#3 Soft Tissue in Fossils

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.

Amazingly, the bone marrow contained what appeared to be flexible tissue. Initially,
some skeptical scientists suggested that bacterial biofilms (dead bacteria aggregated
in a slime) formed what only appear to be blood vessels and bone cells. Recently
Schweitzer and coworkers found biochemical evidence for intact fragments of
the protein collagen, which is the building block of connective tissue. This
is important because collagen is a highly distinctive protein not made by bacteria.
(See Schweitzer’s review article in Scientific American [December 2010,
pp. 62–69] titled “Blood from Stone.”)

Some evolutionists have strongly criticized Schweitzer’s conclusions because
they are understandably reluctant to concede the existence of blood vessels,
cells with nuclei, tissue elasticity, and intact protein fragments in a dinosaur
bone dated at 68 million years old. Other evolutionists, who find Schweitzer’s
evidence too compelling to ignore, simply conclude that there is some previously
unrecognized form of fossilization that preserves cells and protein fragments
over tens of millions of years.1 Needless to say, no evolutionist has publically
considered the possibility that dinosaur fossils are not millions of years old.

Tyler Lyson, Associated Press

A Little Skin: A largely intact dinosaur mummy, named
Dakota, was found in the Hell Creek Formation of the Western U.S. in 2007.
Some soft tissue from the long-necked hadrosaur was quickly preserved as fossil,
such as the scales from its forearm shown here.

An obvious question arises from Schweitzer’s work: is it even remotely plausible
that blood vessels, cells, and protein fragments can exist largely intact over
68 million years? While many consider such long-term preservation of tissue
and cells to be very unlikely, the problem is that no human or animal remains
are known with certainty to be 68 million years old. But if creationists are
right, dinosaurs died off only 3,000–4,000 years ago. So would we expect the
preservation of vessels, cells, and complex molecules of the type that Schweitzer
reports for biological tissues historically known to be 3,000–4,000 years old?

The answer is yes. Many studies of Egyptian mummies and other humans of this
old age (confirmed by historical evidence) show all the sorts of detail Schweitzer
reported in her T. rex. In addition to Egyptian mummies, the Tyrolean
iceman, found in the Alps in 1991 and believed to be about 5,000 years old,
shows such incredible preservation of DNA and other microscopic detail.

We conclude that the preservation of vessels, cells, and complex molecules
in dinosaurs is entirely consistent with a young-earth creationist perspective
but is highly implausible with the evolutionist’s perspective about dinosaurs
that died off millions of years ago.

Dr. David Menton holds a PhD in cell biology from Brown University and
is a well-respected author and teacher. He is Professor Emeritus at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Dr. Menton has many published works and is one of the most popular speakers for Answers in Genesis.

SourceThis article originally appeared on answersingenesis.org

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