Soft Tissue from Dinosaurs

The Pixie

Well-known member
This is something young Earth creationists like to tout as proof that they are right. It is not.

There is a great description of how the soft tissue was found here.

It was first discovered by paleontologist Mary Schweitzer, who is a Chrisian, by the way. From the above article:

She’s horrified that some Christians accuse her of hiding the true meaning of her data. “They treat you really bad,” she says. “They twist your words and they manipulate your data.” For her, science and religion represent two different ways of looking at the world; invoking the hand of God to explain natural phenomena breaks the rules of science. After all, she says, what God asks is faith, not evidence. “If you have all this evidence and proof positive that God exists, you don’t need faith. I think he kind of designed it so that we’d never be able to prove his existence. And I think that’s really cool.”

BioLogic is a Christian organisation. Here is there take on it:

Those who deny the scientific evidence for the old age of the earth have attempted to leverage this discovery to cast doubt on dating methods. But that is a misrepresentation of her findings.

The best article I found on how the soft tissue was preserved is here:

What exactly is preserved?
... teams have reported finding proteinaceous structures resembling bifurcating blood vessels, fibrous bone matrix and red blood cells in Mesozoic specimens including a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex and an 80-million-year-old hadrosaur.
...
Using Raman microspectroscopy to identify the organic and inorganic contents of the soft tissue structures, the team found they were not made up of original proteins but instead had been chemically transformed into polymer compounds known as advanced glycoxidation end products (AGEs) and advanced lipoxidation end products (ALEs). Nonetheless, they were still recognizable as the original soft tissues.

So what has been discovered is organic material that is derived from proteins in the dinosaur, rather than the actual proteins.

It continues:

“It was quite fascinating to see that different soft tissue structures were transformed more or less into the same type of compound,” Wiemann says. This transformation involves oxidative cross-linking of chemically reactive proteins with glucose or lipid molecules to form the polymers. AGEs and ALEs are well recognized in food science. “If you burn toast, the brown color that arises on the crust is due to the presence of these same compounds,” she says. The compounds help explain why many fossils are brown in color and why the chemical transformation helps preserve delicate soft tissue structures: The polymers are highly resistant to decay, water and bacteria.

The article in Nature is available here:

It must be pointed out that this is on-going science, and at this stage we do not know for sure how it was preserved. However, it does appear that mechanisms do exist that can explain.

At the end of the day, the evidence for an old Earth is overwhelming, and this single datum is not going to to change that. When 99.9% of your data indicates one thing, and 0.1% indicates another, you look for a way to explain than 0.1% within the former, rather than abandoning it altogether for the latter.
 
It must be pointed out that this is on-going science, and at this stage we do not know for sure how it was preserved. However, it does appear that mechanisms do exist that can explain.
Yes, the evo-scientist don't know.

But you're fossils date the rocks and the rocks date the fossil circular argument still prevails in your mind.
 
The issue of iron preservation fails. So I would suggest the evo's come up with another idea.

Here's why...

In order to conduct the experiment and have hopes of it working here's what they had to do...

They used Chicken and Ostrich blood because they thought they were the closest to dinosaurs.
Put in an anti-coagulant
Put it in a centrifuge to remove serum.
Put it in a centrifuge to take out platelets
Took out white blood cells
Purified and broke down the red blood cells and added a chemical to expose the hemoglobin which contains iron atoms to do the preserving.

Yeah, that process mimics the real world.

Tissue was then soaked in the modified blood for 2 years in a laboratory environment. That is, no insects, water, microbes, plant roots etc were present….which would have been present when the organisms were buried.
From the heavily modified blood Mary Schweitzer was able to extrapolate 2 years into 65+ MY's and suggest that's how the biomaterial may have been preserved.
But, as we all very well know in the natural conditions the blood would have clotted and hardened and the iron would not have been available.

