The most recent ice age ended about 10k years ago. 1995: spectroscopy and chemical analyses of extracts from a T. rex femur suggested preserved proteins, including a form of collagen abundant in modern animal bones. But does formaldehyde preserve tissues for tens of millions of years? One (Biblical) is based on recorded history in the Bible and the other (Uniformitarian) is based on assuming that the present (processes today) is the key to the past (ancient processes) and on the hypothetical geologic time scale. Editor's Note: This article was updated at 2pm Eastern Nov. 28 to correct unclear language about proteins and DNA. D. matildae,however, was medium-sized, growing to about 65 feet and weighing up to roughly 27 tons (54,000 pounds). Ive been trying ever since to disprove it. "What we found was unusual, because it was still soft and still transparent and still flexible," Schweitzer told LiveScience.
in Communicative Disorders from Utah State University in 1977, and got a Certificate of Secondary Education in Broadfield Science from Montana State University in 1988. Wake up to the day's most important news. After death, though, iron is let free from its cage. These soft tissues are composed mainly of proteins, which are believed to completely degrade within about four million years. And in 2015 fibers and cellular structures were discovered preserved in 75 million year old dinosaur specimens. Scientists have excavated the first near-complete skull of a sauropod to ever be found in Australia. Schweitzer was able to retrieve proteins from this femur in 2007. The result is like a radioactive clock that ticks away as unstable isotopes decay into stable ones. The controversial discovery of 68-million-year-old soft tissue from the bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex finally has a physical explanation. It also explains why collagen fragments survived for 68 million years and is consistent with my earlier suggestions. In relative dating, fossils are compared to similar fossils and rocks, the ages of which are known. (2018) are, in many cases, subsequent steps of a single, unified reaction mechanism, and not separate hypotheses. Schweitzer is set to search for more dinosaur soft tissue this summer. How to read the Bible in chronological order. Even a polymer shield strong enough to resist microbes would develop cracks. This process measures isotope decay inside the fossil or the rock to determine its exact age. In addition, the oldest known moon rocks are 4.5 billion years old. (1/2/2008) http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/parks/gtime/ageofearth.html, Special Offer on Antivirus Software From HowStuffWorks and TotalAV Security. Unfortunately, these elements don't exist in dinosaur fossils themselves. The most widely known form of radiometric dating is carbon-14 dating. If the fragments were due to contamination, they should have mapped randomly onto all regions of the collagen fibers. And it doesnt explain wholly soft, pliable tissue. 2023 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved. This entry was posted on November 4, 2019 by George Hawke. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Scripture index 2017: the study done in 2009 was repeated in order to answer critics. The bones of these various specimens are articulated, not scattered, suggesting they were buried quickly. A chemical framework for the preservation of fossil vertebrate cells and soft tissues (Landon A. Anderson, Earth Science Reviews, May 2023 issue). 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. At the end of the Cretaceous Period, dinosaurs went extinct. They soaked one group of blood vessels in iron-rich liquid made of red blood cells and another group in water. 9/28/1991. They found the proteins really did come from dinosaur soft tissue. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Exercise: LAAs paper is open-access. The research, headed by Mary Schweitzer, a molecular paleontologist at North Carolina State University, explains how proteins and possibly even DNA can survive millennia. 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. Then a blatant assertion is made to sweep away the issue: Because we didnt realize that these processes could come from the same starting place and share a step, the hypotheses have been presented as separate, Anderson says. That idea is not considered by LAA. The same is true if you take a block away from one of the pyramid's sides, making the rest unstable. Both of these ages are assigned according to the geological time scale. The fact that the fragments clustered to the most protected areas of the fibers makes better sense if they were generated from dinosaur collagens. Dinosaurs' iron-rich blood, combined with a good environment for fossilization, may explain the amazing existence of soft tissue from the Cretaceous (a period that lasted from about 65.5 million to 145.5 million years ago) and even earlier. To determine the ages of these specimens, scientists need an isotope with a very long half-life.
Lawsuit: CSUN Scientist Fired After Soft Tissue Found On The Scrambling Continues Schweitzer earned a B.S. @JesseDornfeld Well the soft tissue is usually in arctic conditions, Ill give you dinosaur bones. Photograph B shows the demineralized bone in (A) after air drying. National Conference on Christian Apologetics. The specimens Schweitzer works with, including skin, show evidence of excellent preservation. Using the basic ideas of bracketing and radiometric dating, researchers have determined the age of rock layers all over the world. Typically an animals remains mineralizeas they decay, so most specimens of this supposed age consist of inorganic material. 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). But you can disprove it. really did come from dinosaur soft tissue, Paleo-Art: Illustrations Bring Dinosaurs to Life, Dinosaur Detective: Find Out What You Really Know. How does he know it could? This is a world famous area for finding fossil dinosaur remains. John Morris from the Institute of Creation Research writes: Indeed, it is hard to imagine how soft tissue could have lasted even 5,000 years or so since the Flood of Noahs day when creationists propose the dinosaur was buried. At present there are two main explanations of the earths geological and climatological history. Once the protein strand breaks, the fragments are held in close proximity by the contact points. 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. Demineralized fragments of tissues lining the marrow cavity of Tyrannosaurus rex femur. Under the direction of mentor Jack Horner, she received her Ph.D. in Biology from Montana State University in 1995. WebEvidence for the extraction of short segments of ancient DNA from dinosaur fossils has been reported on two occasions. Yes, proteins do break down into amino acids or peptides that crosslink to form N-heterocyclic polymers. Change). 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. ), Fixatives like formaldehyde keep the tissues from degrading in part, they make them less digestible to bacteria, says Landon Anderson, doctoral candidate at NCState and lead author of a study in Earth Science Reviews. [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.
