Dinosaur Soft Tissues, the Age of the Earth, and Microscopy

People familiar with The Question Evolution Project on Facebook should remember podcasts we posted of Dr. Ben Scripture of Scripture on Creation. (In fact, they interviewed me, and one of our topicss was Question Evolution Day.) Dr. Scripture contacted me with exciting news from his interview with Dr. Mark Armitage.

File photo of Dr. Scripture (left), YouTube screenshot of Mark Armitage (right)

We have two items of interest about how microscopy is not conducive to universal common descent evolution, the second of which will appear below. The one I like best is first.

Mark Armitage is a bad man according to believers in molecules-to-microscopist evolution as well as proponents of an old earth. His crime? Having an article published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Acta Histochemica with Dr. Kevin Anderson about soft tissues in a Triceratops horn in 2012.

Dr. Armitage had a successful job at the biological imaging facility at California State University, Northridge. The program was popular there. Although the paper was about microscopy, he was fired from the college because having a Christian on staff apparently puts burrs under the saddles of those in power. He sued the university. Misotheists were laughing about it, evosplaining that he deserved it for being a biblical creationist. However, he won his suit and they settled out of court (see this article from 2016); it was costing the university lots of grotzits and they were clearly engaging in discrimination. Best to cut their losses.

This comment from one who believes in pursuing knowledge and not at
all bigoted is posted under Fair Use provisions for educational purposes.
It was originally made in response to another post about Mark Armitage.

He has ridden a long trail over the years and quite a bit has happened. I'll let Dr. Scripture and Dr. Armitage fill you in, but I want to say that he started the Dinosaur Soft Tissue Research Institute, which is run by volunteers. They have ongoing discoveries, including one about chromosomes with follow-up peer-reviewed papers. (I am stressing the peer-reviewed part because misotheists claim that creationists are never in secular journals.) So, Mark has been busy and so has the DSTRI.

Now I'll turn you over to Dr. Scripture's interview. I liked it so much, I listened twice. It is free to listen online or download the MP3, so you can find out here. Listen for a reference to a prediction by Dr. Armitage that there would be an increase in the discoveries of soft tissues. (Related: see "Five Important Soft Tissue Problems for Evolutionists".) Remember that I said there was another item? Right, let's do that next.

Longtime followers of ICR should be familiar with our research into original organics in fossils. Over 100 peer-reviewed secular publications have shown that one might discover original tissue remnants in fossils from any region.

. . . 

One technique that targets the protein collagen in bone is called cross polarized light microscopy (XPOL). Research begins with preparing very thin sections of bone. A microscope fitted with crossed polarizers (“cross polars”) can detect regions in the sample where something twists the light. In bone, that something is collagen.

. . . 

XPOL light microscopy is just one more tool—alongside a few dozen others—that scientists use to help describe collagen in fossil bone. As with the other 100-plus soft tissue discoveries, these bones look thousands, not millions, of years old.

To read the entire article, visit "Microscopy May Detect Fossil Bone Collagen".

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Painting with Octopus Ink

That is a title I did not expect to use. Although a group of fossil octopuses was discovered in 2009, it was not until a few years later that the lovely and talented Esther van Hulsen was commissioned to paint a picture of it using its own ink.

If the octopus was Keuppia levante, it may have looked like this
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons / Smokeybjb (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Using the dried-out ink sacs of cephalopods for writing and art is not a new idea, but the effort by Esther was large and highly publicized. Many questions arise that trouble proponents of deep time:

• How could a soft critter like an octopus be fossilized slowly?
• Why is the ink sac still extant after 95 million Darwin years?
• Why is the pigment of the ink, a kind of melanin, still stable?
• Shouldn't everything be permineralized after all that alleged time?
• How do you reconcile this and the discoveries of soft tissues and even DNA — which should not exist according to your paradigm — with observed facts?

The narrative among secularists is that the earth is very old. This gives Darwin time to peep and mutter so he can work his magic. However, the evidence, including the existence of octopus fossils, indicates a young earth and rapid burial by the Genesis Flood. Yippie ky yay, secularists!

A rather unusual painting hangs in Oslo’s Natural History Museum, Norway. Displayed beside a magnificent fossil octopus is a painting meant to depict it when alive. What makes this painting so unusual is that the ink used to paint it came from the same ink sac that can be observed in the fossil. It is quite literally a painting in the present made from pieces of the past.

While evolutionists claim the fossil octopus is 95 million years old, it serves instead as a demonstration of the rapid deposition of sediments during the Noahic Flood some 4,500 years ago.

You can read the rest by clicking on "A painting ‘95 million years’ in the making?" There is a short video below. Never mind it's promoting false science and has no sound, we can get a glimpse of the artist (in Brooklyn, pronounced "ottist") at work.



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Spectacular Remnants to Make Evolutionists Cry

Soft tissues of dinosaurs and other critters are becoming more and more common, and so are remnants that are termed spectacularly preserved. These are existential threats to universal common ancestor beliefs, as we will see in the three posts below. Faint not, brethren, most are not lengthy.

