The Devastating Issue of Dinosaur Tissue

[food4thought]

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.

Let me digress into a little comparative analogy:

An apparently 1900 year old papyrus is discovered in Egypt. It is found to be a copy of the book of John. Upon close inspection it is written entirely in Greek consistant with that period, the carbon dating confirms the date... except that the ink is later found to be modern ink. Immediately it is determined that the ink falsifies all the other dating methods and renders the find to be of modern origin.

Of course, I am not implying that the dinosaur bone and it's soft tissue are a fraud, what I am pointing out is that the existance of one method of dating that eliminates beyond reasonable doubt that an ancient age for the fossil is possible, then the other methods of dating must be rejected and come up with the obvious conclusion that it is of recent origin.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I am not familiar with any scientific studies that show that this tissue could last even 1 or 2 million years, let alone 65 million. On the contrary, all the exising evidense points to the conclusion that this material should not be there. I will 100% agree that much more rigorous testing needs to be done before absolute conclusions can be drawn, but still...

 

[random_guy]

Let me digress into a little comparative analogy:

An apparently 1900 year old papyrus is discovered in Egypt. It is found to be a copy of the book of John. Upon close inspection it is written entirely in Greek consistant with that period, the carbon dating confirms the date... except that the ink is later found to be modern ink. Immediately it is determined that the ink falsifies all the other dating methods and renders the find to be of modern origin.

Of course, I am not implying that the dinosaur bone and it's soft tissue are a fraud, what I am pointing out is that the existance of one method of dating that eliminates beyond reasonable doubt that an ancient age for the fossil is possible, then the other methods of dating must be rejected and come up with the obvious conclusion that it is of recent origin.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I am not familiar with any scientific studies that show that this tissue could last even 1 or 2 million years, let alone 65 million. On the contrary, all the exising evidense points to the conclusion that this material should not be there. I will 100% agree that much more rigorous testing needs to be done before absolute conclusions can be drawn, but still...

The problem most of us aren't paleontologists, so we don't know exactly what they found. From what I heard, it was minerals that show traces of heme-something. I also heard the news articles butchered the actual science (as they often tend to do). Until someone digs up the original article and puts it into laymen's terms, I'd rather believe that if it was impossible for the soft tissue to exist, the paleontologists and geologists would definitely be speaking up.

 

[shernren]

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.

Egads! I've been quotemined! Does that make me a leading evolutionary biologist? B-) (No, that just makes me a guy whose post was too hard to actually refute.)

All I was saying is that irrelevant evidence cannot disprove evolution. It's like trying to defend a murder suspect by showing that he was in the shopping mall the day after the crime. It may be interesting, it may even be surprising, but it doesn't in any way prove that the suspect was innocent.

Besides, you are simply wrong about what I am saying. Just one click away in my Cambrian rabbits thread I explicitly stated:

If paleontological evidence shows that contrary to theory B was present before the A(n)s were present, then the theory is in serious doubt, because some other force besides descent with modification from common ancestry is required to explain the presence of B.

(read thread for context: http://www.christianforums.com/t2880737-cenozoic-dinosaurs-vs-cambrian-rabbits.html )

I clearly outlined one way that the fossil record can seriously undermine evolutionary theory. In fact, creationists have purportedly found such evidence, such as pollen in Pre-Cambrian strata (although in that case, even fellow creationists doubted the validity of the find IIRC).

On the other hand, the onus is on you to show that the evidence at hand falsifies evolutionary theory. Prove that the recent existence of living dinosaurs must imply a young earth. Otherwise, you shouldn't be surprised that an irrelevant piece of evidence cannot falsify evolution.

Is there any way I can get free access to the actual scientific paper? I'm very curious to know what the actual level of preservation was in this fossil. I don't have any firsthand experience in this field but in an anaerobic, anhydrous (no oxygen or water) environment, I can't think of many reasons not to expect this level of fossilization.

 

[Marshall Janzen]

the existance of one method of dating that eliminates beyond reasonable doubt that an ancient age for the fossil is possible, then the other methods of dating must be rejected and come up with the obvious conclusion that it is of recent origin.

The trouble with that is that the level of preservation of tissue within the fossil is not a method of dating.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I am not familiar with any scientific studies that show that this tissue could last even 1 or 2 million years, let alone 65 million.

From what I've read, there had not been studies either way. This is something that hasn't really been studied, since nobody really thought to crack open big dinosaur bones and then apply chemical mixtures to them to see what happens. In this case, the bone was cracked because it was too big to be transported from the site in one piece. (But, I'm again going from press accounts of it, so I may have some of the facts wrong.)

On the contrary, all the exising evidense points to the conclusion that this material should not be there.

I think it's fair to say that it was assumed that the material would not be there (which is why nobody else was looking for it). That assumption turned out to be false.