How Do Scientists Reconstruct What Dinosaurs Looked Like? Sometimes a dinosaur carcass has been preserved as a natural mummy with widespread skin impressions. "The problem is, for 300 years, we thought, 'Well, the organics are all gone, so why should we look for something that's not going to be there?' Under the biblical explanation of geologic history (see Appendix B), the dinosaurs were buried during the global flood about 4.5k years ago. Scientists have had two decades to think about soft tissue preservation in dinosaur bones. The American Biology Teacher (2021) 83 (5): 298302. The recent discovery of preserved cells and soft tissues in certain dinosaur bones seems incompatible with an age of millions of years, given the expectation that cells and soft tissues should have decayed away after millions of years. Advertising Notice
Dino-Sore: Smithsonian Paleontologist Diagnoses Ancient ]]>. Even so, scientists have found intact soft tissue in dinosaur bones before. The most famous case dates to 2005 when Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University found collagen fibers in the fossilized leg bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex. But such discoveries are rare and have previously occurred only with extremely well-preserved fossils. (1/2/2008) http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg13117884.900-rock-of-ages--cleft-by-laser-if-you-want-to-date-a-rockget-a-laser-thats-the-message-for-geologists-interested-in-the-preciseageof-anything-from-moon-rocks-to-hominid-fossils-.html, Museum Victoria. And so all of you skeptics eat crow; away with you! "They basically act like formaldehyde.".
Flexible fossil shows tyrannosaur's softer At least six possible explanations (including bacterial contaminants) have been suggested for this preservation of soft tissue in dinosaur bones, but they have all been refuted (Thomas, 2019). The study by Anderson also delves into the processes of carbonization and sulfurization, in addition to the best conditions for preservation. Based on similarities in the part of the skull surrounding the brain, the bones at the back end of the jaw joint and the curved and conical teeth, the new fossil supports the idea that these two dinosaurs were close relatives, per the statement. It works by linking up, or cross-linking, the amino acids that make up proteins, which makes those proteins more resistant to decay. Observations on life; particularly spiritual, Being fruitful in work, service & relationships, Six reasons to be skeptical of the geologic time scale. 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. For example, see these RTB resources for probable explanations for the T. rex soft tissue. They also argue that the collagen fragments derive from bacterial proteins with structural homology to collagen. That gives him an escape valve. It focuses on proving that two of the crosslinking hypotheses are essentially similar. According to the laws of chemistry and physics, within a few hundred thousand to a million years, all proteins in soft tissue structures should be hydrolyzed and completely degraded.
Scientists Find Soft Tissue in T. rex Fossil - Scientific American Rare 95-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Skull Uncovered in Australia. Notice that the press release admits that these biological tissues and cells exist. Eventually, some of the blocks can fall away, leaving a smaller, more stable structure.
How Do Scientists Reconstruct What Dinosaurs Looked Like? The soft tissues found by Schweitzer and others are not mineral replacements of soft tissue; they are the original soft tissue. 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). "The free radicals cause proteins and cell membranes to tie in knots," Schweitzer said.
Dinosaur Soft Tissues: They're Real Follow Stephanie Pappas on Twitter and Google+. This review posits a chemical framework describing the persistence of biological soft tissues into deep time. These regions are the most protected within the collagen fiber.
Dinosaur Bone TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 01, 2009. The last step may be the trickiest: Possibly the most controversial part of reconstructing a dinosaur's appearance is determining what, How Are Dino Tissues Preserved in Deep Time? 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. When Mary Schweitzer saw red blood cells in soft dinosaur tissue her supervisor said, Prove to me theyre not. His job in academia may depend on his being an old-earther. 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. The discovery is the latest in several recent - and controversial - soft tissue finds by archaeologists: researchers last November claimed the controversial discovery of How do scientists know the bones are really 68 million years old? There were multiple ice ages over millions of years. But there are a number of different chemical pathways that can result in crosslinking. They discovered that the fragments all came from the innermost areas of the fibers, where the strands are packed most closely. Change), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Schweitzer has also isolated organic compounds and antigenic structures in sauropod egg shells. 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
Structure of Dinosaur Collagen and the Age "Understanding Evolution for Teachers: Radiometric Dating." Mary Schweitzer proposed that iron from blood helped preserve dinosaur tissue for millions of years by crosslinking proteins and acting as an anti-oxidant. Rare 95-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Skull Uncovered in Australia. The discovery of Ann is helping uncover more details about D. matildae. It was really amazing to be able to find a skull at all and even more so to get so much of one that had been preserved.. My two topics are The Cells Design and Dinosaur Blood and the Age of the Earth.. The first-of-its-kind find reveals how sauropods may have moved between Australia and South America during the mid-Cretaceous.
