Posted on 09/16/2009 9:03:13 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
Fresh Fossil Feather Nanostructures
by Brian Thomas, M.S.*
Bird feathers can contain pigmentation for a wide range of colors, with specific molecules reflecting certain hues when light touches them. They also can display “structural” colors, where the thicknesses of layers of cells and connective tissues are fine-tuned to refract certain colors.
Scientists recently described structural coloration that is still clearly discernible in well-preserved fossil feathers. Why do these fossil feathers have their original cell structures laid out in the original patterns if they are millions of years old?
In 1995, paleontologists Derek Briggs and Paul Davis provided an overview of fossil feathers from the 40 or so places on the globe where they were known to exist.1 Among their findings was that 69 percent of feather fossils are preserved not as impressions, but as carbon traces. This was verified by comparing the proportions of carbon in both the surrounding carbonaceous rock and the fossil within it, to the proportions of organically-derived carbon from the same items. They found that there was more organic carbon in the fossil than in the stone.
At that time, the researchers thought the carbon came from bacteria that had degraded the feather material and then remained placed in the feather’s outline. But 13 years later, Briggs and other colleagues showed clear evidence that these “bacterial cells” were actually melanosomes―the same microscopic, sausage-shaped, dark pigment-containing structures in today’s bird feathers―from the original feather.2
This means that the organic carbon in the melanosomes somehow avoided decay for millions of years, which contradicts “the well-known fact that the majority of organic molecules decay in thousands of years.”3
Briggs and his colleagues recently described fossil feathers from the German Messel Oil Shale deposits, which are famous for their remarkably well-preserved fossils. These not only contained organic carbon from melanosomes (not bacteria), but the melanosomes were still organized in their original spacing and layering. Thus, the “metallic greenish, bluish or coppery” colors that can be seen from different viewing angles, producing an iridescent sheen, may very well be similar to that of the original bird’s plumage.4
Biologists already know that “in order to produce a particular [structural] colour, the keratin thickness must be accurate to within about 0.05 μm (one twenty thousandth of one millimetre!).”5 Although the keratin had decayed from these fossil feathers, its layers of melanosomes remained laid out in similarly precise thicknesses. Thus, not only was the color preserved, but the melanosomes were still organized to within micrometers of their original positions.
Evolutionary geologists maintain that the Messel Shale was formed 47 million years ago. But with these colorful feather fossils—which retain not only the original molecules inside their original melanosomes, but also the architectural layout of these structures—evolutionists must invent some kind of magical preservation process that simply isn’t observed in the laboratory or in nature.
Without the assumption of millions of years, however, the fossil data begin to make much more sense. Fresh-looking fossil features point to a young world.
References
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on September 16, 2009.
Can you point to any evidence of “other creationists are embarrassed by him”, OR “...TP wants to be respected by his fellow creationists for his grasp of the issue, but its quite obvious they don't”? and what does it say of you even if,
“by taunting him into making some other asinine statement”?
Whose respect are you attempting to garner here?
Creationists? ID’ers? Darwinist's? YEC folk? Or perhaps...your own?
“Nice that you included some psychologists and pediatricians on there. Haha! They’re such experts on the age of the Earth.”
—I particularly liked the dentists, “food science”, geographers,linguists, “DVM” (I had to look that one up - veterinarian!), and my favorite - the plastic surgeons.
When you have to stretch things that far - to get a list that short - that says something.
No one. I come to the CrEvo threads a few days a month strictly for amusement, and it always delivers.
I never post to TP initially, he always seeks me out and tries out his new insults. This time he accused me of believing in evolution because I listen to Chris Matthews.
When I told him that I don't watch Chris Matthews and never have, he started calling Matthews my "buddy", and accused me of trying to help him with the "evo-atheist agenda".
Its really pretty funny if you just step back for a minute. He's like a crazy person, and unintentionally funny.
“No, I mean the abusive pricks that pile on with daily ridicule, calling theory fact.”
How about the abusive pricks that post the daily steaming pile of dung and call it God-approved “science”?
“Can you point to any evidence of “other creationists are embarrassed by him””
How about you give us empirical data - Are you embarrassed by TP’s rants about how everyone who disagrees with him is a “liberal”, among other things?
If not, is there any humiliation that you aren’t willing to endure?