 

[LoG]

Until someone digs up the original article and puts it into laymen's terms, I'd rather believe that if it was impossible for the soft tissue to exist, the paleontologists and geologists would definitely be speaking up.

Here is a link to a pdf file that documents how they tested the samples, results and some images. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/data/307/5717/1952/DC1/1

Here is a link (Creationst, I'm afraid ) that gives some history and backround to what Mary went through because of her conclusions and why paleontologists aren't speaking up. http://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/~do_while/sage/v9i7n.htm

 

[RealityCheck]

Let me digress into a little comparative analogy:

An apparently 1900 year old papyrus is discovered in Egypt. It is found to be a copy of the book of John. Upon close inspection it is written entirely in Greek consistant with that period, the carbon dating confirms the date... except that the ink is later found to be modern ink. Immediately it is determined that the ink falsifies all the other dating methods and renders the find to be of modern origin.

Of course, I am not implying that the dinosaur bone and it's soft tissue are a fraud, what I am pointing out is that the existance of one method of dating that eliminates beyond reasonable doubt that an ancient age for the fossil is possible, then the other methods of dating must be rejected and come up with the obvious conclusion that it is of recent origin.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I am not familiar with any scientific studies that show that this tissue could last even 1 or 2 million years, let alone 65 million. On the contrary, all the exising evidense points to the conclusion that this material should not be there. I will 100% agree that much more rigorous testing needs to be done before absolute conclusions can be drawn, but still...

Or, you know, the papyrus really is 1900 years old and the ink is more modern. Some scribe retracing the greek letters. The papyrus and ink are separate materials.

The article does not say the tissue itself is still existent. It is a fossilized remnant of that tissue.

 

[Mallon]

Of course, I am not implying that the dinosaur bone and it's soft tissue are a fraud, what I am pointing out is that the existance of one method of dating that eliminates beyond reasonable doubt that an ancient age for the fossil is possible, then the other methods of dating must be rejected and come up with the obvious conclusion that it is of recent origin.

The problem with your analogy, as Mercury already pointed out, is that we cannot, and have not ever, dated fossils based on their level of preservation. Believe it or not, the fossilization of soft tissue is something we know relatively little about because nobody has ever bothered to study it before (everyone has just assumed that it cannot happen). Just last year it was discovered that DNA can preserve inside the crystallized interior of bones. (e.g. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/genetics/dn7988--crystal-clumps-preserve-fossilised-dna.html)

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but I am not familiar with any scientific studies that show that this tissue could last even 1 or 2 million years, let alone 65 million.

You're right! Nobody's ever really tried to study this stuff! We're all just going by old assumptions that evidently need updating.

 

[shernren]

From the link Lion of God supplied:

Applying molecular and analytical methods to well-preserved dinosaur bone has important implications for elucidating depositional microenvironments that favor preservation, as well as contributing to our understanding of the processes of geobiological interactions at the microscopic and molecular levels leading to fossilization. We have shown that soft tissue structures remain in more than one dinosaur, thus the preservation of soft tissues in dinosaur fossils may prove to be a fertile area of study. The variation in preservation of these structures is significant, suggesting microtaphonomic processes that are not well understood and thus ripe for study. While it is possible that these structures represent a type of diagenetic polymerization that results in perfect replication of original material, how mineralization could result in flexible, transparent and pliable structures in multiple specimens of varied phylogenetic affinities and temporal and geographic origin is not clear.

Of course, the creationist equivalent would only have been (and has been, up to now) :

Applying molecular and analytical methods to well-preserved dinosaur bone has important implications for kicking evolutionists' behinds.

One thing to note is that in the case of bones, (AFAIK) paleontology has never used the extent of fossilization as a means of determining a bone's age. So it shouldn't be surprising that not much thought has ever been given to whether organic structures can be preserved in a bone. The most common processes which affect organic structures are hydrolyzation, which requires water, oxidization, which requires oxygen, and microbial activity, which often requires both. In the absence of both water and air (and thus these processes), I'm not sure what else degrades organic material.

And may I present material for the defense:

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

 

[LoG]

One thing to note is that in the case of bones, (AFAIK) paleontology has never used the extent of fossilization as a means of determining a bone's age. So it shouldn't be surprising that not much thought has ever been given to whether organic structures can be preserved in a bone.

Actually, Forensic Taphonomy has been recognized as a distinct discipline since 1940, although it has been studied since the time of Leonardo Da Vinci.

The most common processes which affect organic structures are hydrolyzation, which requires water, oxidization, which requires oxygen, and microbial activity, which often requires both. In the absence of both water and air (and thus these processes), I'm not sure what else degrades organic material.

