How to not handle a young-earth creationist employee: Fired in wake of finding dino soft tissue

Observation Deck ^ | 07/30/2014

[Yardstick]

Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard — that we sound like what English English sounded like before the great vowel shift happened. Which is kind of cool actually.

As for aluminum, don’t we Yanks at least get some credit for our earnest phoneticism? You guys add syllables that aren’t even there for crying out loud. On the other hand, when you invent a language I guess you earn the right to take some license with it. And I must admit the result in the case of aluminum is quite charming with its extra convolutions.

[BroJoeK]

SeekAndFind quoting CBS report:

"Upon examination of the horn under a high-powered microscope back at CSUN, Dacus says Armitage was “fascinated” to find soft tissue on the sample – a discovery Bacus said stunned members of the school’s biology department and even some students 'because it indicates that dinosaurs roamed the earth only thousands of years in the past rather than going extinct 60 million years ago.' "

The fact is that nobody expected to find soft tissues in dinosaur fossils, so never looked for them, so they weren't found.. until recently.

Now, it turns out, ancient soft tissues may be somewhat common:

"The researchers also analyzed other fossils for the presence of soft tissue, and found it was present in about half of their samples going back to the Jurassic Period, which lasted from 145.5 million to 199.6 million years ago, Schweitzer said."

How can this be?
The answer it seems is that, under ideal conditions, iron in dino-blood can act as a preservative, like formaldehyde, keeping soft tissues viable more-or-less indefinitely.

"Schweitzer and her colleagues found that dinosaur soft tissue is closely associated with iron nanoparticles in both the T. rex and another soft-tissue specimen from Brachylophosaurus canadensis, a type of duck-billed dinosaur.
They then tested the iron-as-preservative idea using modern ostrich blood vessels.
They soaked one group of blood vessels in iron-rich liquid made of red blood cells and another group in water.
The blood vessels left in water turned into a disgusting mess within days.
The blood vessels soaked in red blood cells remain recognizable after sitting at room temperature for two years...

Dinosaurs' iron-rich blood, combined with a good environment for fossilization, may explain the amazing existence of soft tissue from the Cretaceous (a period that lasted from about 65.5 million to 145.5 million years ago) and even earlier.
The specimens Schweitzer works with, including skin, show evidence of excellent preservation.
The bones of these various specimens are articulated, not scattered, suggesting they were buried quickly.
They're also buried in sandstone, which is porous and may wick away bacteria and reactive enzymes that would otherwise degrade the bone."

So one scientific question, assuming the presence of multiple samples of dino soft-tissues, is whether they "prove" Young Earth claims the earth is only thousands of years old?
I'd say they only confirm that under ideal conditions, some organic material can be preserved indefinitely.

[TalonDJ]

Well...if they had an astronomer who believed the sun revolved around the earth then I'd expect they'd be let go too.

Yeah but he was a tech. If he was the guy that polished the telescope and he believed they sun went around the earth they would probably just laugh at him and let him keep working.

[TalonDJ]

I'd say they only confirm that under ideal conditions, some organic material can be preserved indefinitely.
They only 'confirm' that if you start from the unassailable assumption that the bones were down there 'indefinitely'. The 'logic' goes like this.

A)Dinosaurs have iron blood. B)dinosaurs have soft tissues still C)Dinos are millions or years old. D)Iron might work as a preservative

A+B+C+D= iron can preserved something darn near forever.

But if you use A+B+D=?
Well nothing really.

In other words they went, "Well we KNOW they are really old. And they are soft in places. So there must be a mechanism that allows that. Iron might do that in some magic ideal setting that we cant prove will work for ten million years. Therefore.... Iron DOES do that! It is a prove fact!"

[tacticalogic]

If it’s only a few thousand years old, they should still find C14. Did they test for that?

[BroJoeK]

TalonDJ: "But if you use A+B+D=? Well nothing really....
Therefore.... Iron DOES do that! It is a prove fact!' "

You understand basic scientific methods, right?
We begin with data -- apparent soft-tissue from Dinosaurs.
We "brain-storm" a hypothesis to explain it -- does iron in dino-blood slow down decomposition of soft-tissues?
We test the hypothesis -- two tissue samples, one soaked in blood, the other in water. See Schweitzer's work reported in post #22 above.
After two years Schweitzer found little decomposition in blood soaked tissues, but complete decomposition otherwise.

Of course, I couldn't say whether such a test confirms Schweitzer's red-blood-cell hypothesis enough to call it a "theory", but it is surely more than just wild speculation.

Alternative speculations -- such as dino soft-tissue somehow proves a Young Earth hypothesis seems to me problematic in the extreme.
For example, it would require us to throw away everything else we think we understand about the age and evolution of the Universe, Earth and life.

