This article comes directly from the Institute for Creation Science website. It is an excellent example of why these supposed proofs are so heavily criticized by true scientists:
Note if anyone else can add more to my critique, please do!
Dinosaur Soft Tissue Issue Is Here to Stayby Brian Thomas, M.S.*
In recent decades, soft, squishy tissues have been discovered inside fossilized dinosaur bones. They seem so fresh that it appears as though the bodies were buried only a few thousand years ago.[/quote]
First, where is the evidence that this is true?
Finding soft tissue preserved in fossils would be phenomenal! Any paleontology journal, most natural science journals would welcome any such evidence with open arms. If this is original research, then it needs to be presented to such a journal before it will be considered credible by the scientific community. No such data or proof has been presented to any scientific journal. It was not presented and rejected, it was not even presented!
IN FACT, the Smithsonian article in which the information was presented actually came to a very, very different conclusion!
If it is not original research, then it needs a citation to the original source. Again, the author provides nothing, just expects the reader to plain accept that this is true because he says it is true. Only when information is very widely accepted and proven are citations not needed. Most informatio in textbooks meets that definition ... so long proven, such widespread evidence that a citation is just not needed. You don't need a citation that H2O us water, you don't need a citation when saying that bees spread pollen from flower to flower, etc. Even so, most textbooks do provide those citations partly to show students what citations look like, to help those who wish to research the matters more and, yes becuase some people are still challenging information.
[i]Since many think of a fossil as having had the original bone material replaced by minerals, the presence of actual bone--let alone pliable blood vessels, red blood cells, and proteins inside the bone--is quite extraordinary. These finds also present a dilemma. Given the fact that organic materials like blood vessels and blood cells rot, and the rates at which certain proteins decay, how could these soft tissues have been preserved for ten thousand, let alone 65 million or more, years?Again, NO time at all was spent proving that this statement is true... the reader just has to take the author's word on it.
But, even if it were true, would this really and truly prove either that fossils are not original bone replaced by minerals OR that the bones were not really ancient? In fact, no.
What it would prove is that in some rare cases, living material can be encased and preserved within fossil material. How this could happen, etc would be a matter of further study.
These soft tissues have met with hard resistance from mainstream science, and some scientists have even discounted or ignored them. But fresh studies keep finding fresh tissue, making the issue difficult to dismiss. Either the vast evolutionary ages assigned to these finds are dramatically erroneous, or "we really don't understand decay" rates of the soft tissues and proteins.1Again, where is the proof that this is real? Of course it is "met with hard resistance from mainstream science!" Science required proof. Further, look at any journal article presenting anything truly new and what follows? HUGE controversy. Science IS very slow to change ideas, becauase the standards of proof are very, very high. Creationists like to paint this as some kind of special attack against Creationism, but it really just how science works. If the proof is there, then science moves forward/changes. Creationists simply do not provide the proof.
Paleontologists who have analyzed the tissues, visible through their microscopes and squeezable with their tweezers, insist that something is fundamentally wrong with laboratory data on biochemical decay rates.2 In turn, biochemists are confident that their repeatable experiments show that the soft tissues should not be there after all this time. To try to get around the hard facts of soft tissues, some scientists have even proposed that the blood vessels and red blood cells in question were bacterial slime. This was thoroughly refuted, however, by research showing that the dinosaur tissue contains a collagen protein that bacteria do not produce.3Again, more unsupported statements. Sounds perfectly logical, IF you take the initial assumption that these soft tissues were found as proof. However, the author neatly bypasses this and moves on to "arguments" for why this information reasonably presented is just being ignored. Its not being ignored, it was not presented in a factual way!
