Posted on 12/11/2013 8:10:28 AM PST by fishtank
Dinosaur Soft Tissue Preserved by Blood? by Brian Thomas, M.S. *
Researchers are now suggesting that iron embedded in blood proteins preserved the still-soft tissues, cells, and molecules discovered inside dinosaurs and other fossils after the creatures were buried in sediments. The ability to justify millions of years is at stake, and this study promises to do just that. What are its merits and demerits?
Publishing in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Mary Schweitzer led a team that showed how iron atoms from blood adhere to and preserve blood vessels.1 The team placed ostrich bone blood vessels in water and watched them disintegrate in less than a week. They then treated another set of ostrich blood vessels with concentrated blood, and the treated blood vessels still looked fresh after two years of sitting on the lab bench.
They postulated that iron generates chemically reactive oxy radicals that help adjacent proteins bond, preserving their overall structure in a process called cross-linking. The way a fried egg resists rotting longer than a raw, cracked egg might illustrate this effect.
“Oxy radicals also facilitate protein cross-linking in a manner analogous to the actions of tissue fixatives (e.g. formaldehyde), thus increasing resistance of these ‘fixed’ biomolecules to enzymatic or microbial digestion,” according to Schweitzer and her colleagues.1
These results are unique and compelling. But do they really justify the study authors’ claim that this iron preservation phenomenon explains how dinosaur tissues lasted for tens of millions of years?
The study authors wrote, “The HB [hemoglobin]–oxygen interactions investigated here explain both the association of iron with many exceptionally preserved fossils and the enhanced preservation of tissues, cells and molecules over deep time.”1
For an experiment to really explain an effect lasting for millions of years, shouldn’t it gather enough time-related measurements to estimate the maximum time that iron-treated soft tissues could last? Only then could researchers directly compare that maximum time with fossils’ evolutionary ages. Schweitzer’s report did not show these kinds of results.
The scientific community has long shown its desperation to defend mainstream fossil ages against the short shelf-life of soft-tissue fossils. Will they now call upon blood iron to have preserved fossils in a way that these results don’t justify?
Iron does appear to preserve tissues, even keeping blood vessels intact at room temperature for two years. Could iron keep soft tissues intact for millions of years? At least four reasons show why the study’s results, amazing though they are, answer with a clear “No.”
First, “Ostrich vessels were incubated in a concentrated solution of red blood cell lysate,” according to the study authors.1 Their procedure involved extracting and purifying iron from blood. But ancient dinosaur and other fossils did not have the advantage of scientists treating their carcasses with a blood-soup concentrate.
Second, many of the still-fresh fossil biochemicals described in the literature do not show evidence of nearby iron. For example, researchers have encountered bone cells called osteocytes locked inside dinosaur bones, including a Triceratops horn core.2 These cells have fine, threadlike extensions that penetrate the bone’s mineral matrix through tiny tunnels called canaliculi. Could concentrated blood penetrate and preserve those almost inaccessible bone cells?
Schweitzer and her coauthors think so. They wrote, “In life, blood cells rich in iron-containing HB [hemoglobin] flow through vessels, and have access to bone osteocytes through the lacuna-canalicular network.”1 Yet, the study authors did not demonstrate this supposed access, they merely asserted it.
For example, have experiments shown that canaliculi can wick blood puree, despite having tiny diameters on the order of 0.0004 millimeters? Also, how could iron-rich preservative “have access to” tiny tunnels already clogged with osteocytes? Other examples of original soft tissues without these iron particles include mummified dinosaur and lizard skin.3,4
Third, for experimental control, the Royal Society authors kept ostrich vessels in water to watch them rot.1 Does this resemble the burial conditions of dinosaurs, which are mostly dry today and have been primarily dry perhaps since the day of burial? Water accelerates tissue decay by providing for microbes and by facilitating degradative chemistry. So by adding water, these scientists may have rigged their “control” sample to show a higher-than-expected decay rate difference.
The researchers then compared their hemoglobin-soaked samples to the watered-down samples and wrote, “In our test model, incubation in HB increased ostrich vessel stability more than 240-fold, or more than 24000% over control conditions.”1 If both their control and test models used unrealistic conditions, then they dulled the edge of their entire argument.
Fourth, just because this iron increases the “resistance of these ‘fixed’ biomolecules to enzymatic or microbial digestion” does not necessarily mean that it increases resistance of these “fixed” biomolecules to degrading chemical reactions.1 In other words, these authors have again shown that iron inhibits microbes, but they did not show that it inhibits the oxidation and hydrolysis reactions known to relentlessly convert tissues into dust.
Plus, though they showed how iron ups resistance to microbes for two years, they did not show that it does so for millions of years. Getting these tissues to resist enzymes and microbes is the lowest hurdle. These results fail to demonstrate the next step—getting tissues to resist the laws of chemistry for unimaginable time spans.
While the study does show that iron helps preserve soft tissues, the results fall far short of the authors’ claim that this explains soft tissue persisting for millions of years. Concentrated blood and extra water may not approximate real conditions, iron is not always present with known original tissue fossils, and the scientists did not produce a useful time-to-dust estimate for their iron-encrusted tissues.
By showing that iron particles stuck to dinosaur blood vessels look similar to those attached to ostrich vessels, this research may explain how soft tissues have resisted disintegration for longer-than-expected intervals—for example, thousands of years.
References
Schweitzer, M. H. et al. A role for iron and oxygen chemistry in preserving soft tissues, cells and molecules from deep time. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Published online before print, November 27, 2013.
Armitage, M. H. and K. L. Anderson. 2013. Soft sheets of fibrillar bone from a fossil of the supraorbital horn of the dinosaur Triceratops horridus. Acta Histochemica.115 (6): 603-608.
