The Devastating Issue of Dinosaur Tissue

[lands21]

by Frank Sherwin, M.S.



A recent discovery in the field of paleontology has sent shockwaves through the scientific community. Evolutionist Mary H. Schweitzer of North Carolina State University has discovered flexible blood vessels inside the fossilized thighbone of a "68-70 million year old" Tyrannosaurus rex1 from the Hell Creek formation in eastern Montana. Further investigation revealed round microscopic structures that look to be cells inside the hollow vessels. Even to the untrained eye, the tissue samples look as if the animal died recently. Fibrous protein material was dissolved with an enzyme called collegenase, indicating that amino acid sequencing could probably be done (amino acids are the building blocks of protein).


Although it is too early to make definite statements regarding this stunning and wholly unexpected find, the evidence seems to indicate the T. rex fossil is—well, young. Young as in just centuries-old, certainly not an age of millions of years. Indeed, Dr. Schweitzer said, "I am quite aware that according to conventional wisdom and models of fossilization, these structures aren't supposed to be there, but there they are. I was pretty shocked."2


Would evolutionary theory have predicted such an amazing discovery? Absolutely not, soft tissue would have degraded completely many millions of years ago no matter how fortuitous the preservation process. Will evolutionary theory now state—due to this clear physical evidence—that it is possible dinosaurs roamed the earth until relatively recent times? No, for evolutionary theory will not allow dinosaurs to exist beyond a certain philosophical/evolutionary period.


This is not the first time that puzzling soft tissue has been unearthed. Nucleic acid (DNA) taken from wet "fossil" magnolia leaves allegedly 17-20 million years old have been discovered.3 Fragments of genetic material up to 800 base pairs long were recovered—amazing considering it does not take long for water to degrade DNA. A microbiologist in California dissected a 25-to-40-million-year-old Dominican stingless bee from amber.4 Spores of bacteria were found inside the insect and actually grew when placed in the proper medium. Dr. Cano, the discoverer, took careful measures to avoid contamination. Analysis of the DNA extracted showed it was very much like the DNA found in bacteria growing in bees today. Just as the creation model predicts, bees have always been bees and bacteria have always been bacteria.


If this is in fact what these various scientific evidences indicate—soft tissue, bacteria, and DNA ensconced in fossils and amber allegedly millions of years old—then there needs to be a complete re-evaluation of these evolutionary time spans, especially in light of the advances of the ICR RATE project.


As the great English author Charles Dickens said over a century ago, "these are the best of times"—for creation science!



1. Schweitzer, M. H., et al.,Science, vol. 307, no. 5717, pp. 1952-1955, 25 March 2005.
2. Boswell, E., Montana State University News Service, 24 March 2005.
3. Golenberg, E., et al., Nature 344:656-8.
4. Cano, S., Science, vol. 268, no. 5213, p. 977, Research News, 19 May 1995.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

Please, observe good manners and attribute your references.

http://www.icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=view&ID=2033

for the original article there is:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/307/5717/1952
http://www.bioone.org/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&issn=0883-1351&volume=018&issue=03&page=0286
or from:
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050326/fob1.asp

Paleontologists usually find only a creature's hard body parts, such as bones, teeth, or shells, preserved as fossils. In the rare instances when internal organs, muscles, skin, and other soft body parts turn up, the original tissue has been replaced by minerals that create hard replicas, says Mary H. Schweitzer, a paleontologist at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Sometimes, a soft tissue's shape is recorded by sediments that surround it.

Now, the first report of flexible material from a fossil describes an extraction from the femur, or upper leg bone, of a T. rex that lived about 68 million years ago in what is now Montana.

The researchers dissolved minerals from the fossil by soaking it in a series of slightly alkaline solutions. After a week, much of the remaining material was surprisingly soft and pliable, say the researchers. Many parts of the remains were translucent and fibrous, and they retained their elasticity after repeated cycles of dehydration and rehydration. Schweitzer and her colleagues report their findings in the March 25 Science.

pretty neat, but it doesn't seem to be any particular problem of age that would cause anyone to start thinking that these pieces are thousands of years old and not 10's of millions.

 

[Mallon]

Here are some articles outlining the position of those professionals who actually work with fossils as to why there is no issue with "soft-tissue" preservation in dinosaurs, including the sentiments of Mary Schweitzer -- the very woman who's work in T. rex histology is continuously hijacked and misquoted by creationists:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur/blood.html

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/issues/2006/may/dinosaur.php

 

[Dannager]

In other words, the only ones who are trying to make this look like a problem for evolutionary theory are the ones who both have a vested interest in doing so, and who are not actually doing the research first-hand. Everyone who is actually working in the field believes these findings are completely compatible with evolutionary theory. Hmmm.....

