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.
Have a nice wedding and listen to that girl! ;)
When will the evos realize that Creationists and IDers are not the same?
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You are correct.
Those in the set ID are a subset of those in the set creationist.
when I argue with liberals at harmony-central.com
LOL. Arguing with liberals at harmony-central.
The politics of stomp boxes and electric guitars.
The use of a stratocaster is a sure sign of evo-atheism, but a Les Paul ids you as a creationist. That’s what gets us evo-atheists, the 60 cycle hum of a single coil pickup.
yup...good way to put it...”arrogant godless turds”.
It appears the ones that have been here for awhile are simply too incompetent to get themselves banned like Coyoteman did! LOL!
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Wow. Puts the lie to the notion that it is only the evos who have potty mouth, and who can do no better than to name call creationists.
You and yours can easily hold your own in that department.
The Raelian belief that space aliens got life started on Earth is perfectly consistent with Darwood’s evo-religious creation myth.
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As it is also consistent with Intelligent Design.
Missing the point.
FR isn’t a bash creationism/Christianity/conservatism site, like so many evos are desperate to do anywhere and elsewhere and when they go over the line here...they’re gone.
And there really are a handful of evos that do just that, yet are too incompetent not only to get themselves banned but are wholly unaware of who they are...what FR is all about...etc. etc. etc.
I’m not missing the point when you refer to evos as ‘arrogant godless turds’ at the same time you are decrying how we evos engage in name-calling (post 20 of the Trio of Darwin film thread).
Neither side of this argument has any right to the moral high ground as it relates to debating techniques.
Cheers and have nice weekend tpanther. I see adult beverages in my near future and will be happy to raise my glass to the freeper crevo threads.
“And there really are a handful of evos that do just that, yet are too incompetent not only to get themselves banned but are wholly unaware of who they are...what FR is all about...etc. etc. etc.”
Speaking of incompetence, Do you ever notice that these threads always end up with whining about what people say and how they say it, and hardly ever with discussion of the “incompetence” of the “creation science” that starts the thread? Do you ever wonder why?
No, I stopped wondering the very first week I was here when I figured out liberals project alot.
That and spewed up things like "religious attacks on science" each and every time their cult of evoluttion was questioned.
“That and spewed up things like “religious attacks on science” each and every time their cult of evoluttion was questioned.”
You sure do whine a lot for someone who likes to call OTHER people “liberal”.
There is no way for religion to attack science - and frankly no way for science to attack true faith.
The problem you have and many other “creation science folk” have is that you cannot fathom the coexistence of faith and science, unless it is sourced by one of those crackpot organizations that 3G always posts from.
Accept the coexistence of faith and science, and accept that scientists (real ones, not those crackpot guys) are fulfilling their God-given destinies in search of scientific truth. Have faith that God’s Truth will not be threatened by mere science as it meanders on it’s quest for man-made knowledge.
Now quit whining you liberal and fly right.
catching up....hope you had a good weekend also.
Apparently your memo to your liberal friends just isn't getting out, and it's not my side that resorts to suing and shouting down any and all debate, Einstein.
“Apparently your memo to your liberal friends just isn’t getting out, and it’s not my side that resorts to suing and shouting down any and all debate, Einstein.”
No, those are YOUR liberal friends that are doing all that, Mr. Mega-Project-o-rama.
Funny that you invoke Einstein as the “de facto” standard of intellect, even in sarcasm......It seems that you folks are not as dense as you would have people believe, even for the lying liberals that you are.
That’s some grip the cult has on you to actually believe that anyone on FR is going to buy that liberals haven’t hijacked science...
and that the creationists are the ones shutting down debate via multiple lawsuits, and various other tactics, etc..
Have fun with that!
“That’s some grip the cult has on you to actually believe that anyone on FR is going to buy that liberals haven’t hijacked science...”
You don’t understand much at all, do you? Science has not “grip” on anyone. All free-thinking individuals are able to participate. Influences come from all areas - gov’t is a big one, private research concerns as well. Even people, like the “creation science don’t-think-tanks” participate. In the end, it matters not who is the best funded (funding can help but it can’t make it into the scientific body of knowledge for long if it has no foundation in reason). It’s a giant self-correcting research machine. Your boys try to give their input - but they really can’t cut it with their “research” so it is discarded almost immediately when it has no science behind it.
You, of course, claim it’s because there’s been a “hijacking” or a “conspiracy” or a conflagration of “evil-godless-bastards” involving thousands or millions of conspirators. Or you could just accept that your “creation science” boys just can’t hang with the real men and women of science, and their crackpot ideas (with no actual science to back them up) gets it’s proper respect.
Millions of conspirators vs. a handful of paranoid scientific mediocrities. Which is more plausible?
You don’t really have to answer, but deep down you and your liberal “creation science” friends can’t talk your way out of the scientific playpen you’ve limited yourself to.
Your liberal denial of reality. Your liberal liberalness of lying liberalism. You and your liberal liberal liberals liberally liberalizing about liberating liberalism.
liberal liberal liberal, liberal liberal liberal liberal....liberal.
There, I put it in terms that you, the one-trick “liberal” pony that you are can understand......
And by the way, I think you’ve still used the word “liberal” on this thread more than I have....amazing as that may seem.
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