In an exceptional preservation state, bones conserve the entire pattern of extracellular bone matrix proteins over thousands or sometimes even millions of years. Here we present typical extracellular bone matrix proteins, which were extracted from a 3.0-million-year-old gomphothere proboscidean, and identified with special antibodies. For the first time, osteonectin, osteopontin and BMP-2 were confidently identified from the extinct Anancus arvernensis, based on late Pliocene material from Willershausen, Lower Saxony, Germany. Our study has value in demonstrating that the longevity of original extracellular bone matrix proteins is much greater than formerly expected, and that such materials may be stabilised for distinct geological periods of time, especially in Fossil Lagerstätten.

在特殊的保存状态下，骨骼在数千年甚至数百万年中保存了整个细胞外骨基质蛋白模式。在这里，我们展示了典型的细胞外骨基质蛋白，这些蛋白是从 300 万年前的 gomphothere proboscidean 中提取的，并用特殊抗体进行鉴定。根据来自德国下萨克森州威勒斯豪森的上新世晚期材料，首次从已灭绝的Anancus arvernensis中可靠地鉴定出骨连接蛋白、骨桥蛋白和 BMP-2 。我们的研究具有价值，可以证明原始细胞外骨基质蛋白的寿命比以前预期的要长得多，并且此类材料可能会在不同的地质时期内保持稳定，尤其是在 Fossil Lagerstätten 中。