 

[shernren]

No big deal, mate, it's about as devastating as the discovery of coelacanths off the Madagascar seabed.

http://www.christianforums.com/t2880737-cenozoic-dinosaurs-vs-cambrian-rabbits.html

 

[LoG]

Here are some articles outlining the position of those professionals who actually work with fossils as to why there is no issue with "soft-tissue" preservation in dinosaurs, including the sentiments of Mary Schweitzer -- the very woman who's work in T. rex histology is continuously hijacked and misquoted by creationists:

Hijacked and misquoted? Where? Did you read anything other than Talk-Origins? Did you read the link that rmwilliamsll posted? http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050326/fob1.asp . From that you'll get a clue as to what was found. What the Creationists were saying was a rational deduction from the evidence.

What we have here is scientists saying for a couple of hundred years that blood and soft tissue does not last for very long. In fact studies, both theoretical and actual testing have suggested that tissue and cells and even their molecular constituents degraded in a matter of weeks to decades although some molecular fragments may last for 40k-100k years. Now that there is a 65 million year old dinosaur with soft parts in it, the evolutionists with an agenda, want to overturn the findings of those repeatable studies to prop up their sagging time scales.
For anyone other than that, logic says that the specimen wasn't millions of years old.

Hmmm...more lying creationist weasels?

How is it lying when creationists take the data that scientists give them and make conclusions based on that? 2+2=4 not 65,000,000 years.

For myself I don't have a problem with an old Earth but at least I am impartial and rational enough to see that there is something grossly wrong with these ages the evolutionary scientists are trying to foist on us.
If this finding doesn't lead you to question some of these ages even a little then I can only conclude that some here are only capable of parroting whatever Talk-origins tells them and are unable to make their own conclusions as to what the evidence is leading to.

 

[shernren]

Para by para:

Para 1:

Even to the untrained eye, the tissue samples look as if the animal died recently.

Sensationalization. No such details in the Science News article.

Fibrous protein material was dissolved with an enzyme called collegenase, indicating that amino acid sequencing could probably be done (amino acids are the building blocks of protein).

Subtle misquote of: Similar demineralization experiments on modern-day ostrich bones—with an added step required to digest the collagen strengthening those bones—yielded blood vessels of a similar size and texture, she reports. The text clearly implies that while modern ostrich bones required collagenase, the T-Rex bone didn't, the exact opposite of the creationist claim.

Para 2:

the evidence seems to indicate the T. rex fossil is—well, young. Young as in just centuries-old, certainly not an age of millions of years.

You'll have to eat your words ...

Indeed, Dr. Schweitzer said, "I am quite aware that according to conventional wisdom and models of fossilization, these structures aren't supposed to be there, but there they are. I was pretty shocked."

I like the precision of the phrase "models of fossilization", which will be important when we get to

Para 3:

Would evolutionary theory have predicted such an amazing discovery? Absolutely not, soft tissue would have degraded completely many millions of years ago no matter how fortuitous the preservation process.

Clear goal-shifting: while the T-Rex find raises issues for modern theories of fossilization, there really isn't a problem for evolution per se.

evolutionary theory will not allow dinosaurs to exist beyond a certain philosophical/evolutionary period.

Stated without citation, elaboration, or proof - because, it's wrong.

Para 4: [no comments, since I don't have access to the texts being cited, other than the general comment that evolution has no problem with species once assumed extinct being actually extant.]

Para 5:

If this is in fact what these various scientific evidences indicate—soft tissue, bacteria, and DNA ensconced in fossils and amber allegedly millions of years old—then there needs to be a complete re-evaluation of these evolutionary time spans, especially in light of the advances of the ICR RATE project.

How does the evidence that, say, dinosaurs may have been alive 200 years ago, cast any doubt on the decay rate of uranium, the deposition rate of varves, or the size of the universe?

Para 6:

As the great English author Charles Dickens said over a century ago, "these are the best of times"—for creation science!

Even Dickens can't escape being quotemined by ICR? Anybody would recognize the opening quote from A Tale of Two Cities which actually reads, "These were the best of times, these were the worst of times." For creation science indeed!

Now, why do I say that evolutionary theory has no problems with this find? Firstly, because evolution has far less problems with Cenozoic dinos than with Cambrian rabbits (were they to be found). Remember the coelacanth? (By itself it's a pretty interesting fish.) Well, the finding, akin to "finding a live dinosaur roaming the earth" ( http://www.unmuseum.org/coelacan.htm ) doesn't cause evolution the slightest bit of panic.