Plesiosaur skeleton credit: Flickr / Kim Alaniz (CC by 2.0)

The first article is about the discovery of well-preserved brains and nerves in the Cambrian period. These things ought not to be because of the alleged long ages! Or is it because of global warming? Instead, fossils are showing great detail. It was thought by archaeologists — yes, I know, should be paleontologists, but the writers made the easy mistake — that soft tissues could not fossilize. Surprise! They could do that during the catastrophic processes of the Genesis Flood, and that is the best explanation.

Exquisitely preserved fossils of Cambrian arthropods show minute details of brain and central nervous system.

Paleontologists have seen remains of nerves and brains in Cambrian fossils before, but these newly-announced ones exceed all previous ones for detail. Coverage in Phys.org shows that Harvard scientists are befuddled that this much detail of soft tissue could survive before fossilization, and remain visible for over 500 million years.

You can read the rest of this first installment by clicking on "Cambrian Brains Found". Hope you come back for the next one.

Howdy, welcome back! Because Darwin's disciples must keep to the deep time framework, they are convoluted and attempting to explain away the truth. All sorts of phrases are used in their "explanations", so mayhaps the Charles Darwin Club Secret Decoder Ring™ would come in handy right about now. This discovery raises inconvenient questions, and points to (wait for it) the Genesis Flood.

Scientists at Lund University say, “Remarkably preserved fossil sea reptile reveals skin that is still soft.”

An ichthyosaur (a type of marine reptile thought to have died out with the dinosaurs), if it could talk, would boast, ‘I’m young! Feel my soft skin.’

But watch how evolutionists distract attention from the main thing – the apparent youth of the fossil. Their evolutionary worldview obligates them to keep this fossil with the mythical Darwin timeline. The opening paragraph in the press release from Lund University could be considered a model of confabulatory obfuscation:

You can finish reading this one by swimming on over to "Marine Reptile Found With Intact Skin". Don't forget to come back for the final piece.

Thanks for staying along for the ride. So, how about them hadrosaurs? Think they'll have a good season next year? No, of course not, they're extinct. But boy howdy yee haw, gray skin pigment molecules have been preserved! Not only that, but blood vessels. The story about the find is fatuous, so it needs (and receives) further examination. Yet still again, the best explanations are recent creation and the Flood. You savvy?

So well preserved is a hadrosaur’s skin, the remnants of blood vessels and pigments are still visible with original molecules present.

It’s a phenomenal case of exceptional preservation for a dead dinosaur, but all the scientists seem excited about is the color. Michael Marshall in New Scientist titles his article, “Mummified skin suggests duck-billed dinosaurs were grey like elephants.” But is the skin color the biggest news?

To conclude this trilogy, click on "Dino Skin with Blood Vessels, Proteins Found". If they extricated their heads from Darwinism, scientists might be able to cowboy up and have some doubts. After all, Question Evolution Day is there to remind them — and us — annually on February 12.



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Secularists Still Puzzled over T. Rex Soft Tissues

When soft tissues of dinosaurs were discovered, they were considered oddities or misunderstood. Problems for secularists continued as more soft tissues were found as well as proteins, so rescuing devices were attempted. Another effort was made that does not bode well for evolutionary ideas.

Count Krosstich told me that these folks have to deal with a great deal of cognitive dissonance. True, they are presuming that dinosaur bones have been in the ground for millions of years, but also knowing that soft tissues and proteins cannot last anywhere near that long. The toast concept and Maillard reactions have been invoked, but nothing popped up with them. New studies have tremendous flaws. These people should admit that the evidence supports recent creation and the global Genesis Flood of only a few thousand years ago.

The latest fossil biochemistry paper, published in Scientific Reports, describes “blood vessel structures” recovered from inside a T. rex femur. This is the same femur in which the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology featured collagen fibers, protein remnants, and possible DNA signatures back in 1997. Since then, debate has raged among experts. On one hand, fossil experts keep reporting more biochemicals in all kinds of fossils. On the other hand, protein experts keep confirming that biochemicals cannot possibly last millions of years. This new report attempts to bridge those two parties.

The Scientific Reports paper focused on mechanisms that might help protein last for 65 million years—the length of time that secular scientists insist the T. rex bone rested in the earth. Such mechanisms bear a big burden. Assuming normal temperatures, proteins and other biomolecules fall apart after only thousands of years.

To read the rest of the article, click on "More T. rex Soft Tissues". Yippie ky yay, secularists!

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Deep Time Proponents Continue to Deny Facts

Atheists and evolutionists bucked and kicked at the news that soft tissues were found in fossils. Some even accused creationists of lying or at least misunderstanding the reports. It was not our problem that they were the ones who were uninformed or in denial. Worse for them, the more soft tissues and other fascinating instances of preservation were found.

Once again, there was mandatory overtime at the Darwin Ranch where help was needed at the excuse mill to save deep time dogma. Rescuing devices were utilized to no avail; the facts were not made to ride off into the sunset. (Who does that, anyway? You can't see where you're going none too well.) Sometimes the preservation is on a large scale, and other times very delicate features have been preserved. Sorry Hoss, they cannot last millions of years, nor can things be buried slowly. Excellent preservation (indeed, as are fossils themselves) are testimony to the Genesis Flood and the young earth.

The first question ought to be, how can such things survive hundreds of thousands or millions of years?