Is iron the answer...no. Iron fails
 
Yes, the evo-scientist don't know.
That is your take away? You just cherry pick the bit you want to believe and ignore the rest.

This is creationism.

But you're fossils date the rocks and the rocks date the fossil circular argument still prevails in your mind.
Explain why it is circular reasoning. Or are you going to pull your usual trick of stating your uninformed opinion as fact, then furiously evading when called to support it?
 
The issue of iron preservation fails. So I would suggest the evo's come up with another idea.

Here's why...

In order to conduct the experiment and have hopes of it working here's what they had to do...

They used Chicken and Ostrich blood because they thought they were the closest to dinosaurs.
Put in an anti-coagulant
Put it in a centrifuge to remove serum.
Put it in a centrifuge to take out platelets
Took out white blood cells
Purified and broke down the red blood cells and added a chemical to expose the hemoglobin which contains iron atoms to do the preserving.

Yeah, that process mimics the real world.

Tissue was then soaked in the modified blood for 2 years in a laboratory environment. That is, no insects, water, microbes, plant roots etc were present….which would have been present when the organisms were buried.
From the heavily modified blood Mary Schweitzer was able to extrapolate 2 years into 65+ MY's and suggest that's how the biomaterial may have been preserved.
But, as we all very well know in the natural conditions the blood would have clotted and hardened and the iron would not have been available.

Is iron the answer...no. Iron fails
The Nature article I linked to cites another that discusses the iron issue in more detail. It can be found here:

The persistence of original soft tissues in Mesozoic fossil bone is not explained by current chemical degradation models. We identified iron particles (goethite-αFeO(OH)) associated with soft tissues recovered from two Mesozoic dinosaurs, using transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, micro-X-ray diffraction and Fe micro-X-ray absorption near-edge structure. Iron chelators increased fossil tissue immunoreactivity to multiple antibodies dramatically, suggesting a role for iron in both preserving and masking proteins in fossil tissues. Haemoglobin (HB) increased tissue stability more than 200-fold, from approximately 3 days to more than two years at room temperature (25°C) in an ostrich blood vessel model developed to test post-mortem ‘tissue fixation’ by cross-linking or peroxidation. HB-induced solution hypoxia coupled with iron chelation enhances preservation as follows: HB + O2 > HB − O2 > −O2 ≫ +O2. The well-known O2/haeme interactions in the chemistry of life, such as respiration and bioenergetics, are complemented by O2/haeme interactions in the preservation of fossil soft tissues.

This is real science. You object to it because you are obliged to cling to any straw that might support creationism, but as more and more evidence comes to light, it is increasingly clear this is not one of those straws.

Clearly the model they used is not a perfect mimic, but it is the best achievable, and proves that the hypothesis is plausible.

Perhaps you would show us the science creationist have done on this, CrowCross? Oh, right. There is none. Plenty of armchair philosophy, but no one actually doing any science. Odd, when we consider this is one of the very few straws creationists are still clinging to. If I was cynical, I would say that was because those qualified to do the research know full well that it will fail. And yes, I am cynical.
 
Explain why it is circular reasoning. Or are you going to pull your usual trick of stating your uninformed opinion as fact, then furiously evading when called to support it?
Opine Pixie,
The post pretty well told you why it's circular logic.

Fossils date the rocks and the rocks date the fossil.....it's not that hard to comprehend.
 
The Nature article I linked to cites another that discusses the iron issue in more detail. It can be found here:

The persistence of original soft tissues in Mesozoic fossil bone is not explained by current chemical degradation models. We identified iron particles (goethite-αFeO(OH)) associated with soft tissues recovered from two Mesozoic dinosaurs, using transmission electron microscopy, electron energy loss spectroscopy, micro-X-ray diffraction and Fe micro-X-ray absorption near-edge structure. Iron chelators increased fossil tissue immunoreactivity to multiple antibodies dramatically, suggesting a role for iron in both preserving and masking proteins in fossil tissues. Haemoglobin (HB) increased tissue stability more than 200-fold, from approximately 3 days to more than two years at room temperature (25°C) in an ostrich blood vessel model developed to test post-mortem ‘tissue fixation’ by cross-linking or peroxidation. HB-induced solution hypoxia coupled with iron chelation enhances preservation as follows: HB + O2 > HB − O2 > −O2 ≫ +O2. The well-known O2/haeme interactions in the chemistry of life, such as respiration and bioenergetics, are complemented by O2/haeme interactions in the preservation of fossil soft tissues.

