soft tissue in dinosaur bones debunked

While fossils of large titanosaur limb bones can largely resist decomposition, their relatively smaller skulls are much more rare. Scientists can't tell whether the clock ran down a few days or millions of years ago. Because the creature had a rounded snout, paleontologists conclude it browsed for foliage at varying heights rather than always feeding low to the ground, per the Guardian. Within the bone matrix, collagen fibers adsorb to the mineral component of bone. How did scientists find soft tissue in dinosaur fossils? The find was also controversial, because scientists had thought proteins that make up soft tissue should degrade in less than 1 million years in the best of conditions. Flexible fossil shows tyrannosaur's softer They admit it exists, but can only make up stories Appendix B: Different explanations of geological history. What are the idle words referred to in Matthew 12:36? So believing proteins could last for tens of millions of years takes enormous faith. At certain points along the triple helix, the individual protein strands are chemically bound to each other to form crosslinks. Fossils represent the biological evolution of species. "Understanding Evolution for Teachers: Radiometric Dating." They also argue that the collagen fragments derive from bacterial proteins with structural homology to collagen. But people like her never seem to question their deep time evolutionary assumptions. LAA is wedded to generally accepted geologic settings that make him feel obliged to preserve deep time at all costs. 5. I don't care what they say about me': Paleontologist Once all the parents have become daughters, there's no more basis for comparison between the two isotopes. They found the proteins really did come from dinosaur soft tissue. The tissue must be something else, perhaps the product of a later bacterial invasion, critics argued. The biblical explanation mainly involves rapid processes over short periods of time, whereas the Uniformitarian explanation mainly involves slow processes over long periods of time. Notice that the press release admits that these biological tissues and cells exist. Keep your eye on the issue: how could stretchable soft tissues, cells and proteins survive for tens of millions of years against all the forces that would degrade them in short order? They then tested the iron-as-preservative idea using modern ostrich blood vessels. The ratio of parents to daughters can tell the researcher how old the specimen is. How does he know it could? | READ MORE. Remember that Mary Schweitzer shocked 60 Minutes host Leslie Stahl and dinosaur paleontologist Jack Horner by showing the tissue was still stretchable. Was Philip transported miraculously after the Ethiopian was baptized? Researchers estimate Ann was likely about 50 feet from head to tail. Your Privacy Rights Soft Tissue In Dinosaur Bones But there are a number of different chemical pathways that can result in crosslinking. Osteocytes with delicate filipodia and blood vessels in ostrich bone (A, C) compared with similar soft tissues in a dinosaur bone (B, D). "Once we can get the chemistry behind some of these soft tissues, there's all sorts of questions we can ask of ancient organisms," Schweitzer said. So they involve huge extrapolations in time. Mark Armitage participated in a dig at the Hell Creek Formation, in Montana, a world-famous dinosaur graveyard. And they need to be tested quickly, as soft tissue could degrade once exposed to modern air and humidity. Formaldehyde, of course, preserves tissue. Meanwhile, Schweitzer has been testing whether the medullary bone and other soft tissue she discovered are original. The controversial discovery of 68-million-year-old soft tissue from the bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex finally has a physical explanation. Soft tissue has also been extracted from bones that are assumed to be from the Jurassic period which lasted from 145-200 million years. You would have to invent a But as compelling as this evidence for a young earth might seem, the preservation of dinosaur soft tissue for 68 million years can be readily explained. The most widely known form of radiometric dating is carbon-14 dating. In a paper published last week in Royal Society Open Science, Poropat and his colleagues detail thesimilarities between Ann and another sauropod discovered in Argentina and described in 2016. This information has also helped determine the age of the Earth itself. [9][10] The extreme temperatures of the magma would just destroy the bones. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Red blood cells could be clearly viewed using a thrift store microscope! The big controversy started here at NC State when Mary Schweitzer posted photos and videos of stretchy tissue inside a T. rex bone in 2004. (1/2/2008) http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/docs/parks/gtime/radiom.html, USGS. Because scientists knew that soft tissues didnt last that long before they degrade, Schweitzer said that there were two alternatives for the interpretation of these observations, either the dinosaurs arent as old as we think they are, or maybe we dont knowexactlyhow these things get preserved (interview of Schweitzer in 2014). The resemblances between the skulls of Diamantinasaurus and the similarly aged Sarmientosaurus from southern South America are pretty striking.. The most widely known form of radiometric dating is carbon-14 dating. If, however, there are too many or too few neutrons, the atom is unstable, and it sheds particles until its nucleus reaches a stable state. If the