Posted on 04/09/2010 11:35:22 AM PDT by lasereye
Fresh tissues continue to be found in supposedly millions-of-years-old fossils. These un-replaced, un-mineralized, still-soft tissues come from animals or plants that were preserved by some catastrophic event.1 Each specimen looks young, and a direct inference is that its host rock must also be dated as thousands, not millions, of years old. And the fresher the meat, the more ridiculous are the evolution-inspired claims of great antiquity for the rock in which it was discovered.
These tissue finds are typically accompanied, in either the technical literature or science news, by the phrase "remarkable preservation." If one is to believe in the great ages assigned to these artifacts, then the quality of preservation is beyond "remarkable"--it is not scientifically possible in such a context. This is, of course, why authorities increasingly offer assurances that soft tissues, despite what is known about their decay rates, can somehow be preserved for millions of years.
For example, Melanie Mormile of Missouri University recently told Discovery News that when other researchers recovered intact DNA from bacteria trapped in "419 million-year-old" salt deposits, this showed "that these organisms can somehow survive for these amazing amounts of time."2 A similar assertion came in a recent airing of CBS News' 60 Minutes. Reporter Leslie Stahl interviewed Dr. Mary Schweitzer, who proved beyond any reasonable doubt in early 2009 that soft tissues, including several different proteins like collagen, had been extracted from a hadrosaur.3 At one point, Schweitzer showed Stahl soft tissue from a Tyrannosaur. Stahl then commented, "It looked like the soft tissue she would have expected to find if it had been modern bone. This was impossible. This bone was 68 million years old."4 Stahl's statement that it is "impossible" makes more sense than the implied assurance from Schweitzer that these discoveries are somehow indeed possible in the context of "80 million years."
A more recent finding was claimed to be the "highest quality soft tissue preservation ever documented in the fossil record."5 Paleontologists found intact, mostly desiccated muscle--complete with blood-filled vessels--in a fossilized salamander that had been removed from the Ribesalbes Lagerstatte deposit near Castellon in northeast Spain. This geologic formation probably resulted from a local, explosive event.
Reporting in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the researchers made it quite clear that "the detail revealed by TEM [transmission electron microscopy] imaging unequivocally identifies the organic remains as fossilized musculature from the salamander itself."6 They did not comment on the trouble these tissues bring to evolution's assumption of deep time, but their silence regarding the "elephant in the room" question of how a "fresh" fossilized salamander could exist after millions of years does not diminish the question's relevance.
When it comes to evidence that earth's igneous rocks are young, ICR-sponsored research found it in spades in the form of an abundance of trapped helium in granites and still-ticking carbon-14 clocks in diamonds.7 Now, when it comes to scientific evidence that sedimentary rocks are much younger than evolutionary scientists claim, there is perhaps no clearer message than that provided by fresh tissues in fossils.
References
1 These remains must have been deposited catastrophically, either as a result of Noah's Flood or from smaller, local post-Flood catastrophes. Although each deposit must be carefully and individually interpreted, it is possible to generalize that fossils found from the Cambrian up to the Cretaceous strata were Flood-deposited, and fossils found in Cenozoic Era were post-Flood.
2 Reilly, M. World's Oldest Known DNA Discovered. Discovery News. Posted on discovery.com December 17, 2009, accessed December 18, 2009.
3 Schweitzer, M. H. et al. 2009. Biomolecular Characterization and Protein Sequences of the Campanian Hadrosaur B. Canadensis. Science. 324 (5927): 626-631.
4 B-Rex. 60 Minutes. Aired on CBS November 15, 2009. Accessed online November 19, 2009.
5 Ancient muscle tissue extracted from 18 million year old fossil. University College Dublin press release, November 5, 2009.
6 McNamara, M. et al. Organic preservation of fossil musculature with ultracellular detail. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Published online before print October 14, 2009.
7 Vardiman, L., A. Snelling and E. Chaffin, eds. 2005. Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, vol. 2: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative. El Cajon, CA: The Institute for Creation Research and Chino Valley, AZ: Creation Research Society.
Why don't we find recent mammalian mega fauna fossilized to the same extent? Why, in other words, to dinosaur bones invariably look OLDER and more fossilized than those bones of more modern mammalian mega fauna?
Why the disparity, how do you explain why every dinosaur bone looks like it was mineralized for so much longer than, say, an elephants bones?
