Best ever find of soft tissue (muscle and blood) in a fossil
by Carl Wieland
Published: 11 November 2009(GMT+10)
A salamander allegedly “18 million years old” is the latest fossil to
produce astonishingly well preserved soft tissue. This time, it’s muscle tissue,
and it is supposedly the most pristine example yet.
M. H. Schweitzer
The muscle and blood found in the salamander fossil are the latest soft-tissue evidence
in a long line of similar discoveries. Earlier, these flexible branching structures
in T. rex bone (left photo) have justifiably been identified as blood vessels,
while microscopic structures squeezed out of the blood vessels (right photo) look
distinctly like cells, as evolutionary researchers themselves have admitted. (See
Still soft and stretchy.)
Soft-tissue evidence such as muscle, blood and cells should not be there if the
fossils really are millions of years old.
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Background—the “dinosaur connection”
Readers may recall the controversy that erupted when we first started reporting
(in Creation magazine and later also on this site) on the discovery (by
evolutionists) of blood vessels containing red blood cell remnants, and later other
soft tissue, in dinosaur fossils (see
Sensational dinosaur blood report!). This included flexible transparent
branching blood vessels with nucleated red blood cells visible and more (see
Still soft and stretchy: Dinosaur soft tissue find a stunning rebuttal of ‘millions
of years’, also the trail of links leading from that to later articles,
including the
discoveries of dinosaur proteins).
There was not only astonishment that such fragile tissues could have survived for
more than a few thousand years at most, there was frank disbelief from many circles.
Even some creation-believing scientists made sceptical comments showing that they
didn’t understand the issues (as
shown), and not surprisingly “progressive creationist” long-agers
published detailed attempts at refutation which
fell flat. The reason for their problem is clear; the physics and chemistry
indicates that the protein molecules responsible for such structures could
never, in the best of circumstances, last for millions of years. So this
is powerful evidence for the Bible’s young age for the earth.
Evolutionist and dinosaur expert Prof. Phil Currie acknowledges the opposition faced
by those who have published on such finds that upset the traditional viewpoint—see
the ‘extras’ interviews on CMI’s DVD Darwin: The Voyage that Shook the World for Professor
Currie’s very revealing comments on the topic.
And the evidence continues to mount, including carefully repeated analyses of the
actual proteins themselves. And there are now so many published reports and detailed
documentation and analysis of similar finds that it is rapidly becoming “mainstream”.
This latest report on preserved salamander muscle should really serve as the final
nail in the coffin of ill-informed opposition.
The best yet
According to University College Dublin geologist, Dr Maria McNamara, the lead author
of the report1 just published
in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the muscle specimen in this
particular fossil showed “very little degradation since it was
originally fossilised … making it the highest quality soft tissue preservation
ever documented in the fossil record.”2
The muscle tissue was preserved ‘organically’ in three dimensions, with
many fine microscopic details. Its circulatory vessels were ‘infilled with
blood’.
McNamara says that the team, which consisted of researchers from Spain, the UK and
Ireland, undertook “a series of highly detailed analyses to limit the possibility
that it was simply an artefact of preservation” or something non-biological.
The muscle tissue was preserved “organically” in three dimensions, with
many fine microscopic details. Its circulatory vessels were “infilled with
blood”.1
The authors say that their results are “unequivocal evidence that high-fidelity
organic preservation of extremely labile tissues [i.e. extremely unstable ones-Ed]
is not only feasible, but likely to be common.” They then mention similar
discoveries in Germany’s Messel oil shale pit.1
OK, it’s soft tissue—what now?
One could hardly wish for a better demonstration of the bankruptcy of deep time
It wasn’t hard to predict that such inconvenient facts, even when they could
no longer be denied, would not lead to a wholesale abandonment of such a carefully
constructed worldview artifice as evolution’s “deep time”—especially
given its crucial importance for the materialist religion of the age. All it will
take is for report after report to talk about the “millions of years”
ages for each such “squishy fossil”, and everyone will relax and come
to accept that “we know that soft tissues can last for millions of years”.
As if there was never any doubt. And no one will bother to explain how it is that
all that “hard science” said (and still says) that they shouldn’t
be there, period, in anything anywhere near that old. As Bible-believers, we need
to keep holding their feet to the fire, so to speak. We need to be graciously but
persistently pointing out this potent and unresolved inconsistency in “long-age
religion”, despite the convenient apathy that is already shrouding the issue.
For those who are open to believing God’s Word one could hardly wish for a
better demonstration of the bankruptcy of deep time and the reality of Genesis history.
Related articles
Further reading
Blood and soft tissue in T. rex bone:
Other examples of soft tissue preservation in fossils:
References
- M. McNamara, P. Orr, S.L. Kearns,
L. Alcalá,
P. Anadón and
E. Peñalver-Mollá,
‘Organic preservation of fossil musculature with ultracellular detail’,
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, published online before print 14 October
2009. Return to text.
- ‘Ancient muscle tissue extracted from 18 million year
old fossil’,
www.physorg.com, November 5, 2009. Return to text.
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