When the first dinosaur blood vessels, proteins and skin cells were discovered, many creationists thought the fix was in for the moyboys. . . .

Evolutionists used to state adamantly that proteins, cells and DNA could not last for a million years, let alone ten thousand. Any biological material would become permineralized and turn to stone in short order. But when soft tissues started turning up fossils from the age of dinosaurs and earlier, they began saying, like the dead man, “Well, I’ll be. Soft tissue can last for tens and hundreds of millions of years.” Watch them do it right here.

To see the show — well, to read the entire article — click on "Amazing Preservation Fails to Shock Evolutionists". You may also like this short article: "Delicate Spider Fossil Discovered". 

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A Toast to Dinosaur Soft Tissue Rescuing Devices

When an employer requires overtime, the employee is expected to work efficiently and accurately with available facts. Also, the use of intoxicants is not allowed. Seems that the hands at the Darwin Ranch (yonder near Deception Pass) are ignoring good work habits when they put in overtime at the excuse mill. Case in point, more shenanigans regarding soft tissues.

When soft tissues were discovered in dinosaur bones and shown to be more than a fluke, evolutionists were stricken with the inability to explain what they considered impossible because they "know" that the earth is very old and that dinosaurs took a group dirt name millions of Darwin years ago. In today's exciting episode, we have some denial of reality with flagitious evoporn presented as science.

New Soft Tissue Discoveries

A Jurassic ichthyosaur was found with more than just remarkably-preserved tissues, but also skin and blubber. Good science was used to discuss the biology, but they ignored the ichthyosaur in the room: the age issue. In addition, bad science was utilized with "convergence" and other science-free excuses. Another find involved a special bone found in egg-laying animals, is very fragile, and only exists for the laying of eggs. This was from a Cretaceous bird. Once again, we see more evidence of rapid burial due to the global Genesis Flood.

Evolutionists are dodging hard evidence with an absurd excuse that soft tissue can last hundreds of millions of years.

Soft tissue in fossils violates everything paleontologists thought they knew about deep time. Proteins, DNA and tissue were supposed to decay and be replaced by rock in mere thousands of years, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of years at the very most. Now, the evidence for surviving original material is beyond question. Two more instances have been reported this week. So are evolutionists giving up on deep time? The thought doesn’t even enter their minds. Instead, they claim that the evidence proves that soft tissue can indeed last millions of years, and that it can help Darwin by providing more evidence for evolution. Both claims are false. Soft tissue destroys deep time. These fossils were recently buried.

To read the rest of this article and before moving on to the next installment below, click on "Two More Soft-Tissue Fossils Pile on the Evidence Against Deep Time".

Toasting the Tissues

Mary Schweitzer suggested that dinosaur soft tissues were preserved by iron. She did a test under pristine laboratory conditions and extrapolated out to millions of unobserved and unobservable years, and Darwin's Flying Monkeys™ swoop down, playing "Gotcha!" with biblical creationists. Except that Schweitzer's ideas do not work, and evolutionists know it. That's why they keep working the excuse mill.

Scientists often get inspirations for studies from unlikely sources. That's a good thing; it shows they are being observant and commencing to ponder sciency stuff. Consider toasted bread. It is still bread but has undergone some changes, one of which is getting darker. So, compare this concept with dinosaur soft tissues. Add in presuppositions regarding deep time, that Darwin was on the right trail, and dinosaurs went extinct en masse, then you get the toast "hypothesis". These owlhoots need to cowboy up and face the facts that Earth is not so old after all, and there was a global Flood.

Evolutionists cannot deny the presence of soft tissue in dinosaur bones, but their explanation burns up in the heat of critical analysis.

Finally, some scientists have taken a hard look at the evidence of soft tissue in dinosaur bones. In Nature Communications, Jasmina Wiemann and six others, including noted paleontologists Derek Briggs and Mark Norell, bravely face the question: how can soft tissues that degrade rapidly still exist in fossils they believe are over 100 million years old? A press release from Yale is frank about the problem this poses for evolutionists who take long ages for granted:

To read the rest, I propose that you click on "New Dino Soft Tissue Explanation Is Toast". You might be interested in a related article, "Soft Tissue Fossils Preserved by Toasting?" A couple of videos are below for fun and education.









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The Lena Horse and the Age of the Earth

Although is is interesting to read about the people and politics of Russia, something that gets neglected in the news is the natural habitats. Russia is a big place in all four directions, with eleven time zones and many kinds of habitats spread around. This sort of thing happens when you have the largest land mass country in the world, you know.

East Siberia taiga image credit: Wikimedia Commons / Terpsichores (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Of interest to us today is the Batagaika crater in the taiga of east Siberia. It's a cold place, but we're finding out that this permafrost isn't. That is, it's not permanent. That "crater" was not caused by a meteorite. Instead, it is the result of melting, which was influenced by the forest around it being removed in the 1960s, and by flooding. For scientists, this was much better than digging. People explore stuff, you know. It's our nature.

Many ancient animals have been found there, and are remarkably well preserved. We hear that more and more nowadays. Using their uniformitarian deep time presuppositions, dates have been assigned to the findings that make things very impressive. Scientists have found critters that have been flash frozen, allegedly tens of thousands of years ago. One of these was The Lena Horse.

