The Evolution/I.D. debate continued

[Montie_Claunch]

Hello everyone,

I was watching the Discovery Channel some time ago and I caught the tail end of this very interesting show (I apologize for the fact that I never caught the name of the show so I can’t point you to it). In it The Lady Archeologist had discovered a T-Rex fossil skeloton. The had to break it up to move it from the site. What they found inside was some fully preserved soft tissue. The show narrarator was dumbfounded by this because soft tissue is soposed to disapear after 2 Million years (which sounds a bit long to be but whatever) so how could it be in the bones of an animal that has been dead for 65 Million years.
I did find this link to MSNBC on the story msnbc.msn.com/id/7285683/
and some more on Robert Sungenis’ website catholicintl.com/scienceissues/trex2.pdf which has some links as well.

To me at least this would put the earth at a lil’ bit to young for evolution to work in any major way.

I though everyone might find this interesting and add something new to the conversation.

 

[Michaelo]

TalkOrigins has already addressed this:

Claim CC371.1:

Soft, flexible tissue, complete blood vessels, and apparently intact cells were found when a Tyrannosaurus bone was broken open (Schweitzer et al. 2005). Such preservation indicates that the bones are only a few thousand years old, not millions of years.

Response:

1. The reports of the soft tissue, though remarkable, have been sensationalized further. The tissues were not soft and pliable originally. The tissues were rehydrated in the process of removing the surrounding mineral components of the bone (Schweitzer et al. 2005). Moreover, it is unknown whether the soft tissues are original tissues. Fossil flexible tissues and nucleated cells have been found before in which the original material was not preserved (Stokstad 2005).

1. The age of fossils is not determined by how well they are preserved, because preservation depends far more on factors other than age. The age of this particular bone was determined from the age of the rocks it was found in, namely, the Hell Creek Formation. This formation has been reliably dated by several independent methods (Dalrymple 2000).

1. DNA has never been recovered from any dinosaurs nor from anything as old as them, and researchers do not expect to find DNA from these soft tissues (though they can still hope). DNA has been recovered, however, from samples much more than 10,000 years old (Poinar et al. 1998), even more than 300,000 years old (Stokstad 2003; Willerslev et al. 2003). If dinosaur fossils were as young as creationists claim, finding soft tissues in them would not be news, and recovering DNA from them should be easy enough that it would have been done by now.

source

 

[VociMike]

In any case, how is this related to evolution/I.D.? Does I.D. claim a young earth?

 

[Montie_Claunch]

In any case, how is this related to evolution/I.D.? Does I.D. claim a young earth?

It is realated in that if the tissue is only a few thousand (or a few hundred thousand) years old that would greatly restrict the amount of time for interspecies evolution (a few Hundred thousand years to go from Dinosaurs to Humans) which seems highly unlikly. We have severaly thousand years of written history and we would have expected at some evolution in mankind that would be noticable if that were the rate.

From my understanding of I.D. is that I.D. mearly claims that there Intelligence behind this (as aposed to Darwinian Evolution which dictates random chance not intelligence). There are serveral forms of I.D. (Young Earth Creationism being one of those forms) like there various therories of Evolution (See puncuated Equilibrium, Theistic Evolution, Traditional Darwinian Evolution, ect). There are I.D.ers that hold to an Old Earth. I.D. like evolution has deveolped into an Umbrella Term.

Edit: Sorry it toke me so long to answer your question. I don’t have ready internet access so it will take me time to say things.

 

[Montie_Claunch]

Dear Mr. Michaelo,

Thank your for bringing this to my attention. I had not been aware that anyone had attepted to address this (though I do not find it supprising, for this is such an interesting subject for there no to be a response would be alarming).

I have some comments.

1. At least in the Discovery show, and again I apologize for not having the name of it I wish I could point you to it, said that they found some DNA from it (not enough to clone but quite a bit.) And this article from the National Geographic says that it is orignal T-Rex and that they extracted some protiens.

2.From my understanding about radiometric dating (and it is limited so I may be mistaken) is that it doesn’t work that well. Since any given item in the soil isn’t in a strickly closed system, elements and isotopes are allowed to seep in and original are allowed to seep out.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Turns out, there was no tissue. Not even intact cells. But there was a little heme left (heme is a fragment of hemoglobin, all of which broke down)

The heme was injected into a lab animal, which produced antibodies against it. Those antibodies were then tested against modern animals and reacted most strongly against the heme of a bird.

Precisely what evolutionary theory predicts.

Radiometric testing is quite accurate, providing you are careful in sampling. Often, careless sampling can mess things up.

In a surprising confirmation of the process, volcanic rock from the eruption that buried Pompeii was tested and the results precisely match the actual eruption.
berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/97legacy/pompeii.html

 

[Montie_Claunch]

Turns out, there was no tissue. Not even intact cells. But there was a little heme left (heme is a fragment of hemoglobin, all of which broke down)

The heme was injected into a lab animal, which produced antibodies against it. Those antibodies were then tested against modern animals and reacted most strongly against the heme of a bird.

Precisely what evolutionary theory predicts.

Don’t all animals antibodies react strongly against items that are from outside the body. And I don’t see how an immune system proves either theory. Or am I misunderstanding what you are saying.

And could you show a source that says that they were tissue? all that I have seen said that there was soft tissue.