Blood tests are useful tools for doctors and scientific researchers: they can reveal a lot about a body’s health. Usually, a blood sample is taken to get a picture of the large molecules that are present, such as cholesterols, lipids and proteins. This is called a metabolic profile.
For more specific information, another kind of blood test looks at the tiny traces of chemical processes taking place at tissue, organ, and even cellular levels. This fine-scale kind of test, metabolomics, studies metabolites – the by-products of metabolism (the body’s way of producing energy and recycling chemicals).
You’d never think this kind of test could be done for animals that lived millions of years ago. But what was very recently science fiction is now reality: it’s called “palaeometabolomics”.