Lingham-Soliar, T. and G. Plodowski. 2010. The integument of Psittacosaurusfrom Liaoning Province, China: taphonomy, epidermal patterns and color of a ceratopsian dinosaur. Naturwissenschaften. 97 (5): 479-486.
Edwards, N. P. et al. 2011. Infrared mapping resolves soft tissue preservation in 50 million year-old reptile skin. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 278 (1722): 3209-3218.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on December 11, 2013.
Agreed.
What conclusions do you see being argued, and what assumptions are they based on?
-what translation are you reading from?
"There is NO way if young earth creationists were correct in claims of a young earth would the Creator have allowed the religion of evolution to become the law of this land...."
FALSE conclusion/argument
your argument for protein fragments
Wow... someone hasn’t read the Word to get a proper sense of what is going on.
The “prince of the air” is the temporary ruler of this world, of which we are to be “in” but not “of”,
so it’s actually EXPECTED that a false religion would become “common knowledge” amongst those “of” this world.
by this you mean evolution?
Humanism.
“Man is the sum of all knowledge”.
Evolution is a consequence of this, and is circularly argued to support it.
I guess they need to read II Peter 3:17........
The guy who sold him those stones with the dinosaur carvings admitted in 1973 that he had faked them. He demonstrated how he did it in a BBC documentary in 1977 titled Pathway to the Gods.
Google is your friend.
send me a link.
is this the same guy that sold a pig’s tooth as human?
There is no argument from this author that there are some fake Ica Stones out there, but on the other hand, just because some fakes and frauds have been made, doesn’t mean the real ones are discredited. However, most evolutionists take the position that the stones are all fakes because they are afraid. If just one of these stones is real, it would collapse the very foundations of their religious teachings.
I have traveled to Pensacola, FL to see the largest collection of these stones in the US. Most evolutionists, that believe the stones to be fake, have never even seen them in person. They are incredibly dense and heavy, and when you see them yourself, you will notice the care that must have been taken to carve these stones, and question the processes that were used to accomplish it.
There are many articles and documentaries made that have, in their own words, “proven” these Ica Stones to be fakes, but the whole truth is not told. Most of these shows and documents are simply not well-researched because there is a presuppositional bias that needs the stones to be non-existent. For example, a man by the name of Philip Coppens wrote an article on his website that attempts to squelch any credibility to the Ica Stones, but the extent of his research is seen in his labeling of Dr. Cabrera’s father:
“Cabrera’s private museum includes a collection of stones belonging to his father — Bolivia Cabrera...”
Those that say all the Ica Stones are fake have to find a ways around the scientific and archeological evidence, and often, it is ignored. For example, these stones were first discovered and reported by the Spanish in 1535.
“Father Simon, a Jesuit missionary, accompanied Pizarro along the Peruvian coast and recorded his amazement upon viewing the stones. In 1562, Spanish explorers sent some of the stones back to Spain.”
Erich von Daniken analyzed these stones on a microscopic level, and found the following:
“Right angled clean scratches showed on the new stone under the microscope, whereas microorganisims could be seen in the grooves of Cabrera’s stones under a fine glaze... that was the tiny major difference between genuine and false stones.”
-Erich von Daniken, According to the Evidence: My Proof of Man’s Extraterrestrial Origins, Souvenir Press, 1977, p. 327, ISBN: 9780285623019
http://www.creationliberty.com/articles/icastones.php
entire article
If the skeptics would do a little research, they wouldn’t have to be so skeptical.
-Christopher J. E. Johnson
They are incredibly dense and heavy... Now THAT's a real solid supporting argument o.0
you will notice the care that must have been taken to carve these stones, and question the processes that were used to accomplish it. by the hoaxers admission: dentist's drill.
...whereas microorganisims could be seen in the grooves of Cabrera’s stones under a fine glaze... that was the tiny major difference between genuine and false stones. Baked cow poop.
You say this after fully reading the article I supplied???
You didn’t read it??
I leave it to others to judge betwixt us.
(I would have read the article before replying)
You brought a smile to my face!!!
I will just leave you with that! :)
I made no argument. I asked a question.
I read the article. The “evidence is thin, incomplete or hearsay.
So here’s a thought experiment for you - if the stones are real, why do you assume that this proves that dinosaurs existed recently? Would you allow that (if they were real) the stones could also indicate that humans have been around for a lot longer than generally assumed (millions of years)?
Just as soon as Evo's begin to assume 10,000 years. Let me know when that happens. When it does, let me know if after allowing for 10,000 years that this person would be open to both.
"The Ica stones were a hoax and officially a branch of the tourist industry. It was over… or was it? When dealing with controversies of this sort, nothing is ever simple. Believers in the antiquity of the stones claimed that the farmer admitted to the hoax for a very simple reason: if the stones were genuine, he had been selling government possessions. Peruvian law dictates that archæological discoveries should be turned over to the government and he faced prison if found guilty. By admitting it was a simple hoax, the farmer was let off the hook… and was able to provide his family with an income. When von Däniken visited the farmer in 1973, Uschuya confirmed to him that he had faked the stones; but later on, in an interview with the German journalist Andreas Fischer, Uschuya claimed the opposite. They were genuine, he insisted, and he admitted to a hoax to avoid imprisonment."
http://www.philipcoppens.com/jurassiclibrary.html
“In the 1930s, a man named Dr. Javier Cabrera started collecting strange stones that an ancient Indian culture had carved.”
Is that the same Dr. that admitted that he faked the stones?
I read the article. The “evidence is thin, incomplete or hearsay....”
he referenced his quotes well. so I reject this statement.
“So here’s a thought experiment for you - if the stones are real....”
now that is an good question. (the point of the exercise)
did he?
when?
Please don’t quote portions of what I wrote. It’s childish. I posed a thought experiment to you which you refused to answer.
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