We're supposed to believe that, although frozen, there was no significant decay from anything for all that time. The Lena Horse is so well preserved, they're thinking of cloning it! Well, they have a far better at this than the foolish notions some have of cloning dinosaurs. The situation isn't going well for evolutionists, since conditions in various places that were widespread catastrophes are not happening now. They cannot adequately explain their findings. Creationists have plausible models that do present reasonable explanations of scientific data.

An exceptionally-preserved foal has been found in Siberian tundra. Can scientists bring it back to life as a clone?

A baby horse, the “best preserved ancient horse ever found” according to Live Science, has been recovered in Siberia. But is it as old as claimed?

The astonishingly intact body of a young foal that died between 30,000 and 40,000 years ago was recently unearthed from melting permafrost in Siberia. Its mummified remains were so well-preserved by icy conditions that the skin, the hooves, the tail, and even the tiny hairs in the animal’s nostrils and around its hooves are still visible.

Scientists believe it was about 2 months old when it died. The Lena Horse, as it is being called, measures about one meter in length. Phys.org adds that “The foal was discovered in the Batagaika crater, a huge 100-meter (328-foot) deep depression in the East Siberian taiga.” Fox News adds that this crater is known locally as the “doorway to the underworld.”

You can finish the article and learn about this and related news by clicking on "Horse Found Frozen in Tundra".

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Dinosaur Tissue Preservation and the Iron Maiden

If you want to get the hands at the Darwin Ranch on the prod, just mention dinosaur soft tissues. This is because soft tissues in dinosaurs and other critters is a threat to old earth uniformitarianism. From there, particles-to-parasaurolophus evolution is severely inconvenienced. There are several articles on that subject here as well as other biblical creationist sites.

Metallized triceratops profile derived from an image a Pixabay from Dimitris Vetsikas

Ever since Mary "Iron Maiden" Schweitzer got fame for herself because of dinosaur soft tissues, evolutionists at the Darwin Ranch have been running the excuse mill at full steam. (They don't even get overtime pay from their cheap bosses.) One of the premier excuses was formed by Schweitzer: iron as a preservative.

Dr. Kevin Anderson was interviewed by Bob Enyart on Real Science Radio. (Dr. Anderson is one of the scientists in Is Genesis History? My review is here.) You see, Dr. Schweitzer reckons that iron in blood keeps tissues somewhat intact for millions of Darwin years (this is why the guys at RSR refer to her as the "iron maiden"). She kept the tissue and blood sample in pristine conditions for a spell, then extrapolated backward for millions of Darwin years. Although a professing Christian, Schweitzer's primary commitment seems to be toward atheistic interpretations of science. That might explain why she does science like other owlhoots riding for the Darwin brand, which is to ignore important factors and commit sloppy science. At least she's not obnoxious like so many evolutionists on teh interweb.

Something else that was discussed is radiometric dating, especially carbon-14. Darwin's disciples often insist that radiometric dating is reliable despite the great disparity in results from various methods, and the fact that rocks of known ages are dated at millions of years. Carbon-14 is found in coal and diamonds, but evolutionists wave away that fact by denigrating the skill of technicians in the labs, claiming "contamination". (Were you there? Did you see something done wrong? Do you have your own lab so you can do better, Hoss?) Then they claim that carbon-14 dating is impeccable when the results are in their favor. Two standards, no waiting in their attempts to reject the Creator.

Seems to me that I've given enough introductory material. It's time to let you hear the two podcasts in question. Both are free to hear online or to download. (Disclaimer: Bob Enyart is an advocate of "open theism", so I do not recommend his theological material.) As a bonus, a video of Dr. Anderson discussing the iron as a preservative rescuing device follows.

Slaying the Iron Maiden: Mary Schweitzer's Vulnerability

Slaying the Iron Maiden II: Mary Schweitzer's Vulnerability

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Dinosaur Soft Tissues and the Age of the Earth

One of the biggest issues that gets proponents of universal common ancestor evolution and other old earth advocates on the prod is dinosaur soft tissues. Although soft tissues and such have been found previously, the work of Mary Schweitzer and microscopist Mark Armitage analyzing dinosaur blood and soft tissues really brought the subjects into prominence.

Some evolutionists try to deny it, even saying that biblical creationists were misrepresenting the discoveries or outright lying. But the subject simply will not go away. Some of us won't let it. So, secularists and their religious useful idiots keep the excuse mill at the Darwin Ranch running at full steam.

Compromiser Dr. Hugh Ross has a kind of cult following and some strange beliefs. He has an associate, Dr. Fazele Rana, who has written a book that is a thinly-veiled attack on biblical creation science. It may seem convincing, but Rana did poor research (none of it with the tissues in question under a microscope). He also blatantly misrepresented important facts and ignored others in his quest to manufacture rescuing devices to explain away the implications of dinosaur soft tissues: they were created recently, and did not live millions of years ago.