fragments were due to contamination, they should have mapped randomly onto all regions of the collagen fibers. Schweitzer was the first researcher to identify and isolate soft tissues (such as collagen, a connective protein) from an ancient fossil bone (Appendix A). Some of the isotopes used for this purpose are uranium-238, uranium-235 and potassium-40, each of which has a half-life of more than a million years. L ast year at about this time, it was disclosed that scientists had made an amazing discovery of a Tyrannosaurus rex thigh bone that still retained well-preserved soft tissue (which included blood vessels and cells). Dinosaur soft tissues preserved as polymers - EARTH Magazine Did you know that in 2013 a scientist was fired by a University because of his research into soft tissue in dinosaur bones? D. matildae,however, was medium-sized, growing to about 65 feet and weighing up to roughly 27 tons (54,000 pounds). Amino acid sequencing of several samples have shown matches with the known collagens of chickens, frogs, newts and other animals. Iron chelators increased fossil tissue immunoreactivity to multiple antibodies dramatically, suggesting a role for iron in both preserving and masking proteins in fossil tissues. 5. And Schweitzer has even recovered fragments of the more fragile and complex molecule, DNA. Why does the Bible describe death as sleep? Significantly, this framework demonstrates the hypotheses presented by Schweitzer et al. Even a polymer shield strong enough to resist microbes would develop cracks. The biblical explanation allows for catastrophic events (such as the flood of Noah), whereas the Uniformitarian explanation minimizes the role of catastrophic events (because it has a preference for gradual events). Controversial T. Rex Find Finally Has An Explanation, Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. The specimens Schweitzer works with, including skin, show evidence of excellent preservation. This is what archaeologists use to determine the age of human-made artifacts. It forms minuscule iron nanoparticles and also generates free radicals, which are highly reactive molecules thought to be involved in aging. Microscopy images of "soft tissues" isolated from bones of the Cretaceous dinosaur Brachylophosaurus canadensis (MOR 2598 and GPDM 328), along with extant Struthio camelus analogs. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. But after several years of debate, its generally agreed that the soft tissue discovered by Mary Schweitzer is authentic. The Fascinating Story Behind Dinosaur Soft Tissue - Is Genesis Such a find is quite rare, lead researcher Stephen Poropat of Australias Curtin University tells the Guardians Donna Lu. Appendix A: A summary of Mary Schweitzers research (Service, 2017). [7] With respect to the significance of her work, Kevin Padian, Curator of Paleontology, University of California Museum of Paleontology, has stated "Chemicals that might degrade in a laboratory over a short period need not do so in a protected natural chemical environmentit's time to readjust our thinking. Please copy/paste the following text to properly cite this HowStuffWorks.com article: The oldest fossils, microscopic in nature, were discovered in a 3.5 billion-year-old rock in Western Australia. Radiometric dating relies on the properties of isotopes. This fall I will be presenting at the 2016 National Conference on Christian Apologetics. The recent discovery of preserved cells and soft tissues in certain dinosaur bones seems incompatible with an Mary Schweitzer proposed that iron from blood helped preserve dinosaur tissue for millions of years by crosslinking proteins and acting as an anti-oxidant. These are complex molecules that continually tend to break down to simpler ones. [13] The extraction of protein, soft tissue, remnant cells and organelle-like structures from dinosaur fossils has been confirmed. Since 2004, soft tissue has been discovered in fossils all over the world, spanning the entire Deep Time continuum, as Dr Brian Thomas at ICR has shown. In most cases, microbes feast on a dead animal's soft tissue, destroying it within weeks. Schweitzer's most explosive claim came 2 years later in two papers in Science. Schweitzer is set to search for more dinosaur soft tissue this summer. His job in academia may depend on his being an old-earther. soft tissue In short, he argues that because we know that fossil fuels, coalified wood and invertebrate fossils are tens or hundreds of millions of years old, whats the problem with accepting dinosaur soft tissue being that old as well? Schweitzer earned a B.S. While the oldest known rocks on Earth are about 3.5 billion years old, researchers have found zircon crystals that are 4.3 billion years old [source: USGS]. Despite very good reasons to believe that collagen could survive for tens of millions of years in the matrix of dinosaur bones, some in the scientific community have questioned the soft-tissue finds.2 They claim these materials resulted from bacterial contamination of the fossils with microbially derived structures, thus creating a false appearance of blood vessels and cells. New research from an interdisciplinary team of scientists provides further response to this question by demonstrating how collagens structural features allow fragments to survive for eons.1. Scientists have also made improvements to the standard radiometric measurements. This means that isotopes with a short half-life won't work to date dinosaur bones. Now, the 95-million-year-old fossil is revealing insights into how dinosaurs may have traveled between continents. You cant prove something