Does it tell us new things about the process of fossilisation? Can we recover DNA and if so what can that tell us about dinosaurs? Were they in fact cold blooded or not? What does their genes tell us about their relationships to modern living creatures such as birds? If dino DNA can be preserved what about hominoid fossils? The potential for discovery is fantastic.
Cofty,
You seem like a reasonable person. Those are all good questions. However, the question of age in stinking rotting tissues from "millions of years" old animals is also a good question in my opinion. The problem is that many scientists do not ask questions that might put them crosswise with their funders. They are not bad people for doing that, they are just people.
The tobacco industry set up numerous "front companies" to do certain tasks, one of which was to fund scientific studies that did not look for a relationship between tobacco and lung cancer. They spent scores of millions of dollars funding these studies.
"Since 1954, one of CTR's [Council for Tobacco Research - U.S.A., Inc.] principal activities has been to fund scientific research by independent scientists through its grant-in-aid program, under the supervision of its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) supplemented on occasion by research contracts. CTR itself has not conducted any scientific research. Through this research program, from 1954 through 1996 CTR has provided approximately $282 million to fund over 1,500 research projects by approximately 1,100 independent scientists.
The researchers who have received CTR grant funding have been affiliated with approximately 300 medical schools, universities, hospitals and other research institutions, including such prestigious institutions as Harvard Medical School, Yale School of Medicine, Stanford University, numerous institutions in the University of California system, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the University of Chicago Medical Center, the Scripps Research Institute, the Mayo Clinic and the Salk Institute. The researchers who have received this funding have not been employees of the tobacco companies or CTR. CTR's grantees have included many distinguished scientists, three of whom have won Nobel Prizes." http://www.rkmc.com/tobacco.order91097.asp
Now explain something to me. If a group of high school students with a phone book can scientifically prove there is a relationship between tobacco and lung cancer, emphysema, etc., how is it possible that 1,500 research projects, done over a period of 42 years, by researchers at 300 prestigious medical schools, etc. had not been able to find a relationship between tobacco products and lung cancer, emphysema, etc.!!!
As the tobacco industry aply illustrated, consistent failure to ask the right question will consistenly present a faulty illusion. The tobacco industry didn't want to find a cancer link; and so none was found.
Similarly, out of all the questions that you asked above, age wasn't one of them... despite the astonishing pink "350 million year old" shrimp.