Soft sheets of fibrillar bone and stunningly preserved osteocytes recovered from a Triceratops horn at Hell Creek, Montana, cannot be explained by the interpretations tendered by Dr Fazale Rana in his book Dinosaur Blood and the Age of the Earth. Rana’s obvious misunderstanding and mischaracterization of the Triceratops horn soft tissues are examined and corrected herein. Simply parroting the talking points of evolutionary scientists on dinosaur soft cells does not explain their presence, therefore careful work must be done to explain them.

To read the rest, click on "Utterly preserved cells are not remnants—a critique of Dinosaur Blood and the Age of the Earth". You may also want to see "The Mark Armitage Legal Victory and a Clarion Call for Laity to Carry the Torch in the Creation-Evolution Controversy".




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Dinosaur Proteins and More Rescuing Devices

The hands at the Darwin Ranch (over yonder by Deception Pass) are busy cranking the Rescuing Devices Generator™, as we saw in "Biochemicals and Evolutionary Rescuing Devices". This time, we are going to be a bit more specific and focus on excuses made by evolutionist owlhoots regarding dinosaur proteins and soft tissues.

Credit: Pixabay / TechPhotoGal

Evolutionists and deep time advocates fight tooth and nail to find ways out of the inconvenient truths that dinosaur soft tissues represent. Namely, that the earth is not zillions of years old, that dinosaurs could not have been extinct for 65 million years or so because proteins and tissues cannot exist that long, and the best explanation for what is found is the global Genesis Flood. No wonder they get on the prod! 

Professing Christian Dr. Fazale Rana has a deep time ax to grind because his arch compromiser employer Hugh Ross runs the weird "progressive creation" organisation called Reasons to Believe. They disbelieve that Genesis means what it says, preferring a mix of Scripture and atheistic interpretations of science. Like other evolutionists who try to dance around the fragments and tissues issue, Rana makes assertions without significant experimental support. He also uses irrelevant and outdated material in his attempt to reject recent creation. 

Fragments of various animal proteins have been found in several different dinosaur fossils. Results of experimental decay studies clearly indicate that even small fragments of these proteins will not survive for millions of years. Critical challenges to this experimental evidence fail to adequately address known protein biochemistry. Instead, the persistence of these proteins continues to present a significant conflict with the assigned ages of dinosaur fossils.

To read the rest, click on "Are Dinosaur Proteins Virtually Immortal?" Also, for some additional material, a series of lengthy articles (still in progress) answering Rana can be found beginning with "Dinosaur Blood and the Real Age of the Earth". 




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Bird Fossils Peck Away at Deep Time Beliefs

The flap over well-preserved tissues and bones in fossils continues. Not only are more and more being found in dinosaur remains, but they are found in other fossils as well. According to materialists' dating methods, these fossils are alleged to be millions of years old, so soft tissues and such simply cannot last for such long periods of time. Unfortunately, secularists are so locked into their mindset, they have to deal from the bottom of the deck in hopes that they get a winning hand. That'll be the day! The truth is, what they continually discover debunks long ages and evolution, and supports recent the Genesis Flood and recent creation.

Credit: Pixabay / suju

Two creationary organizations released articles about sensational bird fossil discoveries, and I thought they were both reports on the same thing. Nope, didn't happen. So I'm giving you a twofer in this post. The first involves finding a gland that secretes oil that birds use for preening and such, and is essentially identical to that of modern birds. Evolutionists are frantically spinning their Charles Darwin Club Secret Decoder Rings© in hopes that they can explain away the facts.

The Messel Pit has yielded some of the best-preserved fossils in the world. Even in the context of previous amazing finds at the site, this discovery struck the scientists by surprise. Gerald Mayr, ornithologist for the institute, remarked,”The discovery is one of the most astonishing examples of soft part preservation in animals. It is extremely rare for something like this to be preserved for such a long time.” It’s astonishing because paleontologists know that “The organic materials that the soft parts consist of usually decompose within decades, or even just a few years.” And yet the lipids analyzed from the sample have kept their chemical composition for 48 million Darwin Years. How?

To read the entire article, click on "Fossil Bird Oil Stuns Scientists". Don't forget to come back for the next installment. 

Welcome back for the second exciting report! It's exciting for biblical creationists, anyway. This time, paleontologists found bird bones that shouldn't be there. That is, the bones should have permineralized. Not only do the bones exist in good condition, but they are intricate and modern — like in the chirpers we have today. To make matters worse, the fossil is 40 million Darwin years out of place. Oh, boy.

Recently, Chinese researchers described their discovery of the “earliest” bird fossil with fused pelvic bones, just like modern birds. Also like modern birds, this fossil appears to be made of original bone, not mineralized bone (which would be rock). Could any process preserve actual bones for 120 million years?

To read the rest, click on "Stunning Bird Fossil Has Bone Tissue". I would say that evolution is for the birds, but even they are testifying against that flight of fancy.

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Secularists Devalue Dinosaur Soft Tissues

Advocates of deep time and dust-to-dinosaur evolution presuppose that dinosaurs died off 65 million Darwin years ago, and biblical creationists presuppose that Earth is much, much younger. With incontrovertible evidence of soft tissues in dinosaur bones, evolutionists had to circle the wagons and open fire on facts (and people presenting those facts) that threaten their belief systems.