“Its really pretty funny if you just step back for a minute. He’s like a crazy person, and unintentionally funny. “
I must confess that I have found your dialog with TP throughout the thread amongst the finest entertainment I’ve seen here in a while.
“The hypothesis that [some] life [has actually] originated on this Earth through moss-grown fragments from the ruins of another world may seem wild and visionary; all I maintain is that it is not unscientific, [and cannot rightly be said to be improbable.]”
However, I think his larger argument is this: since we are bound by the latest fashion in science to only invoke naturalistic explanations for the origin of life, and since the Earth is finite, and since it is a law that life only comes from life (which implies that the origin of life is eternal and therefore did not originate from either the Earth or the Universe), then the only plausible naturalistic explanation is that life came from preexisting life from outer space, which pushes the origin life back, but still requires said eternal life (God) to get extraterrestrial life started.
In short, after reading this and other writings of Lord Kelvin, I still consider him a Christian creationist, but he certainly isn't of the 6-10,000 year variety. And yet, he does not hold the same views as the old earthers either (as they believe the Earth is much older than Lord Kelvin did, nor do they flirt with the idea that life came from outer space...but plenty of IDers do!...and yet he's not an IDer either...hmmmm.....).
It’s like being back on the schoolyard again. It’s fun in small doses.
“I rest my case.”
And it was rested with your own poetic words from your previous post.
“It’s like being back on the schoolyard again.”
Except there is more whining and crying.
And if, “He's like a crazy person, and unintentionally funny”, why engage him at all? I mean these articles weren't posted just to provide a opportunity for you to taunt someone you feel in a morally superior position to or for your amusement, (a reasonable assumption).
===================================
I'd wager you do quite a bit of parroting then thinking yourself clever for it.
Why not? It's funny; we've been doing it for years. Why do you have such a problem with it.
If I find amusement with people posting articles about a 6,000 year old Earth, viruses being caused by sin, and geocentrism, that's no fault of mine.
“I’d wager you do quite a bit of parroting then thinking yourself clever for it.”
Well, “abusive prick” was too amusing a term to not parrot back to you when I read your post.
Why are you so angry? I mean, really, you “creation science” guys should be of good cheer. All the folks that believe in science and evolution will be going to hell, just where you want them to be and where you’ll never have to deal with them again (along with that neighbor who’s dog barks at night, and the person who cut you off in traffic the other day), and God will be happy that rather than having blind faith in Him, you sought to prove your faith with inconclusive and irrelevant “research”.
God likes it when you use fake science to test to see if He exists, and then seek to diminish those people who actually advance their God-given faculties to understand the universe He provided for us, doesn’t He?
“I mean these articles weren’t posted just to provide a opportunity for you to taunt someone you feel in a morally superior position to or for your amusement, (a reasonable assumption). “
Well, I understand that. However, it is simply a fortuitous coincidence that the articles posted on creation make it so easy to taunt, and flex intellectual superiority, and amuse those who espouse “creation science”.
The “moral superiority” angle is why “creation science” advocates post these threads. They are too scared to tell scientifically-minded people to their faces that they should “Go to hell, heretic” so they do it in a passive aggressive way, by posting “creation science” threads.
You can keep telling me what my opinion is tho if you want, don't let me stop you.
“You can keep telling me what my opinion is tho if you want, don’t let me stop you.”
I liked you better when you were calling people that disagree with you “Abusive Pricks”. You were much more fun then.
Can’t we get back to those sort of mad-cap “creation science” antics, or must this thread die, like all the rest do, in a whimper of inconclusivity?
I’m of the mind that anyone that posts here is able to defend themselves so I feel no obligation to do so for them and thus any “problem” I have is with the utter pettiness of your desire to provoke someone, anyone, by taunting.
I can say, being neither a Darwinist or of the YEC persuasion, that it does tell much more about your character(s) than that of the “creationists” and of a certainty separates you from the “scientifically-minded people” you say the”“creation science” advocates” are scared to address with an anathema.
Added to all is that your ridicule is really crashingly, mind crushingly boring. Boring, not “intellectual superiority”, just pedestrian and petty.
You can keep telling me what my opinion is tho if you want, don't let me stop you.
Liberals project-alot. You learn alot about a liberal through their projections.
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