And AiG has tried to use the coelacanth ingeniously in this article: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v26/i2/missing.asp , which brings me to my next point: the argument that dinos lived recently actually damages other creationist claims. The obvious one is that most creationists believe that dinos were wiped out in the Flood, and thus a mere few-centuries-old dino find threatens their views as well. But more importantly, quoting from the article above:

In other words, just because we don’t find fossils of certain creatures (or plants) together with humans in the fossil record, it doesn’t mean they didn’t live together.
Starting with the Bible, and therefore the presupposition that man and dinosaur did live together, we can properly interpret such ‘facts’ (or in this case, really the absence of a fact—thus an argument from silence). But, as our coelacanth example shows, the absence of human fossils in ‘dinosaur rock’ does not support the presupposition that dinosaurs lived millions of years before man.
(emphasis added)

All this hue and cry for what? To disprove the evilutionary fact that dinosaurs and man did not live together. But does evolution require that dinosaurs and man not live together? Not at all. We could find a bunch of T-Rexes alive in the Congo today and evolutionists wouldn't be the slightest bit stirred (other than warning everyone they know to stay away from Congo). What dictates that dinos are extinct today isn't evolution, it's the fossil record. Since the fossil record shows practically no dinosaurs post K-T, this means that dinos went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous.

But what is the most popular argument against evolution? That the fossil record shows no transitional forms. This assumes that the fossil record is a trustworthy indicator of the existence or not of a particular species. An assumption, mind you, which AiG has just disproved. And spectacularly, too, with this dino find and their interpretation of it. Let's say that there really are T-Rexes alive today, and that a recently-killed one was found as the controversial fossil. What that means is 65 million years of T-Rexes yielded one miserable soft-tissued femur. This is the perfect argument to demonstrate the relative rarity of fossilization. If 65 million years of T-Rexes can yield just one fossil, why should we be surprised that many transitional species (which in the evolutionary scheme of things may have lasted far shorter than 65 million years) haven't left any fossils at all?

 

[The Lady Kate]

Para 6:

As the great English author Charles Dickens said over a century ago, "these are the best of times"—for creation science!

Even Dickens can't escape being quotemined by ICR? Anybody would recognize the opening quote from A Tale of Two Cities which actually reads, "These were the best of times, these were the worst of times." For creation science indeed!

Sad how such dishonesty has become second nature for Creationists... to paraphrase Will Rogers, they never met a quote they didn't mine.

Not that I have any love for Charles Dickens, but even he deserves better treatment.

 

[LoG]

Clear goal-shifting: while the T-Rex find raises issues for modern theories of fossilization, there really isn't a problem for evolution per se.

Para 4: no comments, since I don't have access to the texts being cited, other than the general comment that evolution has no problem with species once assumed extinct being actually extant.

Now, why do I say that evolutionary theory has no problems with this find?

Well, the finding, akin to "finding a live dinosaur roaming the earth" ( http://www.unmuseum.org/coelacan.htm ) doesn't cause evolution the slightest bit of panic.

But does evolution require that dinosaurs and man not live together? Not at all. We could find a bunch of T-Rexes alive in the Congo today and evolutionists wouldn't be the slightest bit stirred

If 65 million years of T-Rexes can yield just one fossil, why should we be surprised that many transitional species (which in the evolutionary scheme of things may have lasted far shorter than 65 million years) haven't left any fossils at all?

Kudos shenren. You have clearly demonstrated that for an evolutionist, ToE is unfalsifiable. No evidence or lack of, would be sufficient to disprove the theory to its proponents. All contrary evidence is simply worked into the theory.

It is as much faith-based as Creationism.

 

[gluadys]

No evidence or lack of, would be sufficient to disprove the theory to its proponents. All contrary evidence is simply worked into the theory.

First,this shows you don't actually understand the kind of evidence that would really disprove evolution.

Second, working new information into the existing theory is what scientists are supposed to do in order to keep the theory up to date with new evidence.

It is only when this becomes impossible, or when a new theory (not an already falsified one like creationism) provides better explanation of the evidence that the current theory will be abandoned.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

No evidence or lack of, would be sufficient to disprove the theory to its proponents. All contrary evidence is simply worked into the theory.


natural chimeras like sphinx, satyrs, griffins etc would destroy TofE.
so would fossils in the wrong place, ie human in K-T boundary.

what can falsify creationism?

 

[RealityCheck]

No evidence or lack of, would be sufficient to disprove the theory to its proponents. All contrary evidence is simply worked into the theory.


natural chimeras like sphinx, satyrs, griffins etc would destroy TofE.
so would fossils in the wrong place, ie human in K-T boundary.

what can falsify creationism?