[See Images of a Near-Complete T. rex]. Read on to see what it takes to date a fossil and what volcanic ash has to do with it. For one, scientists can now create a loose reconstruction of how the dinosaurs face might have looked. 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. 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). It was filed under Christian, Creation, Spiritual and was tagged with Armitage, biblical time, blood cells, Blood vessels, dinosaur, discimination, geologic time, proteins, Schweitzer, soft tissue. 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. It was really convincing, says paleontologist Martin Sander of the University of Bonn, Germany. Based on the analysis of these samples, scientists estimate that the Earth itself is about 4.5 billion years old. However we have no reason to believe that they were not literal years, genesis is very specific, even to odd numbers. Trace Fossils In 2005 paleontologist Mary Schweitzer found the first evidence for soft tissues in a dinosaur bone. 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. Depending on the depositional conditions and the kind of dinosaur, non-overlapping polygonal scales or feathers may be seen. "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. How many are there, and which one is Jesus in?
List of Dinosaur Soft Tissue Finds Radiometric dating!" Where they should be three separate bones, these bones have grown together, Carrano said.
Dinosaur Bone I have heard there are seven heavens. Photograph A shows the demineralized fragment is flexible and resilient and when stretched (arrow) returns to its original shape.
Dinosaur Bones After a two-year retrieval process, Jack Horner, director of the Museum, gave the femur bone to Schweitzer. Radiometric dating isn't the only method of determining the age of rocks. Her first report of the preserved tissue ( Science, 25 March 2005, p. 1952) was based on preliminary tests. [Paleo-Art: Illustrations Bring Dinosaurs to Life]. Since 2004, soft tissue has been discovered in fossils all over the world, The window between 100 and 95 million years ago was one of the warmest in Earths geologically recent history, meaning that Antarctica, which was more or less where it is now, had no ice, Poropat says in a statement. [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. 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. The press release introduces the hypothesis of crosslinking to attempt to explain how these original tissues could last for tens or hundreds of millions of years: The most popular hypotheses involve a process called crosslinking. Similar to the way formaldehyde is used to fix tissues and preserve them, crosslinking can also fix tissues of ancient organisms, including dinosaurs. Only hard parts, like bones and teeth, can become fossils. World's Largest Dinosaur Footprints Discovered in Australia, Lewin, Roger. At that time, Australia, Antarctica, New Zealand and South America were all connected in a southern landmass known as Gondwana. You can learn more about fossils, dinosaurs, radiometric dating and related topics by reading through the links below. Since then Schweitzer said, Thats the way science should work. 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. Armitages claim that he had been unlawfully terminated was vindicated as the university was unwilling to go to court. 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). Namely, how is it possible for soft tissue to survive for 68 million years? Give me time in the future and all your doubts will fall. 39 Harvard scientists have confirmed that proteins from the collagen detected in the famous T-Rex (2005) was definitely collagen as determined by sequencing the fraction. That was about 65 million years ago. Since then, the claim of discovering soft tissues in an ancient fossil has been disputed by some molecular biologists. Traces of dino blood, soft tissue found even in junk bones Osteocytes with delicate filipodia and blood vessels in ostrich bone (A, C) compared with similar soft tissues in a dinosaur bone (B, D). Large numbers of collagen fibrils in turn assemble, with the aid of other proteins, into collagen fibers. On the other hand, under the geologic time scale, the dinosaurs are about 100 million years old. They seem so fresh that it appears as
Dinosaur Soft Tissue The bone was said to be 68 million years old according to the geologic time scale. Both of these reptiles were titanosaurs, or massive sauropods that lived around 66 million to 145 million years ago. (1/2/2008) http://museumvictoria.com.au/prehistoric/what/fossilage.html#absolute, University of California at Berkeley. Soft tissue impressions are usually of the skin. This means that isotopes with a short half-life won't work to date dinosaur bones. To preserve the chemistry of potential soft tissue, the specimens must not be treated with preservatives or glue, as most fossil bones are, she said. Yes. This is what archaeologists use to determine the age of human-made artifacts. So it cannot block water and oxygen indefinitely, which readily react with fragile molecules even underground.
Dinosaur soft tissues preserved as polymers - EARTH Magazine