You don't seem to grasp what a “theory” means. Biblical apologetics as to how a god could lie and make starlight from objects that never even existed within the last six thousand years is not a theory, it is apologetics.
Do you know the difference between a scientific theory and Biblical apologetics?
They also cite a CBS 60 Minutes interview; you just don’t do that, they should have sited the interviewees paper on the subject.
That was covered in several other articles on the website. Maybe not including it here was an oversight. Here's one of them.
Dinosaur Soft Tissue Issue Is Here to Stay
One of the scientists who found the bacteria says straight up that they’re 300 million years old. The lead author on the study finding the soft tissue says it’s 18 million years old.
That's based on various assumptions, including evolution. Did they explain how the tissue survived? If not, then so what?
The bottom line is, as of now these discoveries are not explained. This article just mentions a few of them. They first started finding these things over 15 years ago.
What I'm saying is, maybe bone fossilization takes 2,000 years or something like that, and the dinosaurs died out 4,000 years ago. So all their bones would be fossilized by now. Mammals on the other hand are still around in large numbers.
Biblical apologetics as to how a god could lie and make starlight from objects that never even existed within the last six thousand years is not a theory, it is apologetics.
I think you're the one who is not understanding. As I said that's not what his theory says at all. The stars were there in the last 6,000 years. Starlight and Time is a completely scientific analysis, using Relativity Theory.
http://www.conservapedia.com/Russell_Humphreys
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/does-starlight-prove
How do you explain the EXTENT of fossilization present in ALL dinosaur bones that is not present in the remains of ANY modern mammalian mega fauna?
And it is not a “theory”, it is biblical “apologetics”. Do you understand the difference between a scientific theory and apologetics?
Apparently not.
I haven’t read one of Brian’s pieces for a while, but I see he’s as deceietful as ever. The soft tissue found is not “meat” in any normal sense of the word; neither is it “fresh.” And I like the way he refers to “a ‘fresh’ fossilized salamander” when the word “fresh” doesn’t appear in his linked reference. Who is he quoting? Himself?
I don’t know what you mean by “look old”. Looking old is not a scientific concept. When have you ever heard of a scientist talking about how old a bone “looks”?
Why don’t you pinpoint how and where Starlight and Time is not a scientific theory.
Based on your comments you seem to not to understand what a scientific theory is.
It's muscle tissue.
”We noticed that there had been very little degradation since it was originally fossilised about 18 million years ago, making it the highest quality soft tissue preservation ever documented in the fossil record.”According to the University College Dublin geologists, the muscle tissue is organically preserved in three dimensions, with circulatory vessels infilled with blood.
That seems to be what he means by fresh, as in remarkably well preserved. What do you take his meaning to be - fresh like a package of meat in the supermarket? Your objections don't address the point of the article. You seem to be arguing over semantics. Trying to say creationists are misleading seems to be a longstanding tactic of evos. I find evos to be misleading.
And my “looks old” I mean massive mineralization, where mineral rock has replaced bone. We don't find modern species mineralized to the same extent.
It seems you don't know the difference between apologetics and science, nor does it seem that you care to know. Typical.
That's not what "fresh meat" usually means. If I go to the "fresh meat" section of my supermarket, I don't expect to see "remarkably well preserved muscle tissue." Brian and his ilk know this, and they want you to think the soft tissue that's been found looks like something you might eat. I've read anti-evolutionists here refer to the fragments of collagen that Schweitzer found as "steaks," so the technique is having the desired, deceitful effect.
Trying to say creationists are misleading seems to be a longstanding tactic of evos.
Yes, pointing out anti-evolutionists' repeated, often-intentional errors is something evos have been doing for a while now.
“In 1949 some friends and I came upon a noteworthy news item in Nature, a magazine of the Academy of Sciences. It reported in tiny type that in the course of excavations on the Kolyma River a subterranean ice lens had been discovered which was actually a frozen stream – and in it were found frozen specimens of prehistoric fauna some tens of thousands of years old. Whether fish or salamander, these were preserved in so fresh a state, the scientific correspondent reported, that those present immediately broke open the ice encasing the specimens and devoured them with relish on the spot.”
What deceitful effect? They found something that should have disappeared millions of years ago based on current understanding of collagen rate of decay. It should not be there. You don't dispute that but instead focus on choice of words. In fact it's evos who are continually misleading.
What do you mean by modern species? Is something that died 10,000 years ago modern?
By a modern species I mean one which is currently extant upon the Earth.
