"Mummified" Dinosaur Discovered In Montana (pics included)

National Geographic News ^

[Junior]

...but there's no way to picture skin and soft tissue lasting long enough for that to happen.

And yet it happens. Lack of mental accuity on your part does not equate to a refutation of evolution.

[laredo44]

Haven't really gotten the hang of the internet and google searches yet?

Sorry if I didn't make myself clear in my post. I had no trouble finding articles such as the one you provided a link to. I found many and read through about a dozen or so. My point was, there was no information there. Just a handful of supposed knowledgeable folks all citing each other. Also references to debunked assertions about human and dinosaur fossilized footprints in the same rock formation. Sorry, but it's just silly assertions with the same level of proof as UFOs and the Loch Ness monster (cited as a modern dinosaur in one article). Talk of St. George and the dragon as proof of a young earth. It is nonsense, pure and simple. You need some real proof.

[Ready2go]

laredo44 wrote: There's nothing there! About a half dozen people all citing each other. Fresh bones and blood citings about as compelling as UFO sightings! Really, nothing available to check, just somebody claiming something

In a recent article, scientists from Montana State University, seemingly struggling to allow professional caution to restrain their obvious excitement at the findings, report on the evidence which seems to strongly suggest that traces of real blood from a T. rex have actually been found.

The story starts with a beautifully preserved T. rex skeleton unearthed in the United States in 1990. When the bones were brought to the Montana State University's lab, it was noticed that 'some parts deep inside the long bone of the leg had not completely fossilized.' To find unfossilized dinosaur bone is already an indication more consistent with a young age for the fossils (see below).

THE REPORT
Let Mary Schweitzer, the scientist most involved with this find, take up the story of when her co-workers took turns looking through a microscope at a thin section of this T. rex bone, complete with blood vessel channels.

The lab filled with murmurs of amazement, for I had focused on something inside the vessels that none of us had ever noticed before: tiny round objects, translucent red with a dark center. Then a colleague took one look at them and shouted, "You've got red blood cells. You've got red blood cells!".

Schweitzer confronted her boss, famous paleontologist 'Dinosaur' Jack Horner, with her doubts about how these could really be blood cells. Horner suggested she try to prove they were not red blood cells, and she says, 'So far, we haven't been able to.'

Looking for dinosaur DNA in such a specimen was obviously tempting. However, fragments of DNA can be found almost everywhere -- from fungi, bacteria, human fingerprints -- and so it is hard to be sure that one has DNA from the specimen. The Montana team did find, along with DNA from fungi, insects and bacteria, unidentifiable DNA sequences, but could not say that these could not have been jumbled sequences from present-day organisms. However, the same problem would not be there for hemoglobin, the protein which makes blood red and carries oxygen, so they looked for this substance in the fossil bone.

THE EVIDENCE
The evidence that hemoglobin has indeed survived in this dinosaur bone (which casts immense doubt upon the 'millions of years' idea) is, to date, as follows:

The tissue was colored reddish brown, the color of hemoglobin, as was liquid extracted from the dinosaur tissue.

Hemoglobin contains heme units. Chemical signatures unique to heme were found in the specimens when certain wavelengths of laser light were applied.

Because it contains iron, heme reacts to magnetic fields differently from other proteins -- extracts from this specimen reacted in the same way as modern heme compounds.

To ensure that the samples had not been contaminated with certain bacteria which have heme (but never the protein hemoglobin), extracts of the dinosaur fossil were injected over several weeks into rats. If there was even a minute amount of hemoglobin present in the T. Rex sample, the rats' immune system should build up detectable antibodies against this compound. This is exactly what happened in carefully controlled experiments.

Evidence of hemoglobin, and the still-recognizable shapes of red blood cells, in unfossilized dinosaur bone is 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.

More on fresh dino bone

To claim that bone could remain intact for millions of years without being fossilized (mineralized) stretches credibility. The report here of red blood cells in an unfossilized section of dinosaur bone is NOT the first time such bone has been found.

Biologist Dr. Margaret Helder alerted readers of Creation magazine to documented finds of 'fresh', unfossilized dinosaur bone as far back as 1992.

More recently, based on these reports, a team associated with Buddy Davis, a staff member at Answers in Genesis, in Northern Kentucky, has retrieved similarly unfossilized dinosaur bone from Alaska.

[laredo44]

Your real point was that you WISHED there was no information there.