is true. The highly intertwined, cross-linked structure of collagen makes it reasonable that fragments of this molecule could survive for 68 million years. "[8], Schweitzer previously announced similar discoveries in 1993. Depending on the depositional conditions and the kind of dinosaur, non-overlapping polygonal scales or feathers may be seen. Draw the Dinosaur's Face. Eight protein fragments were found from a 80 million year old (geologic time scale) hadrosaur fossil. According to new research, iron in the dinosaur's body preserved the tissue before it could decay. Both of these reptiles were titanosaurs, or massive sauropods that lived around 66 million to 145 million years ago. Scientists at Imperial College London have discovered what appear to be the remnants of soft tissue and red blood cells in poorly preserved dinosaur bones dating back 75 million years. It was really convincing, says paleontologist Martin Sander of the University of Bonn, Germany. How many are there, and which one is Jesus in? This means that soft tissue in dinosaur bones provides another reason (besides, living fossils, coastal geomorphology, fossilization of large animals and orally-transmitted Aboriginal stories) to be skeptical of the uniformitarian (geologic) time scale. And he coauthored a peer-review paper in a scholarly journal about the find. The bulk of the press release distracts attention from the issue of deep time. "Geologic Time." Since then Schweitzer said, Thats the way science should work. 2017: the study done in 2009 was repeated in order to answer critics. Some day over the rainbow, Ill prove all; One of the most provocative pieces of evidence young-earth creationists cite for a 6,000- to 10,000-year-old Earth is the discovery of soft-tissue remains in a dinosaur specimen that dates around 68 million years old. Uniformitarian scientists get upset by statements like these because they assume that the earth is billions of years old and that life began simple and became more complex over time. A more recent study (October 2010) published in PLoS ONE contradicts the conclusion of Kaye and supports Schweitzer's original conclusion. Dont be thrown off balance by acronyms (ITMs, KLMs, MLMs, etc.) Once the protein strand breaks, the fragments are held in close proximity by the contact points. A chemical framework for the preservation of fossil vertebrate cells and soft tissues (Landon A. Anderson, Earth Science Reviews, May 2023 issue). And so all of you skeptics eat crow; away with you! The mapping study supports the bioauthenticity of the collagen fragments. Even if the individual protein strands break down, the fiber would still remain largely intact because of all the association points. The discovery is the latest in several recent - and controversial - soft tissue finds by archaeologists: researchers last November claimed the controversial discovery of They are not denying it, as if misrepresentations or misidentifications have been made. Soft Tissue in Dinosaur This is a remarkably detailed and information-packed paper, Matthew Lamanna, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History who was not involved with the new study but helped describe S. musacchioi in 2016, tells Live Sciences Sascha Pare. Knowledge of the chemical mechanisms underlying vertebrate soft tissue preservation has direct implications for molecular archaeology and palaeontology, including efforts at molecular sequence recovery within the ancient DNA and palaeoproteomic communities. Based at North Carolina State University, Schweitzer is currently researching Molecular Paleontology, molecular diagenesis and taphonomy, evolution of physiological and reproductive strategies in dinosaurs and their bird descendants, and astrobiology. Eventually, some of the blocks can fall away, leaving a smaller, more stable structure. No! Observations on life; particularly spiritual, Being fruitful in work, service & relationships, Six reasons to be skeptical of the geologic time scale. Three options present themselves for the presence of molecules and blood vessels in creatures that purportedly passed on eons ago. Dinosaur Bone Soft fibrillar bone tissue was discovered inside the fossil brow horn of a Triceratops horridus. The fact that the fragments clustered to the most protected areas of the fibers makes better sense if they were generated from dinosaur collagens. After a two-year retrieval process, Jack Horner, director of the Museum, gave the femur bone to Schweitzer. But after a volunteer found a bone that turned out to be part of the brain case, Poropat tells the Guardian, that then made all the other bits fall into place.. Its interesting to note that scientists are exploring the second alternative, but not the first one! These regions are the most protected within the collagen fiber. The substance left behind was a stretchy material that showed blood vessels, bone-building cells known as osteocytes and other organic features when observed under Importantly, Schweitzer and her colleagues have figured out how to remove the iron from their samples, which enables them to analyze the original proteins. Look at how he begs the question: The fossil fuels used daily by society consist of original biomolecules of ancient plants and microorganisms that have been chemically transformed into carbonaceous macromolecules referred to as kerogens (Tissot and Welte, 1984; Tegelaar et al., 1989; Vandenbroucke and Largeau, 2007). But I wanted to show the chemistry behind these ideas, and that it plausibly explains the soft tissues and cells were seeing in, for example, dinosaurs. But it doesnt explain totally