Sure those things would provide contrary evidence to the current theory of evolution. If they existed. They don't.

What can falsify creationism? Where should I start?

1) Creationism holds that the earth is somewhere around 6 to 12 thousand years old, depending on your interpretation. However, evidence shows that the earth is roughly 4.5 billion years old, and that the universe is somewhere in the range of 10 to 20 billion years old. Creationism as a "theory" doesn't fit the evidence. The only way to make creationism work is to dismiss the methods of determining earth/universe age as "faulty" and "unreliable", without providing proof that they are faulty.

2) Creationism holds that the earth was created prior to the sun. Evidence shows that the sun formed first and the earth after.

3) Creationism holds that all land and avian animals currently living must be descended from the animals that Noah had aboard his ark. Creationism also holds that such animals have not substantially changed over time since the flood. This means that over 5,000 mammal species, 8,000 reptilian species, 9,000 bird species, and about 900,000 species of insects, two of each kind, had to be aboard an ark with approximately 100,000 square feet of available floor space (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noahs_Ark), with only 8 human caretakers to care for them for approximately 200 days and nights, and don't forget that somehow they had to be fed so not all of that floor space could be animals alone.... and you can readily see, this is physically not possible or feasible. If you simply dismiss that with "God can make all things possible" then I'd ask why God didn't simply kill every individual human that was ****ing him off, and leave the animals out of it?

 

[Mallon]

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050326/fob1.asp . From that you'll get a clue as to what was found. What the Creationists were saying was a rational deduction from the evidence.

Speaking of getting a clue, have you taken the opportunity yet to read the actual scientific paper??? I have, and I highly recommend you do the same before spouting off about what was found, how it was discovered, and what the meaning of the results were. These scientists didn't just crack open a bone and blood came pouring out, as most creationists tend to think.

Out of curiosity, do you judge books based on their movie adaptations, too?

How is it lying when creationists take the data that scientists give them and make conclusions based on that? 2+2=4 not 65,000,000 years.

I don't even know what this means or how it's at all scientific. But I will tell you that good scientists will view all evidence in context. The fact that the demineralized bone contains soft tissue has to be viewed in light of other lines of evidence such as radioisotope dating, taphonomy, histology, diagenesis, etc. This is something that creationists rarely do. The only context creationists put their "evidence" in is the Bible, which gets us nowhere since they usually end up contradicting themselves anyway (is the earth young or old?).

If this finding doesn't lead you to question some of these ages even a little then I can only conclude that some here are only capable of parroting whatever Talk-origins tells them and are unable to make their own conclusions as to what the evidence is leading to.

I get my news directly from the source: academia and science journals, thankyouverymuch.

 

[LoG]

First,this shows you don't actually understand the kind of evidence that would really disprove evolution.

Noone actually does. There really is nothing that cannot be worked into the theory including the examples that rmwilliams listed. If you can't see that then perhaps it is you who doesn't understand how flexible ToE really is.

Second, working new information into the existing theory is what scientists are supposed to do in order to keep the theory up to date with new evidence.

It is only when this becomes impossible, or when a new theory (not an already falsified one like creationism) provides better explanation of the evidence that the current theory will be abandoned.

The problem is when that new information contradicts previously held ideas. There is no current explanation for how these soft parts of a 65 million year old dinosaur can still exist since it defies previous studies of how long they could have lasted.
Creationism has not been falsified. Some consider YEC has been falsified but Creationism itself has not since there are no current alternatives to a genesis event.

What can falsify creationism? Where should I start?

Never trust those who instead of dealing with the issue at hand, divert attention by condemning the enemy.

Speaking of getting a clue, have you taken the opportunity yet to read the actual scientific paper??? I have, and I highly recommend you do the same before spouting off about what was found, how it was discovered, and what the meaning of the results were.

The problem here lies in the meaning of the results. Those coming from the perspective that the dinosaur is 65 million years old try to figure out how these soft parts lasted so long while those who are more open minded look at these parts as a method of potentially dating the actual dinosaur. That would be the normal method in forensic investigations. Use the evidence to date the event, not put a date on the event and then get the evidence to line up with it.

 

[RealityCheck]

Never trust those who instead of dealing with the issue at hand, divert attention by condemning the enemy.

ExCUSE me? "Divert attention by condemning the enemy?" I just listed three ways in which Creationism could be proven false, and you think I'm attacking you?

Never trust those who, instead of dealing with the evidence at hand, divert attention by making crap up.

 

[RealityCheck]

That would be the normal method in forensic investigations. Use the evidence to date the event, not put a date on the event and then get the evidence to line up with it.