This is real science. You object to it because you are obliged to cling to any straw that might support creationism, but as more and more evidence comes to light, it is increasingly clear this is not one of those straws.

Clearly the model they used is not a perfect mimic, but it is the best achievable, and proves that the hypothesis is plausible.

Perhaps you would show us the science creationist have done on this, CrowCross? Oh, right. There is none. Plenty of armchair philosophy, but no one actually doing any science. Odd, when we consider this is one of the very few straws creationists are still clinging to. If I was cynical, I would say that was because those qualified to do the research know full well that it will fail. And yes, I am cynical.
Might I suggest you re-read what I had to say about the iron experiments?

What they had to do with the bird blood.
 
Opine Pixie,
The post pretty well told you why it's circular logic.

Fossils date the rocks and the rocks date the fossil.....it's not that hard to comprehend.
I take it you have not heard about radiometric dating.

Might I suggest you re-read what I had to say about the iron experiments?

What they had to do with the bird blood.
They produced the best model they could. You are right that what they did does not mimic the real world. Does that prove they are wrong?

Hint: No.
 
The post pretty well told you why it's circular logic.
All it tells us is that your creationist sources are lying to you about the use of index fossils.

YEC has no scientific support, so all YEC websites have are lies. You are being lied to, CC.
 
Don't you see how there can be a way in which the above is NOT an example of circular reasoning, logically speaking? I'll explain it to you if you want me to.
Hey, look, we have an "index" fossil here. We have a bona-fide index fossil here...which means the rock is 150 BY's old.
 
Hey, look, we have an "index" fossil here. We have a bona-fide index fossil here...which means the rock is 150 BY's old.
And then they conform by radiometric dating.

But creationists pretend it is not so because it refutes the Bible account, and in creationism any evidence that disagrees with the Bible must be ignored.
 
And then they conform by radiometric dating.

But creationists pretend it is not so because it refutes the Bible account, and in creationism any evidence that disagrees with the Bible must be ignored.
Ignored??? No. Shown how it fits into the biblical models....yes.
 
Ignored??? No. Shown how it fits into the biblical models....yes.
I'm afraid the earth is far too young to fit the Biblical model. The Bible tells us that hills and mountains are 'eternal' and/or 'everlasting', thus implying an eternal/everlasting earth. Science has a shorter lifetime of about 5 billion years.

See Genesis 49:26, Deuteronomy 33:15 and Habakkuk 3:6 for details.
 
I'm afraid the earth is far too young to fit the Biblical model. The Bible tells us that hills and mountains are 'eternal' and/or 'everlasting', thus implying an eternal/everlasting earth. Science has a shorter lifetime of about 5 billion years.

See Genesis 49:26, Deuteronomy 33:15 and Habakkuk 3:6 for details.
You're not really saying anything...a 4,000 year old mountain would also fit that description.

There is also a problem with what you perceive "eternal" to be. Christians have eternal life and they are not eternal from the beginning. God on the other hand is eternal from the beginning.

One of the definitions for Olam is.... long duration. Which definition have you choosen for your post?
 
Ignored??? No. Shown how it fits into the biblical models....yes.
Yes, ignored.

How does creationist fit these into the Biblical model?
  • distribution of the vitamin C pseudogene
  • biodistribution
  • distribution of radio isotopes in geological column
  • distribution of amino acid sequence variation
All things that come up routinely, and creationists ignore.
 
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