This dilemma between the science of biochemistry and the belief in millions of years is not going away. In addition to the well-characterized tissues from a T. rex reported by paleontologist Mary Schweitzer in 1997,4 2005,5 and 2007,6 new soft tissue finds keep surfacing. Schweitzer published a report on another sample in Science in 2009,3 this time from a hadrosaur, in which the precise characteristics of dinosaur biochemicals were verified by a third party. This was necessary to confirm the reality of the soft tissues to an incredulous scientific community. (Similarly, Schweitzer's 2007 results have also been verified.7)Here might be some kind of proof. I will try to follow up on this if I can access the article in question. However, note that this published data is not verification of soft tissue, it is about the characteristics of dinosaur biiochemicals. Again, I will have to see the original article, but the paragraph is making several leaps in judgement that may or may not be true.
Yet another hadrosaur has been described by UK scientists as "absolutely gobsmacking."8 Its tissues were "extremely well preserved" and contained "soft-tissue replacement structures and associated organic compounds."9
Schweitzer's team recently concluded that "the most parsimonious explanation, thus far unfalsified, is that original molecules persist in some Cretaceous dinosaur fossils."3 But biochemical decay rates showing that soft tissues would be dust after all this time are also thus far unfalsified (i.e., have not been disproved). Therefore, the millions-of-years age assignments must go.[/quote]
Again, suspicious wording, suspicious reference.
Bottom line, that something is not proven false, does NOT mean that "the millions-of-years age assignments must go". Even if all the above were true, (the soft tissue were there, etc.) it would prove that something strange happened in this case, it would not in any way disprove the reams of other evidence that DOES show the earth to be older. At the very best, it might possibly show that this particular dinosaur might have been alive later than was previously thought, though given the fossilized outside, I would doubt that.
[i]However, if the deep time goes, then so does the grand story of evolution that depends on it. For many, that is too sacred an assumption to dare alter. Biblical data, however, not only provide the timeframe for the death of these dinosaurs in Flood deposits a few thousand years ago, but also a mode of deposition in agreement with observable data that their demise occurred when they "fell into a watery grave."8[/i]
Again, Evolutionists get accused of "making assumptions", yet that is all this article contains. Scientist rely upon proof and evidence. Creationists pretend to do so, but only to people who are not trained in what real scientific proof must entail.
COMPARE:
Again, I have not had time to look at all the articles cited in the above article, but here is an excerpt from the Smithsonian link:
Proteins are much too tiny to pick out with a microscope. To look for them, Schweitzer uses antibodies, immune system molecules that recognize and bind to specific sections of proteins. Schweitzer and Wittmeyer have been using antibodies to chicken collagen, cow elastin and ostrich hemoglobin to search for similar molecules in the dinosaur tissue. At an October 2005 paleontology conference, Schweitzer presented preliminary evidence that she has detected real dinosaur proteins in her specimens.
Further discoveries in the past year have shown that the discovery of soft tissue in B. rex wasn’t just a fluke. Schweitzer and Wittmeyer have now found probable blood vessels, bone-building cells and connective tissue in another T. rex, in a theropod from Argentina and in a 300,000-year-old woolly mammoth fossil. Schweitzer’s work is “showing us we really don’t understand decay,” Holtz says. “There’s a lot of really basic stuff in nature that people just make assumptions about.”
Young-earth creationists also see Schweitzer’s work as revolutionary, but in an entirely different way. They first seized upon Schweitzer’s work after she wrote an article for the popular science magazine Earth in 1997 about possible red blood cells in her dinosaur specimens. Creation magazine claimed that Schweitzer’s research was “powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible’s account of a recent creation.”
This drives Schweitzer crazy. Geologists have established that the Hell Creek Formation, where B. rex was found, is 68 million years old, and so are the bones buried in it. 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.”IN OTHER WORDS, the article does NOT support Creationism in any way. So, why would a Christian lie? At best, it comes down to plain poor science knowledge and failure to understand research that is presented. However, after seeing article after Creationist article of this type, I can only believe there is some intentional and knowing false witness occcuring.
Read more:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n ... z0Q96wFPT9
) and instead , like all Young Earthers, seeks instead to discredit Evolution in the mistaken belief that somehow that strengthens his own cause, as I said before it doesn't !