un-crosslinked soft dinosaur tissues (Thomas, 2019). SOFT TISSUE (INCLUDING FLESH) FOUND IN FOSSILS The study by Anderson also delves into the processes of carbonization and sulfurization, in addition to the best conditions for preservation. Trace Fossils They discovered that the fragments all came from the innermost areas of the fibers, where the strands are packed most closely. The most recent explanation is oxidative cross-linking of chemically reactive proteins with glucose or lipid molecules to form polymers, which are highly resistant to decay, water and bacteria. Cookie Policy "They basically act like formaldehyde.". Since 2004, soft tissue has been discovered in fossils all over the world, spanning the entire Deep Time continuum, as Dr Brian Thomas at ICR has shown. In fact, the chemistry from this paper potentially describes preservation for a variety of original cellular tissues, including vertebrates and other organisms trapped within amber, carbonized traces of ancient feathers and skin, and even dinosaur mummies.. Havent you seen bicycles, tanks and Model T Fords before?. These soft tissues are composed mainly of proteins, which are believed to completely degrade within about four million years. Which paradigm is more scientific? Heads I win, tails you lose Such implications that are immediately apparent from examining the chemical framework are discussed. How strong is the empiricism in his argument? Collagens basic structural unit is called a triple helix, consisting of three protein chains intertwining around each other. Schweitzer and her colleagues found that dinosaur soft tissue is closely associated with iron nanoparticles in both the T. rex and another soft-tissue specimen from Brachylophosaurus canadensis, a type of duck-billed dinosaur. Unfortunately, these elements don't exist in dinosaur fossils themselves. They're also buried in sandstone, which is porous and may wick away bacteria and reactive enzymes that would otherwise degrade the bone. By using radiometric dating to determine the age of igneous brackets, researchers can accurately determine the age of the sedimentary layers between them. Two weeks after the results of this research were published, Armitage was terminated from his position as the Manager of the Electron and Confocal Microscopy Laboratory in the Biology Department at California State University Northridge (CSUN). As the soft tissue in dinosaur bones can be explained readily under the biblical time scale, this supplies a more realistic explanation of the presence of soft tissue in dinosaur bones than the uniformitarian (geologic) time scale. The half-life of carbon-14 is only 5,730 years, so carbon-14 dating is only effective on samples that are less than 50,000 years old. On the dig he and others uncovered the largest Triceratops horn ever found at that location. WebCollagen and soft tissue were detected in dinosaur bones which is " exceptional preservation " and should not be there after so long a time period as 65 M years. Numerous collagen triple helices assemble in a staggered fashion to form a larger structure called a collagen fibril. and nobody looks," she said. Are the data driving the paradigm, or vice versa? Today's knowledge of fossil ages comes primarily from radiometric dating, also known as radioactive dating. Draw the Dinosaur's Face. (2018) are, in many cases, subsequent steps of a single, unified reaction mechanism, and not separate hypotheses. Yeah, those frogs were preserved via crosslinking with formaldehyde. A Brief History of Steamboat Racing in the U.S. Texas-Born Italian Noble Evicted From Her 16th-Century Villa. How are dinosaur tissues preserved in deep time? 5. 2023 Smithsonian Magazine But you can disprove it. [5], In 2000, Bob Harmon, chief preparator of paleontology at the Museum of the Rockies, discovered a Tyrannosaurus skeleton in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana. Also see: Lots of limestone My two topics are The Cells Design and Dinosaur Blood and the Age of the Earth.. But does that prove that kerogens are millions of years old? Have evolutionists and believers in Deep Time been able to get a grip? Subjects: Scientific Evidence for a Young Earth? Key to Preserving Dinosaur Soft Tissue Think of the nucleus as a pyramid of building blocks. Dinosaurs are believed to have walked the Earth for close to 165 million years. The result is like a radioactive clock that ticks away as unstable isotopes decay into stable ones. Does it render tissue impenetrable to cosmic rays, radon in the soil, or bioturbation? In cases such as with coalified fossil wood, for example, this conversion of biomolecules towards kerogen macromolecules can preserve original tissue morphology (Gupta et al., 2007a; Gupta, 2015; Mustoe, 2018). In 2005 paleontologist Mary Schweitzer found the first evidence for soft tissues in a dinosaur bone. Armitage was fired because of the intellectual intolerance that other scientists felt toward creationists. If you try to add extra blocks to the sides pyramid, they may stay put for a while, but they'll eventually fall away. Privacy Statement Fossils represent the order of burial during the flood. [19][20] On March 20, 2019 the journal Nature Communications published a paper naming an extinct bird "Avimaia schweitzerae in honor of Mary Higby Schweitzer for her ground-breaking works on MB [ medullary bone ] and for her role in establishing the field of molecular paleontology."[21]. This work shows that at least two of the more popular hypotheses actually share a chemical pathway and overlap quite a bit.

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