Credit: Freeimages / jim daly

Some people tried to say that there were errors in lab testing, and Darwinoids on the web called the creationists who knew more about science than they did "liars". Other folks tried to get dismissive about this massive problem for deep time and evolution, hoping that their bad news would go away and things would be peachy keen if they pulled the covers over their heads and got a good night's sleep. Didn't happen. People at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (who are also fond of advancing the bad science promoting evolutionism) cannot make the problem go away, so they try to make it seem unimportant. The facts are extremely important, since they indicate that biblical creationists are right: Earth is not billions of years old, and life was created, not evolved.

The biggest bombshell of the century in paleontology threatens evolutionary time. It’s not surprising that the AAAS would want to put out the fire.

Dinosaur soft tissue pulls the rug out from millions of years. Most people get that. Tell them that blood vessels, blood cells and original proteins have been found in dinosaur fossils, and a light bulb will go off in their heads: ‘then they can’t be that old’ is the logical conclusion. With few exceptions, fossils are supposed to be remains of organisms that have turned to stone. But when Mary Schweitzer went on 60 Minutes in 2010 (see YouTube) showing stretchy material she found inside a T. rex bone, it elicited gasps from host Lesley Stahl. Nobody on that show could believe it. And her mentor, dinosaurologist Jack Horner, had no explanation. Schweitzer’s “unorthodox approach”, the narrator stated, “may be changing the whole dino ball game”.

To read the rest of the article, click on "AAAS Tries to Downplay Dinosaur Soft Tissue".



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Dinosaur DNA Difficulties

News keeps getting worse for the hands at the Darwin Ranch down Deception Pass way. Trying to deny science related to dinosaur soft tissues and still believe in long ages is downright difficult, but they make a serious effort. Now the prospect of actual dinosaur DNA is becoming more of a possibility.

Some evolutionary scientists are being confronted with a choice: the narrative that dinosaur fossils are multiple millions of Darwin years old (which is based on assumptions), or the scientific fact that DNA degrades rapidly, and cannot for long periods. Secular scientists are loathe to admit that facts show the earth was created recently because minerals-to-mastodon requires those long ages.

According to Dr. Adrian Lister, a British paleobiologist, DNA cannot survive in dinosaur bones because dinosaurs lived far too long ago for their DNA, which is inherently unstable, to survive to the present . . .

Dr. Lister is no stranger to Ice Age remains, having a particular expertise in Ice Age elephants, what we call wooly mammoths and mastodons . . . Dr. Lister knows how difficult it is to study DNA fragments from the Ice Age. That professional experience convinced him that DNA cannot last for millions of years, much less for 50 or 60 million years—the reachback time that evolutionists assume for the “age of dinosaurs.”

To read the entire article, click on "Dinosaur DNA Trumps Mammoth Expert".
   

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Definitely Dinosaur Protein

One of the items that the bosses at the Darwin Ranch have filed away in the locked back room under Try Not to Discuss is soft tissues from ancient critters. Although we've been hearing about those tissues for a spell, it's not such recent news as some people may think. Just that the more recent events about dinosaur soft tissues have rightly exploded since that business with Mary Schweitzer, Mark Armitage, and others.

Triceratops at the Dinosaur Journey Museum credit: US Dept of Transportation / aschweigert
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Some uninformed but loyal evolutionists have tried to deny the tissue problem (even lying about it in forums and on social media), since it's a serious problem for them: dinosaur soft tissues and proteins cannot last for millions of years. That means dinosaurs have not been extinct as long as their dogma requires, and gives another indication that Earth was created much more recently than evolution requires. Excuses have been made, such as the "iron as a preservative" concept, which smacks of desperation and illustrates bad science. Even though Mary Schweitzer believes in long ages, she's willing to present the conclusive evidence that the dinosaur proteins are original material.

Mary Schweitzer’s team reports the most rigorous techniques yet to certify collagen in dinosaur bone. But will evolutionists finally give up their beloved millions of years?

Since 2005 and even earlier, Dr. Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State has boldly charged against fossilized dogma, proving the existence of soft tissue in dinosaur bones. She still believes they are millions of years old, but has faced criticism and (more often) silence from her stubborn, incredulous colleagues. This response hasn’t fazed her. If anything, it has stimulated her to prove she’s right. Now, the latest press release from NC State announces, “80-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Collagen Confirmed.” Here’s their interpretation that rescues long ages by assertion:

To read the rest, click on "No Doubts Left: It’s Dinosaur Protein". 



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Soft Tissues and Hard Facts

It's a bad time to be an advocate of microbes-to-mycologist evolution, since the facts keep undermining evolution and supporting creation. They get mighty ornery when soft tissues in dinosaurs are mentioned. Although soft tissues in the rock have been found for many years, things have really escalated with the finding tissues, blood cells, and the possibility of DNA in dinosaur remains. These things point to a young (as in recently created) Earth.

Image credit: Freeimages / Cam Campbell

Although some evolutionary polecats will resort to presenting tall tales as scientific facts in museums for propaganda purposes, all they can do with the soft tissue thing is make lame excuses and give outrageous extrapolations. You know, iron preserved this sample for a spell, so it must have been so for 65 million years. That's not science, old son, that's desperation.