Why would I wish that? I've got no skin in the evolution game - my livlihood is unaffected either way. I'm just somebody looking for the truth.

I asked creationists to describe how they would determine the age of the thing found in the Montana rock, and none have offered one sniff of a solution. Just hissy fits about how evolution can't possibly be correct. Fine. Evolution is wrong. Now how do you propose we find the answers? It is my experience you will have nothing to offer. I'll be delighted to be proved wrong.

[laredo44]

laredo44 wrote: There's nothing there! About a half dozen people all citing each other. Fresh bones and blood citings about as compelling as UFO sightings! Really, nothing available to check, just somebody claiming something

What I actually did was issue a challenge - one which you've conviently ignored. Again, the challenge is this: some folks pulled something out of the rock in Montana. They claim it is a creature of some sort and that it is about 70 odd million years old. They rely on, I am assuming, in part on the theory of evolution. I ask you, what do you think it is, and how old? More importantly, I ask, how do you arrive at your conclusions, assuming you arrive at one at all. I don't think you have any answers, and I challenge you right here and right now to produce some.

Rather than respond to the challenge, you launched into an ad hominem attack on evolution, and all the holes you believe it has. Then you post some silliness full of holes, mis-characterizations, and illogic as if it is to mean something. It doesn't.

Examples?

Let Mary Schweitzer, the scientist most involved

From what I read, Schweitzer is a grad student. This is designed to mislead the reader.

The tissue was colored reddish brown

The presence of tissue is brought in without foundation. All of a sudden, tissue. Poor argument. Unconvincing.

Schweitzer confronted her boss, famous paleontologist 'Dinosaur' Jack Horner

An attempt to bring in a well respected authority to bolster the argument through transferrence. First, Dinosaur Jack doesn't indicate agreement with the assertions. Second, Jack's expertise is paleontology, not DNA or microbiology. Cheap trick to lend credence to a bad argument.

Again, the challenge is to tell how you would determine what the age of this discovery is, not why others are wrong. Can you do it?

[balrog666]

I'm just watching with amusement. Carry on, soldier!

[laredo44]

I'm just watching with amusement. Carry on, soldier!

Feel free to jump in any time. I'm just looking for the truth and I really think the creation guys are too. But some of them need to grow up a bit and offer a convincing alternative to answer these questions if they want to push evolution off the cliff. They have absolutely no method whatsoever for determining the age of that fossil. At the very least, they should admit that.

[Ready2go]

howdy laredo44

laredo44 wrote: Rather than respond to the challenge, you launched into an ad hominem attack on evolution, and all the holes you believe it has. Then you post some silliness full of holes, mis-characterizations, and illogic as if it is to mean something. It doesn't.

Examples?

Let Mary Schweitzer, the scientist most involved

From what I read, Schweitzer is a grad student. This is designed to mislead the reader.

I'll try to answer your statements one at a time ok?

This is a little info I found on Ms.Schweitzer from the college website:

"It's one of the best preserved hadrosaur sites around. It's just incredible," Mary Higby Schweitzer said of the Malta site.

Schweitzer is a research associate professor in microbiology and earth sciences at MSU. She is supervising graduate student Melody Bergeron, who is at the Phillips County site. Bergeron will excavate, collect and gather information about the conditions of preservation this summer, Schweitzer said. When she returns to the laboratory in the fall, Bergeron will use molecular and chemical analytical methods, including electron microscopy, to analyze what she found.

http://www.montana.edu/commserv/csnews/nwview.php?article=396

Ancient History

When Mary Schweitzer, a paleontologist at Montana State University, speaks at scientific conferences, she sometimes shows her audience how to find DNA from a dinosaur: "Keep your eyes open for one of these," she jokes as she flashes a slide of the ideal specimen-a toy dinosaur embedded in amber.

But it now appears that even if Schweitzer were handed a Velociraptor trapped in a ton of amber, she wouldn't be able to get any DNA. For the past few years, astounding reports in scientific journals (and magazines such as this one) have trumpeted the discovery of ancient genetic material in insects caught in amber millions of years old. But for many researchers, the notion is now pretty much dead. It appears that the fossilized tree resin isn't such a foolproof preservative as once thought. Pretty, yes; but an embalmer of ancient DNA, no. "A lot of the DNA you see in amber is some kind of highly modified ghost," says Richard Thomas, a molecular systematist at the Natural History Museum in London.