And before I'd consider doing that, I'd want extraordinary scientific confirmations that a Young Earth is even possible, much less necessary.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

It's worth keeping in mind what the "soft tissue" they find in dinosaur bones actually is. YECs like to portray it as though they found dinosaur steak. But all they really find is tiny fragments of something like collagen. From the abstract of Armitages paper:

...numerous small sheets of lamellar bone matrix. This matrix possessed visible microstructures consistent with lamellar bone osteocytes. Some sheets of soft tissue had multiple layers of intact tissues with osteocyte-like structures featuring filipodial-like interconnections and secondary branching.... Filipodial extensions were delicate and showed no evidence of any permineralization or crystallization artifact and therefore were interpreted to be soft.

So sure, "soft tissue," but a long long way from 66-million-year-old meat.

[reasonisfaith]

Maybe ancient soft tissue is common because it’s not ancient.

[BroJoeK]

reasonisfaith: "Maybe ancient soft tissue is common because it’s not ancient."

And the physical evidence you have to support such a "hypothesis" is what, exactly?

[reasonisfaith]

Once it’s established that “ancient” soft tissue is common, one of the possible explanations is that the tissue is not ancient.

Seems to me this is a more plausible explanation than the one that claims soft tissue can last ten to the sixth power longer than previously thought.

The latter explanation looks suspiciously like a desperate attempt to escape uncomfortable truth.

[tacticalogic]

Once it’s established that “ancient” soft tissue is common, one of the possible explanations is that the tissue is not ancient.

Then the next logical step would be to examine other lines of evidence that would either support or contradict that explanation. If the tissue is relatively recent it should still contain measurable quantities of C14. Did they test for that?

[BroJoeK]

reasonisfaith: "Once it’s established that “ancient” soft tissue is common, one of the possible explanations is that the tissue is not ancient."

Indeed, one possible explanation is that such "soft tissues" did not originate in the dinosaur where it was found, but is remains some other critter that later on lived & then died in "dino meat".

But for now, at least, all such speculations must remain in the realm of hypotheses which have not been confirmed.
In fact, we can only speculate if "soft tissues" will be commonly found in the future, and if so, what they might tell us about the ancient past...

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks B!

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

Seems to me this is a more plausible explanation than the one that claims soft tissue can last ten to the sixth power longer than previously thought.

That claim doesn't come in a vacuum, though. I see the choice as being between

1. the multiple overlapping and concurring methods of dating fossils are correct, and microscopic fragments of soft tissue can remain in them even after millions of years due to some factors we don't fully understand yet; or

2. all those dating methods are flawed, and not only that but they're each flawed in exactly the way necessary to make it agree with the other ones, so it's possible that dinosaurs were around a few thousand years ago, even though we haven't found any mummified dinosaurs like the mummified mammoths we have, or dinosaur bones that haven't been turned to rock unlike the sabertooth tiger bones we have, or any of the other kinds of fossils we have from animals that lived only a few thousand years ago.

I know which scenario I find more plausible.

[reasonisfaith]

I can appreciate your argumentation because it actually seems to make sense in that you don’t sound like a lawyer.

However, there are some problems. In particular, the “factors we don’t fully understand yet” excuse. That’s available all around.

For example, there could be a universal, unknown factor which affects all dating methods such that although they precisely concur with one another, they are nevertheless vastly inaccurate.

Mammoths lived in ice, so they died in ice. Mummified dinosaurs haven’t been formed in ice because they didn’t frequent icy regions.

I don’t have an answer for the sabertooth tiger bones. It appears to be a problem for my argument, but I must say it doesn’t seem particularly overwhelming.

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

Thank you. I’m always glad when my arguments at least seem to make sense.

Regarding what we understand: again, it comes down to what seems more likely. Is there some chemical process that, under certain conditions, can preserve tiny scraps of soft tissue encased inside bone for millions of years? Or is there some unknown factor that can skew the 700-million-year half-life of U-235, the 1.3BY half-life of potassium 40, the 50BY half-life of rubidium 87, and several others, all by the precise amount necessary to make them all wrong but all agree? I know which scenario I find vastly more plausible.

We have mummies of lots of animals. Some died in ice, some in tar pits, some in bogs, some in deserts, some on mountains. None of them are dinosaurs. It just seems to me that if all the dinosaurs were still around when the mammoths and the sabertooths and humans were, we’d have some evidence in the form of a mummified carcass or at least pieceof a carcass.

To me, accepting the geologic time scale answers all these questions except the fairly trivial one of how flakes of tissue get preserved for millions of years. Throwing out that time scal opens up a myriad of other questions that don’t have good answers.