So, how do we test this stuff? How long can something last? Darwinists have challenged biblical creationists by saying something like, "Well, since the stuff deteriorates, you have a problem with it lasting the 4,000 years since Noah's Ark. Aha! I've got you!" No, you haven't. It turns out that some tests have been done to simulate great amounts of time and conditions. Fascinating stuff.

Hardly a month passes without new reports of “soft tissue” discovered in fossils. Could this material last millions of years? We need to see what laboratory studies show us about tissue decay.

Just last year, I visited the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. As I entered the fossil section, I didn’t know whether to laugh or lament when I read a sign that said, “Fossils that are traces of prehistoric life have no original organic parts preserved.” Such mistaken statements appear throughout popular science media, so it’s no wonder few scientists know about or accept evidence of original tissues in fossils, and even fewer are looking for new evidence.

Of course, if fossils are traces of life that lived a million or more years ago, then we have no reason to believe original organic molecules should be preserved, let alone cells or whole tissues like blood vessels. But many fossils do have these stunning features.

Dr. Mary Schweitzer and her team caught the world’s attention with a Science paper in 2005 that described intact blood vessels and red blood cells in a T. rex bone. But in fact, secular scientists have been reporting them for decades in sometimes seldom-read technical literature. That museum placard is 100 percent wrong, and every Christian should understand why.

Firm up your resolve and finish reading the article by clicking on "Solid Answers on Soft Tissue". While you're at it, I suggest you see "More Examples of Exceptional Preservation in Fossil Reptiles".



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More Dinosaur Blood Vessels Refute Long-Age Paradigms

Soft tissues in dinosaurs has cause considerable agitation at the Darwin Ranch, and reactions have been disbelief, ad hoc excuses, weak extrapolations of tissue preservation possibilities, and the expected ad hominem attacks. But the evidence against long-age paradigms just keeps on rolling in.

New soft tissues and blood cells from dinosaurs and other critters that have been dead for millions of Evo Sith years are being recalcitrant, instead supporting young Earth biblical creation models. The truth is there, and is being presented, that God created the world recently, and the Genesis Flood is the best explanation for what has been found.

Scientists keep finding short-lived biochemicals and even soft tissues in fossils! Over the years, they have found unmistakable evidence of specific proteins like collagen and hemoglobin, and even what look like red blood cells and bone cells, in dinosaurs and other fossils. Most soft-tissue structures occur as mineralized remains that preserve merely an impression or outline, but a few preserve decayed remnants of the original cellular structures. These original structures should be long gone after about one million years. A new report of intact blood vessels in a duck-bill dinosaur bone pinpoints ways that such discoveries challenge old ideas about fossils.

A team of biomedical and earth scientists first chemically removed everything but the blood vessels from deep within the dinosaur bone. They found 10 proteins, including tubulin, actin, myosin, tropomyosin, and histone H2A. A chemical analyzer read sequences of amino acids in each protein—like reading each word in an essay. They found enough similarities between the dinosaur proteins and those of reptiles and birds to conclude they were from a real animal, but enough differences to suggest that it was an extinct animal, like a dinosaur.

To read the rest, click on "Duck-bill Dinosaur Blood Vessels". 

 

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Brian Thomas Interviewed on Real Science Radio about Dinosaur Soft Tissues

The first thing taught in Darwinian catechism is that evolution is a given. Second is that Earth is billions of years old. When evidence is presented that threatens either assumption, evolutionists tend to get on the prod and try to dismiss the evidence (you may like "Fear and Loathing of Dinosaur Research by Evolutionists", "Dinosaur Soft Tissues and Evolutionist Science Deniers", and "Soft Tissue Time Paradox" by ICR's Dr. Vernon Cupps). Dinosaur soft tissues have them mighty angry because the evidence strongly refutes not only the idea that dinosaurs have been extinct for tens of millions of years, but that the planet is as old as they want it to be for evolution to happen. The real evidence, without evolutionary trappings, shows that everything was created recently, and did not evolve in the Darwin way.

Image credit: Pixabay / agfcontact (modified)

Someone sneered on one of my posts, "What next, dinosaur DNA?" Pay attention, Pilgrim. It may be sequenced very soon.

Brian Thomas from the Institute for Creation Research was interviewed by Bob Enyart on Real Science Radio. They discussed a fascinating article that Mr. Thomas had written about bats, pitcher plants, symbiosis, and the like. (Evolutionary explanations for these phenomena are very, very weak.) Then they moved on to the main topic. Brian has done extensive research and compiled a whole whack of information about soft tissues. To listen to the discussion and see links for additional information, click on "ICR's Dinosaur Tissue Expert Brian Thomas on RSR".

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Deceptive Paleontology Reporting

People are a mite confused about the word fossil, seeing as how it's used to mean old stuff as well as organisms that are permineralized (organic material is replaced by minerals) or petrified (turned to stone). I could call my mother-in-law a "fossil", but people would know it would be a disrespectful term about her old age, and they would have sense enough to know that she doesn't fit any scientific use of the word fossil. When it comes to old dead things called fossils, sometimes scientists as well as us reg'lar folk do it. Ian Juby mentioned the shilly-shallying over that word in this video clip, starting at the 20 minute 13 second mark.

