful and unexpected discoveries are made.

Source: Alida Bailleul,

Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology,

Chinese Academy of Sciences