March 21, 2013

Real Flesh and Blood Remains Rather than Fossils Debunk Darwinism!

Crinoid fossils are quite common in the Great Lakes area of the United States. Often known locally as "Indian Beads" because some tribes did use crinoid fossils in making jewelry, they were so commonplace that we rarely kept many of their fossils, preferring trilobites or complete shellfish and other more interesting fossil specimens from that formation. Supposedly "ancient" limestone is often the very top layer of sedimentary rocks found in the Great Lakes area.

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The Chicago Reader had a story on crinoids and limestone that began, curiously, with this quote:

People, as curious primates, dote on concrete objects that can be seen and fondled. God dwells among the details, not in the realm of pure generality. We must tackle and grasp the larger, encompassing themes of our universe, but we make our best approach through small curiosities that rivet our attention--all those pretty pebbles on the shoreline of knowledge . . .

--Stephen Jay Gould, Wonderful Life

How often do Darwinists slip up and say "God" or "design" and such words, I wonder?

One cannot escape the drone of Darwinist propaganda when researching fossils. As a child/teenager/young man I paid no mind to the dates assigned to fossils, I simply found them and collected them along with any spearheads or arrowheads that might be found in the places most people did not go. I memorized the long list of Darwinist ages for science classes and studied various dinosaurs especially. I could immediately give you the name of any common dinosaur depicted in textbooks or made into plastic toys.

Ah, the joys of exploration! I have found abandoned automobiles buried in sand bluffs, dug up pieces of out-dated machinery from the foundations of abandoned factories, and found many fossils from locations all over North America. I've found them high in the mountains and at the bottom of deep canyons. Once I thought I was seeing the record of hundreds of millions of years of Earth history.

Now I know better and, having been thoroughly indoctrinated in Darwinism, I can look back and see it in perspective. Darwinists will rarely admit to it, but every supposition Darwin suggested that involved long ages and gradually developing organisms "climbing up" from primitive forms has been tossed aside. With Uniformitarianism left behind, they try to fit Catastrophism into the long ages somehow. With transitional fossils not being found, they've changed the definition so they can point to some dubious examples while realizing that actual transitional forms are as rare as flying pigs.

I read with mirth one commenter's idea that an obvious flow-caused sedimentary layer was formed by a river! The river would have had to have been around 800 miles wide!!! Sure, in a global flood there will be several flows within that ocean and, once the water began to fall into deepening basins and the land began to rise, the off-flow of flood waters carved up the landscape in ways still inexplicable by Darwinist claims. But back on track - Crinoids have now proven to be yet another proof of young ages and evidence against Darwinism:

Gilding the (sea) lily—Evolutionists’ absurd defense of their long-age story as Mississippian crinoids yield organic molecules

For a hundred years, this evidence of rapid burial in recent history has been right under evolutionists’ noses—yet even now they still claim these crinoid fossils are 350 million years old

http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/oldbiomarkers.htm

by David Catchpoole

Published: 19 March 2013 (GMT+10)

The photograph at right appeared in an Ohio State University press release, with the following caption:

“Different species of the sea animals known as crinoids display different colors in these 350-million-year-old fossils. Ohio State University researchers have found organic compounds sealed within the pores of these fossilized animals’ skeletons. Photo by William Ausich, courtesy of Ohio State University.”¹

Now, there’s a major problem with that caption. Can you spot it?

The problem is not that it says the sea animals are crinoids. They are indeed crinoids—also known as ‘sea lilies’.²

Crinoids which died and then lay on the ocean floor waiting to be slowly covered over would not look like this.

The problem is not that the caption says they’re different species. ‘Species’ is a human construct, for convenience of classification and communication between biological and other scientists, so it’s surely quite legitimate to refer to them here as different species in this case. (We mention in passing here that ‘species’ is not the same thing as the biblical ‘kind’.)

The problem is not that the different species show different colours. The different colours are indeed evident in the photograph, thanks to the sea lily fossils being so beautifully preserved.

Nor is there a problem with the caption’s referring to the recent discovery of “organic compounds sealed within the pores of these fossilized animals’ skeletons”—for that is indeed what a recent Geology paper³ reports. The photographer of the above picture, paleontologist William Ausich of Ohio State University, was one of the authors of that paper, along with his PhD student and lead author Christina O’Malley (who completed this work to earn her doctoral degree), and chemist Yu-Ping Chin. Some readers at this point will remember that Professor Ausich was the lead signatory to a letter of protest to the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, demanding the removal of the creationist book Grand Canyon: A different view from bookstores in the park. His complaint centred on the book’s statements concerning “the age of the rocks” and its challenge to “broadly accepted interpretations of the geologic history of the Grand Canyon”.⁴ Which brings us to the problem in the caption to the photograph above.

The problem is the claim that these sea lily fossils are 350 million years old, rather than the much more logical conclusion that they are a legacy of the global Flood of Noah’s day, around 4,500 years ago.