Anaerobic bacteria does not require oxygen and since a body is composed of mainly water, an external source would hardly be necessary. Further, when the body is interred in the case of a catastrophic event there would still be some oxygen internally thereby giving aerobic bacteria something to thrive on for a period of time. Rapid burial usually is a result of water action so even the oxygen in the water would be sufficient for the aerobic bacterial action to continue.
Supporting link

And may I present material for the defense:

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

Could you refer us to links that do not utilize 95% of their material on criticizing and condemning creationists. It is a waste of time have to read pages and pages of crap to glean a couple of actual scientific statements.

 

[Assyrian]

Anaerobic bacteria does not require oxygen and since a body is composed of mainly water, an external source would hardly be necessary. Further, when the body is interred in the case of a catastrophic event there would still be some oxygen internally thereby giving aerobic bacteria something to thrive on for a period of time. Rapid burial usually is a result of water action so even the oxygen in the water would be sufficient for the aerobic bacterial action to continue.
Supporting link

Dessication would make the tissue too dry and salty for bacteria to survive. The role of oxygen then would be chemical oxidation of molecules rather than aiding bacterial respiration. But this oxygen would be used up fairly quickly.

Remember as well, this material was sealed inside a cavity deep within a massive bone. Mummified or frozen tissue can last tens of thousands of years without any other protection. What happens to fragments of tissue that are mummified and then sealed inside a fossilised bone and entombed in rock?

 

[Willtor]

Here's a little help on how to attack evolution, and I think you'll see why it works like this. It will help show why certain types of evidence don't hurt evolution and why others do. (I apologize if there are errors in the particulars of my clades)

This is the descent of species as evolutionists understand it (again, I apologize if any of my clades are wrong):

What ICR is claiming is that there is a particular piece of evidence that is damaging to evolution. Specifically, it is the discovery of a T-Rex fossil that is not millions of years old. Even if IRC is correct, and the fossil is not millions of years old, this is what it does to evolution:

This isn't a problem. It's certainly unexpected, but it isn't a problem because any species can "turn up" after it is thought to have gone extinct. Again, it's unexpected, but it fits within the picture.

A real problem arises when something appears in an age prior to when it is thought to have developed:

The ToE predicts this will never occur. If it does occur, evolution has some real, fundamental problems with which it must contend.

 

[Mallon]

This is the descent of species as evolutionists understand it (again, I apologize if any of my clades are wrong):

Not bad, except T. rex is a theropod, so I would move "theropods" down to the next node.

 

[shernren]

The pictures are worth a thousand words! Good job Willtor

Could you refer us to links that do not utilize 95% of their material on criticizing and condemning creationists. It is a waste of time have to read pages and pages of crap to glean a couple of actual scientific statements.

Would it be too much to ask for a source that doesn't spend 100% of their material on criticizing and condemning evolutionists?

 

[Willtor]

Not bad, except T. rex is a theropod, so I would move "theropods" down to the next node.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I realized that right after I posted it. I thought, "wait, aren't T-Rex's theropods?" Then I thought, "maybe I can just say I forgot to label the left tree, 'mammals'." So...

Actually, Mallon, I simply forgot to label the left tree, "mammals." I'm sorry if it appears as though I only labeled that upper clade "theropods." It was meant to refer to the whole thing.

 

[Mallon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I realized that right after I posted it. I thought, "wait, aren't T-Rex's theropods?"

If it's any easier, as a general rule of thumb, meat-eating dinosaurs = theropods (with a few rare exceptions).

 

[Willtor]

That hadn't occurred to me. Good to know.

 

[LoG]

Here's a little help on how to attack evolution, and I think you'll see why it works like this. It will help show why certain types of evidence don't hurt evolution and why others do. (I apologize if there are errors in the particulars of my clades)

A real problem arises when something appears in an age prior to when it is thought to have developed:

The ToE predicts this will never occur. If it does occur, evolution has some real, fundamental problems with which it must contend.

So since it has occurred does that mean you now have a problem with ToE? I haven't heard a hue and cry that the theory has been overturned because they now think the lagomorphs diverged more than 100 mya. A rabbit or hare fossil 90 mya is now easily fit into the line without so much as a hiccup.

Can we say "unfalsifiable theory" boys and girls?

Willtor, I bet you aren't going to doubt evolution just because they have found a fossil with lagomorphs characteristics dated at 85 mya now are you?
Or are you going to stand behind your statement that you believe evolution has a real fundamental problem to contend with?

Technically there would be a problem with a dinosaur found to be much younger than 65,000,000 years old, especially if it is found in strata with other species that supposedly went extinct back then. The geological ages would be thrown for a loop and the whole elaborate house of cards would fall flat. Trust me, every effort will be made to ensure that some kind of theory will be developed for the existence of "65 million year old soft tissue".

 

[Willtor]

So since it has occurred does that mean you now have a problem with ToE? I haven't heard a hue and cry that the theory has been overturned because they now think the lagomorphs diverged more than 100 mya. A rabbit or hare fossil 90 mya is now easily fit into the line without so much as a hiccup.