Hadrosaur fossil. The 2010 article referred to both fossil and bones.Image credit: Mark E. Jacobsen, Bureau of Land Management

Believers in particle-to-parasaurolophus evolution don't cotton to having the news of soft tissues and actual bones being found because those facts refute their long-age presuppositions. When hadrosaur bones were found, the news report was that they had fossilized bones. That's playing word games and leaves out pertinent information: they were not permineralized or petrified. Nice bit of propaganda, guys! Misrepresenting data won't change the facts that the world was created recently, and evolution did not happen.

‘If Noahs Flood really happened, then why don’t we see any evidence for it?’ a skeptic might ask. In today’s era of mass-media disinformation, this type of question is hurled at Bible-believers daily. The answer is quite simply this: evidence for Noah’s Flood is everywhere, but it is not reported as such by mainstream secular sources. A recent Associated Press article posted on the Guardian website provides us yet another perfect example of how evidence can be hidden in plain sight and presented in a completely dishonest way.

The Liscomb bonebed is in the Prince Creek Formation in northern Alaska. A report by a team of scientists who’ve been excavating in this area detailed what they claim is a new type of hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur), which they named Ugrunaaluk kuukpikensis. It was called “saurolophine”, meaning a member of the Saurolophine subfamily that includes the genus Saurolophus. The Associated Press immediately published an online article about the paper. but curiously, a very important detail was omitted: the bones are not fossilized!

Here is an excerpt from the original paper:

To learn the hard truth, click on "Media bias hides the significance of Alaskan hadrosaur finds".

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Dinosaur Blood and Collagen — For the Birds!

A study on preserved collagen and red blood cells in dinosaur bones, as well as the fossilization process, was marred by the evolutionary mindset of the researchers. Taking the approach that dinosaurs evolved into birds, they did some selective research on commonalities in some areas, and conveniently ignored how these things appear in other critters besides birds. Their unwarranted extrapolations did not give them any clues to origins.

The problem remains that blood and collagen should not last for millions of years, and is remarkable for having lasted the thousands of years after the Genesis Flood. Indeed, the biblical Flood models fit the actual observed facts far better than any evolutionary interpretations.

Red blood cells and connective tissue may be preserved in dinosaur fossils more commonly than previously thought. This suggestion came from scientists on June 9, 2015 in Nature Communications as they unveiled the Cretaceous cells and collagen they recently found. The study’s authors compared the apparent red blood cells in a dinosaur claw to those of an emu. They attributed their similarity to an evolutionary connection between birds and dinosaurs.

Well-preserved fossils occasionally contain soft tissues like blood and collagen, a fact repeatedly documented since Mary Schweitzer’s controversial 2005 discovery of red blood cells and pliable blood vessels in a T. rex femur fossil presumed to be millions of years old. The fossils harboring the latest serendipitous discoveries, however, are a junk assortment found on the surface at Canada’s Dinosaur Park Formation and left in storage at London’s Natural History Museum. The authors of “Fibres and cellular structures preserved in 75-million-year-old dinosaur specimens” say they appear poorly preserved compared to others in which soft tissue has been found, and there was no external evidence suggesting soft tissue might be present. In fact, they obtained leave to invasively study these fossils, hoping to learn about the fossilization process, because they were not particularly pristine. (As coauthor Susannah Maidment explained, “It’s really difficult to get curators to allow you to snap bits off their fossils.”1) And chipping into six of eight miscellaneous dinosaur bones, they found either collagen fibers (in one), other fibers (in three), or cell-like structures (in two).

To read the rest, click on "Preserved Cretaceous Collagen and Dinosaur Blood: Common Clues to a Catastrophic Past?"

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Young Earth Evidence 3: Dinosaur Soft Tissues

The third part of our layman's-level series on evidences for a young Earth sends evolutionists into a frenzy of denial and distortion of the facts. (Indeed, dinosaur DNA research itself is suspect, seemingly pre-censored.) The facts are simple: If dinosaurs have been extinct for sixty-five million years, finding soft tissue should be impossible. Some deny it, some invent a fanciful "explanation" that there is a previously unknown means of fossilization — but they avoid the plain facts that indicate their biases are erroneous and that the Earth may be far younger than evolutionists want to admit.

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Ask the average layperson how he or she knows that the earth is millions or billions of years old, and that person will probably mention the dinosaurs, which nearly everybody “knows” died off 65 million years ago. A recent discovery by Dr. Mary Schweitzer, however, has given reason for all but committed evolutionists to question this assumption.

If dinosaurs lived over 65 million years ago, why do some dinosaur fossils still contain well-preserved soft tissues?

Bone slices from the fossilized thigh bone (femur) of a Tyrannosaurus rex found in the Hell Creek formation of Montana were studied under the microscope by Schweitzer. To her amazement, the bone showed what appeared to be blood vessels of the type seen in bone and marrow, and these contained what appeared to be red blood cells with nuclei, typical of reptiles and birds (but not mammals). The vessels even appeared to be lined with specialized endothelial cells found in all blood vessels.

You are encouraged to finish reading "Soft Tissue in Fossils", here. Further discussion is available in "Those Not So Dry Bones".

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