Consider this. With crinoids in the world’s oceans today, after death, the head of the creature almost immediately disintegrates. So when one finds fossil sea lilies as beautifully preserved as in the photograph above, it indicatesvery rapid burial of the live creatures. Crinoids which died and then lay on the ocean floor waiting to be slowly covered over would not look like this.

If only the researchers had stuck to the facts (their own eyewitness testimony), rather than feeling the need to go ‘gilding the (sea) lily’ with 350 million years worth of evolutionary fairy tale.

And indeed, to give credit where it’s due, the researchers can see that the sea lilies must have been “buried quickly and isolated from the water above by layers of fine-grained sediment”.

However, they say it happened when the sea lilies “appear to have been buried alive in storms during the Carboniferous Period”; specifically, the Mississippian Sub-period. But to label strata as belonging to ‘periods’ or ‘sub-periods’ millions-of-years long ignores worldwide evidence that these and other extensive strata were laid down quickly, on top of each other, without long periods of hiatus between or within them.

And it also ignores their own notable findings, reported in their research paper. Although these fossils have been known of for a century or so, this latest study was triggered when lead author O’Malley noticed “something strange” about these crinoid species that had perished side-by-side and became preserved in the same piece of rock. Namely, that the different species were preserved in different colours, as the caption to the above photograph mentions.

For example, one rock sample she studied had a light bluish-grey sea lily, a darker grey one, and a third which was creamy white.

“People noticed the color differences 100 years ago, but no-one ever investigated it,” she explained. But with the armoury of sophisticated analytical tools now available to her generation of scientists, O’Malley and her colleagues were able to extract molecules directly from the different fossilized sea lily species in the rock. And they were able to determine that different species contained different molecules.

The molecules were organic—specifically, aromatic compounds called quinones, just the same as those found in sea lilies living today. Quinones are known to sometimes function as pigments. So the researchers are quite excited to have found these ‘biomarkers’, i.e. species-specific organic molecules. In fact, in their paper the researchers proclaim they have found “the oldest examples of biomarker molecules extracted directly from fossilized remains.”

The millions-of-years paradigm is wrong, wrong, wrong. These beautifully preserved sea lilies, containing intact species-specific complex organic molecule biomarkers, give testimony to fast processes, not millions of years of slow burial.

But not so fast. This ought to be a bombshell to anyone still thinking these fossils could be millions of years old. As the Ohio State University press release said in its introduction, “scientists have long believed that complex organic molecules couldn’t survive fossilization”—i.e. that complex organic molecules couldn’t survive for millions of years. Yet, bizarrely, researchers O’Malley, Ausich and Chin choose instead to not even question the 350-million-year supposed ‘age’ of their fossils. Rather they blithely say that their results suggest that “the preservation of diagnostic organic molecules is much more common than previously realized”.

The millions-of-years paradigm is wrong, wrong, wrong. These beautifully preserved sea lilies, containingintact species-specific complex organic molecule biomarkers, give testimony to fast processes, not millions of years of slow burial. If only the researchers had stuck to the facts (their own eyewitness testimony), rather than feeling the need to go ‘gilding the (sea) lily’ with 350 million years worth of evolutionary fairy tale.

Now some might ask how I know that the real age of the sea lily fossils is only around 4,500 years old? Well, let me make a candid admission. In my own strength, I’m pretty sure that I would never in a million years have been able to arrive at that figure. But I’m not writing this in my own strength. That’s because God has spoken by His prophets (Hebrews 1:1, 2 Peter 1:20), and we have a record of that—the Bible.

The fossil crinoid Anthedon [or Antedon] pictured at the bottom was found in the Upper Jurassic Solnhofen Limestone of western Germany. It is ‘dated’ by evolutionists as supposedly being around 150 million years old. Yet the modern-day living Anthedon is virtually identical—showing no evolution has taken place. No wonder evolutionists refer to this, and many other modern creatures with supposedly millions-of-years-old fossil counterparts, as ‘living fossils’. But they’re actually a powerful argument for creation.

Three whole chapters (Genesis 6–9), plus numerous verses citing them throughout the Bible (e.g. Psalm 104:6–9, Matthew 24:37–39, 1 Peter 3:20), are devoted to the account of the global Flood. This gives us a tremendous ‘heads up’ in understanding the world’s geography, rocks and fossils, and wipes away latter-day human speculations of millions of years.

Such an understanding is available to Christina O’Malley, William Ausich, and Yu-Ping Chin, too, who could then try to undo the damage (Matthew 12:36) they’ve done through having gilded the sea lily story—if they’re game. I say ‘game’, because for them the academic consequences of proclaiming a biblical thousands-of-years-not-millions timeline in their line of work would likely be fearful indeed.

Witness Expelled and Slaughter of the Dissidents—when even just a hint of apossibility of a Designer is even enough to get evolutionist PhD scientists sacked, it’s easy to imagine that any challenge on their ‘hero’ time would render them apoplectic! It’s their line-in-the-sand, the proverbial ‘hill’ they’re willing to die for.