This is, ironically, excatly the path that ID and Creationism take.

 

[LoG]

ExCUSE me? "Divert attention by condemning the enemy?" I just listed three ways in which Creationism could be proven false, and you think I'm attacking you?

The topic is about Dinosaur tissue, not whether Creationism is falsifiable or not. Besides which, evolutionists maintain that Creationism is not a science because it is unfalsifiable, therefore your point is moot.

However I do apologize. Your post wasn't the only one attacking creationism but it was the one I chose to single out.

 

[Marshall Janzen]

I can understand AIG's frustration on this. It certainly does look like the scientists are purposely avoiding the question of whether this could mean that the bones are actually much younger. However, there's a good reason for this: the bones aren't dated by examining their level of fossilization. The dating has been established by other methods (radiometric dating, classifying strata layers, morphology, etc.), and this find does not cast doubt on any of those methods. Because of that, scientists who study this find are saying "this tells us something new about preservation" rather than "this tells us that dinosaur bones are much younger than we thought".

The scientists are in much the same position a linguist trying to defend that a 2-page letter is written in English in spite of containing the phrase "c'est la vie". The linguist points out that every other word in the letter is English, but a critic just wants to focus on those three words. As long as one limits their analysis to that single phrase, it seems like a plausible explanation to say the letter is written in French. But, when the phrase is put in context, the idea becomes untenable.

The difference is that with the dating of dinosaurs, some people either don't know about the other evidence or dispute it, and so this single finding seems more significant to them than everything else. And, they are baffled that it doesn't also look that way to those who accept the other evidence.

 

[RealityCheck]

The topic is about Dinosaur tissue, not whether Creationism is falsifiable or not. Besides which, evolutionists maintain that Creationism is not a science because it is unfalsifiable, therefore your point is moot.

However I do apologize. Your post wasn't the only one attacking creationism but it was the one I chose to single out.

Apology accepted. And in return, I will clear up a misconception stated:

"evolutionists maintain that Creationism is not a science because it is unfalsifiable"

If you accept this, then creationism is not science and neither is Intelligent Design, and consequently the whole controversy of teaching such in science class is silly. Evolution is falsifiable science, creationism is not. End of controversy.

The statement itself is vague, though generally correct. That it is "unfalsifiable" is not to say "It cannot be proven false" because it can, if it is treated as a "theory" the same way any other theory is. It is "unfalsifiable" simply because it does not adhere to the scientific method or any scientific principles. That is, Creationism starts from the conclusion and assumes this conclusion is correct, and works backward to find evidence that supports it, reject evidence that does not support it, or mis-interpret evidence so that what falsifies it is made to appear to support it.

You complain that Evolution Theory is malleable and can be changed to fit the evidence. Guess what? That's science and that's a perfect example of how science is supposed to work. If the theory as stated is shown not to fit the evidence, you explain why that is so (create a new theory) or change the theory to match the evidence.

For example: For centuries, Newton's theory of gravity was thought to explain the behavior of all matter. However, in the 20th century scientists began to see that the theory only worked for large objects - it broke down and did not work on the small, sub-atomic scale.

The result was a new theory that explained very well how objects behaved at the sub-atomic level. The theory COULD be applied to larger objects, but at that level the old theory of gravitation actually worked and came to the same results, but through much simpler calculations. Thus, the realm of each theory was clearly defined, and the limits of their use well defined.

 

[Assyrian]

The problem here lies in the meaning of the results. Those coming from the perspective that the dinosaur is 65 million years old try to figure out how these soft parts lasted so long while those who are more open minded look at these parts as a method of potentially dating the actual dinosaur. That would be the normal method in forensic investigations. Use the evidence to date the event, not put a date on the event and then get the evidence to line up with it.

The problem here is that the dinosaur has already been dated, using a number of different rigorous techniques, which makes your suggestion that the YEC approach is 'open minded' very odd indeed. They are certainly not open to anything other than suggestions that dinosaur is very recent.

If they wanted to use the 'soft parts' as a dating technique they would need to be a lot more rigorous than they have been. They would need (1) to identify what the actual material was (2) identify the form the dry material was in before the fossil was soaked in acid in the lab (3) identify the conditions inside the cavity in the fossilised bone, temperature, humidity, salinity, enzymes, oxygen level, the presence of any heavy metals or other chemicals which could change the decay rate (4) actually work out the rate of decay of that material, under the exact same conditions (5) repeat the test over and over again and again to see if the decay rate is constant or varies.

In contrast radioactive decay is much simpler and has been measured and tested repeatedly under a wide variety of conditions.