Another Dinosaur Soft Tissue Find

You see, if you start with man’s ideas about the past, then the fossil record is supposedly a history of the slow and gradual evolution of life from simple to complex—including a 179-million-year period in earth’s history where dinosaurs dominated until an asteroid struck earth and they went extinct 66 million years ago.

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But if you start with the eyewitness account of history given to us in God’s Word, what we today call dinosaurs (the word dinosaur wasn’t invented until 1841) were created fully formed on day six of creation week along with the other land animals. Two of every kind of dinosaur survived the flood aboard Noah’s ark (and don’t worry about them not fitting—the ark was huge, most dinosaurs were on the smaller side, and even the largest dinosaurs began life as juveniles). The dinosaurs not on the ark were drowned, many buried in upper rock layers as the floodwaters overwhelmed the continents and their ecosystems and turned them into fossils.

Now, those are radically different interpretations of the past. Which one matches the observational evidence? Well, in 2005 the first popularized find of dinosaur soft tissue rocked the scientific world, and many refused to believe it was real, despite the evidence, because “soft tissue can’t last that long.” But subsequent studies, including a brand-new one, have confirmed that, yes, the soft tissue is original to the fossil.

In this new study, researchers* used advanced mass spectrometry and protein sequencing to detect bone collagen in a well-preserved hip bone from an Edmontosaurus uncovered in the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota. This unexpected find is encouraging other researchers to pull fossils out of storage and look at them with these new technologies. And why?

The popular science article explains:

Furthermore, experts could uncover the biochemical pathways that enabled the preservation of organic compounds over millions of years. “The findings inform the intriguing mystery of how these proteins have managed to persist in fossils for so long,” said Taylor.

Yes, how these proteins could remain for millions of years is a big mystery. Evolutionists, try as they might, have yet to be able to present a plausible explanation for the existence of soft tissue in supposedly ancient fossils. Now the popular science article quoted Dr. Taylor, who is a creation scientist involved with this new find, saying this research will help us understand how proteins can last for "so long"—creationists too want to know how proteins can last a few thousand years. We don't have the problem of millions and millions of years but there's more work to be done to understand the processes that preserved them since the flood, 4,350 years ago.

A better interpretation is the one that starts with God’s Word.

A better interpretation is the one that starts with God’s Word. The fossils aren’t millions of years old—they are only about 4,350 years old and are a stark reminder of God’s judgment on a sin-filled world but also of his mercy in preserving Noah, his family, and two of every kind of land animal (seven pairs of some) onboard the ark.

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This item was discussed Monday on Answers News with cohosts Avery Foley, Dr. Gabriela Haynes, and Dr. Marisa Tillery. Answers News is our weekly news program filmed live before a studio audience here at the Creation Museum, broadcast on our Answers in Genesis YouTube channel, and posted to Answers TV. We also covered the following topics:

• Has the “earliest modern bird” been discovered?
• Are LEGO bricks anti-LGBT?
• Is Africa going to split in half?
• And more!

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Thanks for stopping by and thanks for praying,
Ken

This item was written with the assistance of AiG’s research team.