But my appeal to researchers O’Malley, Ausich and Chin is this—the eternal considerations surely outweigh any temporal persecution you might face. As Jesus said …

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self? If anyone is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels. (Luke 9:24–26)

… and:

Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven. (Matthew 10:33)

References

Gorder, P., Ancient Fossilized Sea Creatures Yield Oldest Biomolecules Isolated Directly from a Fossil, Ohio State University—Research and Innovation Communications, http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/oldbiomarkers.htm, 18 February 2013. Return to text.
Crinoids with a stem are known as sea-lilies. They are like a feathery starfish perched on top of a stem, which floats above a holdfast (or ‘root’) attached to, e.g., a rock surface. Crinoids that lack a stem are known as feather-stars. Return to text.
O’Malley, C., Ausich, W. and Yu-Ping Chin, Y.P., Isolation and characterization of the earliest taxon-specific organic molecules (Mississippian, Crinoidea),Geology 41(3):347–341, 2013. Return to text.
Matthews, M., Geologists in an uproar demand book’s removal from Grand Canyon National Park, creation.com/geologists-in-an-uproar, 6 January 2004.Return to text.

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As it happens, Mary Schweitzer got much grief from other Darwinists for revealing the flesh remains found in her now-famous Tyrannosaurus Rex...including blood cells...and the attempts to call it all "biofilm" were disproven by testing. Now more and more paleontologists are willing to share their finds of fossils with flesh remains. This is deadly to Darwinism! One of these days people will begin to realize that actual flesh in dinosaurs and frogs coming to life and hopping around after being freed from a coal seam are indications that the world is very young.

Triceratops Horn Soft Tissue Foils 'Biofilm' Explanation

by Brian Thomas, M.S. *

Decades ago, when researchers began publishing their discoveries of transparent, floppy tissue with recognizable intact cells inside dinosaur bones, plenty of shocked evolutionists disputed their results. After all, nobody knew—and still nobody knows—a process whereby flesh and bones could persist over the eons that evolutionists insist dinosaur fossils have endured.

One popular pushback asserts that the soft tissues are not from the dinosaurs at all, but from bacteria that somehow infiltrated their bones and built biofilms in the same shapes as dinosaur tissues and cells. A new report of eight-inch long sheets of soft tissue inside a 22-inch long triceratops horn presents three difficult hurdles for the "bacterial biofilm" hypothesis, which suggests that certain species of bacteria manufactured a polysaccharide film that took the shape of each dinosaur tissue that they consumed millions of years ago, before the dino flesh decayed.

Two biology professors coauthored the report in Acta Histochemica.¹ Their electron micrographs (below) show fine detail inside the bony triceratops "horn core." The authors obtained the horn from the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, famous for its well-preserved dinosaur remains. The horn was damp when removed from rock, and it soon broke into several pieces, showing that it was already fractured. The researchers therefore suspected that bacteria could have penetrated the horn through these cracks and lived on the nearby liquid. Despite what promised to be a bacteria-friendly environment, the soft tissue they found looked nothing like bacterial biofilms.

The research pair demineralized part of the bone by soaking pieces of it in a mild acid bath for a month. Soft tissues emerged as some of the dinosaur bone's original minerals departed. The study authors found "large strips of thin, light brown, soft material (20 cm by 10 cm)." They also identified bone cells called osteocytes, "including internal nucleus-like spheres, primary and secondary filipodia, and cell to cell junctions."¹

The first hurdle for the bacterial biofilm story to face is that no known biofilm looks just like bone cells, complete with their thin "filipodia" extensions. Second, wouldn't the supposed bacteria deposit their biofilms on the bone's outer surface even more readily than deep inside the bone? Yet the study authors found no biofilm there. And they described yet a third hurdle when they wrote, "What is also not clear is how such biofilm structures could themselves survive the ravages of time."¹

This report of triceratops soft tissue adds to the long list of discoveries of original skin, blood vessel, blood and bone components found in tyrannosaurs, hadrosaurs, titanosaurs, psittacosaurs, Sinosauropteryx, and other animals.² Bacterial biofilms neither match nor explain any of these finds. Is it time to interpret dinosaur fossils as recent sedimentary deposits from a global flood recorded in Genesis?³ The fossils say yes!

References

Armitage, M.H., and K. L. Anderson. Soft sheets of fibrillar bone from a fossil of the supraorbital horn of the dinosaurTriceratops horridus. Acta Histochemica. Published online before print, February 13, 2013.
Thomas, B. Published Reports of Original Soft Tissue Fossils. Posted on icr.org July 21, 2011, accessed March 6, 2013.
Morris, J. and F. Sherwin. 2010. The Fossil Record. Dallas, TX: Institute for Creation Research.

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on March 18, 2013.

Topics

Fresh Tissues Show That Fossils Are Recent

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DNA cannot last millions of years, nor can flesh or blood. It is time for Darwinists to quit being "surprised" by flesh remains and admit that they were wrong. We need to reset all the history clocks! The Earth is only a few thousand years old and honest science would admit it. Honest scientists should admit it.

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