Can we say "unfalsifiable theory" boys and girls?

Willtor, I bet you aren't going to doubt evolution just because they have found a fossil with lagomorphs characteristics dated at 85 mya now are you?
Or are you going to stand behind your statement that you believe evolution has a real fundamental problem to contend with?

Technically there would be a problem with a dinosaur found to be much younger than 65,000,000 years old, especially if it is found in strata with other species that supposedly went extinct back then. The geological ages would be thrown for a loop and the whole elaborate house of cards would fall flat. Trust me, every effort will be made to ensure that some kind of theory will be developed for the existence of "65 million year old soft tissue".

As I suggested (and Mallon confirmed), my clades may not be correct. You'd have to look at a scientific source to get the specifics. I don't know when lagomorphs are said to have evolved. You're probably right and it probably was before the extinction of the dinosaurs. But errors in my diagrams aside, surely you can see the prinicipals I'm trying to address? Whether a species is thought to have gone extinct, and this thought is refuted, profoundly influences some fields of science, but it doesn't have much of an effect on ToE, since ToE deals in the descent of species, and not their endings.

The example Shernren always uses is a pre-Cambrian rabbit. My guess is that he's working from scientific sources. I'm not.

 

[Willtor]

The geological ages would be thrown for a loop and the whole elaborate house of cards would fall flat. Trust me, every effort will be made to ensure that some kind of theory will be developed for the existence of "65 million year old soft tissue".

Perhaps, but it won't be evolution that does it. It will be some other field, like paleontology or biology or some such. At any rate, try to get the gist of what I was trying to communicate with my diagrams and why finding a living T-Rex, today, wouldn't be an issue for evolution.

 

[shernren]

Here's a little help on how to attack evolution, and I think you'll see why it works like this. It will help show why certain types of evidence don't hurt evolution and why others do. (I apologize if there are errors in the particulars of my clades)

A real problem arises when something appears in an age prior to when it is thought to have developed:

The ToE predicts this will never occur. If it does occur, evolution has some real, fundamental problems with which it must contend.

So since it has occurred does that mean you now have a problem with ToE? I haven't heard a hue and cry that the theory has been overturned because they now think the lagomorphs diverged more than 100 mya. A rabbit or hare fossil 90 mya is now easily fit into the line without so much as a hiccup.

Can we say "unfalsifiable theory" boys and girls?

Willtor, I bet you aren't going to doubt evolution just because they have found a fossil with lagomorphs characteristics dated at 85 mya now are you?
Or are you going to stand behind your statement that you believe evolution has a real fundamental problem to contend with?

(emphasis in Willtor's quote added)

Which part of If escaped your attention? XD What Willtor proposed was a thought experiment: what happens if we find a Cambrian rabbit? (Willtor, in the history of paleontology, this situation has almost never occurred AFAIK, besides that doubtful Pre-cambrian pollen creationist find which other creationists doubt. I use Cambrian because I think "Cenozoic dinosaurs or Cambrian rabbits?" has a nice ring to it, not because of any particular importance of the Cambrian time period to the example.) If we find a Cambrian rabbit, we have effectively a root-less node, which would immediately suggest some sort of special creation hypothesis. But we haven't found any Cambrian rabbits, and therefore the Cambrian rabbit is not a problem for the theory of evolution, not because it can be incorporated, but because it just doesn't exist right now.

More importantly, you have failed to show how this:

disproves evolution in any way. What you said:

Technically there would be a problem with a dinosaur found to be much younger than 65,000,000 years old, especially if it is found in strata with other species that supposedly went extinct back then. The geological ages would be thrown for a loop and the whole elaborate house of cards would fall flat. Trust me, every effort will be made to ensure that some kind of theory will be developed for the existence of "65 million year old soft tissue".

simply doesn't cut it at all. So what if dinosaurs are alive today, and so what if they were in the same strata as other species which went extinct around that time? I'm sure, for example, that you can find dog fossils in the same strata as australopithecine fossils. Does the fact that dogs are extant while australopithecines are extinct today pose any problems for the theory of evolution?

Remember, evolution in itself does not prescribe when or how a species will perish, just when and how it changes. What told us that the dinos were extinct was paleontological absence of their fossils post-K/T (and absence of fossils is the precise creationist argument used to argue that transitional forms never existed). As such, even if dino soft tissue is a perplexing problem for paleontology and taphonomy, it isn't a problem for evolution ...

... at least, not in a way anybody here has identified. But some creationists have used it to raise an interesting, nearly-valid argument against certain forms of evolution. Can you find the argument? (Hint: the light blue line for "T-Rex" should be far straighter, not sloping.) Until you do, I'm not convinced that you understand what the evidence's implications really are at all.