A creature that died 10,000 years ago will not be mineralized to nearly the same extent as a million year old fossil.
So why is it that we find no dinosaur “bones” that are actually bone? Why are they all so extensively mineralized, but we don't see, for example, an elephant fossil mineralized to nearly the same extent?
If dinosaurs and elephants were contemporaneous, why do we never see an elephant fossil that ‘appears’ to be 50 million years old, or dinosaur fossils that ‘appear’ to only be a few thousand years old?
How do you know we never find elephant bones mineralized to the same extent?
Now that is not to say that one will not, some time in the future, turn up. But it is increasingly unlikely.
So how do you explain why we find NO dinosaur bones that are actually bone and not mineralized, but we find elephant bone that is actually bone, and no elephant fossils that are mineralized to rock to the same extent as every dinosaur fossil?
If dinosaurs and elephants were contemporaneous, you would expect to find remains in a similar state of fossilization, but that has never been observed.
Why not?
They have found elephant fossils that are allegedly millions of years old, based on some dating method. I don't know if mineralization is even used as a dating method. Often evolutionary assumptions determine the date that is assigned to a fossil so it becomes circular.
They found these muscle tissues that shouldn't be there. Are those people famous?
No, it is not circular, it is radiometric and can be measured using different isotopes that all give the same answer, but on different scales of predictable radioatomic decay.
They did not find muscle tissue, they found structures; and for that they are very famous... among paleontologists and also creationists, Dr Schweitzer would be a ROCK STAR to creationists, but she keeps saying that the fossils were just amazingly preserved fossils from fifty million years ago instead of making incorrect grandiose claims.
Do you have a reference for "current understanding of collagen rate of decay"? Because I'd say current understanding is that sometimes, under rare and specific conditions, it can last 50 million years.
You don't dispute that but instead focus on choice of words
I'm not disputing that it was a surprise to find it. But it wasn't "steak," and calling it "steak" is an attempt to deceive. I guess that's okay with you.
This is your field of expertise?
Do you have a reference for "current understanding of collagen rate of decay"?
"in bones, hydrolysis [breakdown] of the main protein component, collagen, is even more rapid and little intact collagen remains after only 1-3x104 [10,000 to 30,000] years, except in bones in cool or dry depositional environmnents."
With a lifespan of 30,000 or so years, collagen should not exist in a 68-million-year-old sample. To get around this, some evolutionary scientists challenge the measured molecular decay rates. "Schweitzer's work is 'showing us we really don't understand decay,'" paleontologist Thomas Holtz said in Smithsonian magazine.2 But even allowing 100,000 years for collagen longevity, perhaps due to superior preservation, this is still only 1/680th of B. rex's assumed age.
Dinosaur Soft Tissue: Biofilm or Blood Vessels?
There should be NO collagen there according to current understanding of collagen rate of decay.
They've also found supposedly millions of years old DNA.
Researchers have uncovered biological molecules like proteins, DNA, and pigments from rocks that are supposedly millions of years old. Laboratory studies on many of these materials indicate that they will only survive thousands, not millions, of years.
DNA is particularly prone to decay, yet ancient fossil "plants, bacteria, mammals, Neanderthals, and other archaic humans have had short aDNA sequences identified."2 Such remnant DNA should not be able to last more than 10,000 years.3 Just as finding the phrase "cell phone" in a reputedly ancient stone inscription would immediately identify it as a fraud, finding a ribosomal gene in bacteria supposedly 250 million years old causes deep suspicion of its assigned age.4
Fossilized Biomaterials Must Be Young
There's a number of other articles along these lines at the ICR website.
They've found a variety of elephant species, not just mammoths. As to whether they look exactly like today's elephants is beside the point. There could have been species that went extinct 6000 years ago in the flood, or even after the flood for that matter. They wouldn't have to look exactly like today's species. Creationist believe a certain amount of evolution occurs, just not the massive transformations that Darwinian dogma alleges. Plus God probably created more than one variety of elephants from the start.
she keeps saying that the fossils were just amazingly preserved fossils from fifty million years ago
Of course she keeps saying that. What else is she going to say? She's an evolutionist.
According to this,
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i4/dogma.asp
they don't directly date fossils, but the rocks around them.
This gives an example of how games are played with radioactive dating. It is circular.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2006/0816dating-game.asp
As I said before, mineralization, your first argument, doesn't seem to be a dating method at all.
This discusses the rate at which fossils form under flood conditions:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/cfol/ch3-how-fast.asp
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