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.
That depends on whether you think all these dinosaurs existed at all. It's amazing how from a couple bones some of these exibits grow.
If that were the case, then the quasars should appear less than 6,000 light years away, even though they're now 2.4 billion light years away. Unfortunately for your side, they don't.
Yes, I do. The Bible declares that humans and dinos were created during Creation Week, animals matching dino descriptions are mentioned in the Bible, there are many ancient artifacts depicting dinos all over the world, and now this:
http://creation.com/dinosaur-soft-tissue-and-protein-even-more-confirmation
Of course many are still only drawings from a 12 year olds imagination, with heads hundreds of feet away from their hearts.
Correction, I should have said that “The Bible declares that humans and all the other animals were created during Creation Week”
Sorry for the mistake.
The light you see from stars billions of light years away was obviously created in a way that makes it ‘look’ like the stars are only a few thousand light years away. I can buy that. But why stop there? if the creator did that, why not accept he created the universe to ‘look’ billions of years old and life to ‘look’ evolved even if neither are true. That resolves science and faith perfectly without us returning to the Dark Ages.
Hmmm... I see your point. It could just have been a 6 ton prairie chicken with gland problems.
Not so. You are assuming light speed was always constant, as was and is the expansion of the universe. It couldn't have been.
Nobody assumes the expansion of the universe has been constant. Now do you have any evidence that the speed of light has changed? Of course you don't.
Would you say this exhibit grew underground?
Sure we do. If the universe fist expanded in those first few hours at the speed of light or even faster, what happens to light as its speeding away but slowing down as well? A sort of doppler effect.
“Forget that bird stuff, we’re interested in colored dinosaur feathers, the Holy Grail of feathers”.
Oh, bah-ru-ther!
You’ve seen it on star trek a million times as they go into warp speed.
It's really hard to keep a straight face on these threads.... but they are entertaining.
Thats not a ‘dinosaur’ though. It’s just a big lizard. I’m talking big, 3oo foot hi dinosaurs you see on the cover of a high school general ‘science’ book.
Thanks for the ping!
“Time dilation also results, but not due to a net gravitational effect in a finite bounded universeit is due to the enormous stretching of the fabric of space. Space is not nothingthere is a lot of energy in the vacuum and, at Creation, God caused space to rapidly expand such that clocks on Earth at the centre of the expansion ran very slowly compared to clocks in galaxies in the expanding cosmos.”
Perhaps you should research gravitational time dilation a little further before you start poking fun at it. You will probably have an easier time digesting GTD if you read about it from a Temple of Darwin approved source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation
It’s funny but it’s also a bit embarrassing.
No paleontologist has ever claimed to have found a dinosaur with a head “hundreds of feet away” from their heart.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.