Although there were several reports of discoveries of ancient DNA-particularly from amber-in the early 1990s, most subsequent attempts came up with nothing. No one expected getting DNA would be easy, but many researchers would have been more comfortable if these successes had been replicated even once. Recently Thomas and his postdoctoral researcher Jeremy Austin decided they would try to study the evolution of flies by examining specimens trapped in amber. They used a number of insect samples dating back 25 to 40 million years, including some from the same Dominican amber that had been the source of the first reports of successful gene recovery. They never got to study fly evolution-because, as they reported this past year, they could not find any DNA. Trying out many methods for isolating DNA on 15 samples, Thomas and Austin found nothing.

For many researchers the results of this notably rigorous and thorough research was the last straw for ancient DNA. It is such a fragile molecule, they argue, that it can't hold up for more than 100,000 years, even in amber. (The Neanderthal DNA discovered this past year was only between 100,000 and 30,000 years old.) "Either we're all incompetent or it's extremely difficult to make it work," says Thomas. To him, the supposed successes of the past may have been the result of stray DNA from living organisms that drifted through laboratories. Since the common technique for finding ancient DNA involves replicating numerous copies of gene fragments-through a process called the polymerase chain reaction-even a tiny bit of contamination might fool a researcher.

Not everyone agrees with Thomas's gloomy conclusions. "I don't think the book's closed," says Rob DeSalle, a molecular systematist at the American Museum of Natural History who reported finding DNA from a termite trapped in amber in 1992-and who still stands by his claim. "The fact that they're not replicated doesn't invalidate these results." Nevertheless, many labs that were in hot pursuit of ancient DNA, including DeSalle's own team, have dropped the research; DeSalle says the payoff isn't worth the enormous effort. Mary Schweitzer herself tried and failed to get DNA out of a well-preserved fossil of Tyrannosaurus rex. This year, however, she reported her success in isolating blood proteins, which are far sturdier. It's always possible that some similarly encouraging research will emerge in the field of ancient DNA, but for the moment it seems on its way to becoming ancient history. -Ann Gibbons

http://www.discover.com/cover_story/9801-3.html

[Ready2go]

laredo44 wrote: What I actually did was issue a challenge - one which you've conviently ignored. Again, the challenge is this: some folks pulled something out of the rock in Montana. They claim it is a creature of some sort and that it is about 70 odd million years old. They rely on, I am assuming, in part on the theory of evolution. I ask you, what do you think it is, and how old? More importantly, I ask, how do you arrive at your conclusions, assuming you arrive at one at all. I don't think you have any answers, and I challenge you right here and right now to produce some.

---

Ok I'm guessing it's a really, really old strange looking dead animal that has been preserved for us to find. :)

Does it look like anything I've seen alive before? No.

Ok then does the Bible describe any type of strange animal that I've never seen? Yes it does.

The Bible's best description of a dinosaur-like animal is recorded in Job chapter 40. "Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron. He ranks first among the works of God..."(Job 40:15-19)

The book of Job is very old, probably written around 2,000 years before Jesus was born.

Now how am I going to go about trying to find out the age of this creature? Is the creature 77 million years old or 6,000 or less years old.

Having read the Bible it gives me a genealogy record of how long man has lived on the earth from the time of Adam & Eve to the time of Jesus so I have a timeframe as to how long mankind has been here.

And since they have found man's footprints along with Dinosaur bones I can feel pretty confident that the bones are under 6000 years old.

Which is still a really, really long time if you think about it, because just a little over 100 years ago man was still getting around by horses.

.

[Marysecretary]

Luther Sunderland, now deceased, wrote a number of books and possibly articles, regarding creation vs. darwinism. He even come to our school to speak to the science people. Of course they didn't believe him. He spoke of fossil evidence, etc. Perhaps you could find some of his books to help you. He was from Apalachin, NY, down below Binghamton. Also, Tom Hennigan, Jr. from Georgetown, NY, teaches creationism in school. He's pretty much an expert. He went to school in Anchorage, AK and has made this his life's work. I can get you his address if you're interested.

[Marysecretary]

It probably is a dinosaur of some sort, just not eons old as most scientists believe. Creationists believe that the world is more like 10,000 or so years old. Dinosaurs were on earth at the same time as humans, not cave men, but folks like you and me (well, sorta).

[balrog666]

They have absolutely no method whatsoever for determining the age of that fossil. At the very least, they should admit that.

And then they would have to answer something about the next question, and the next, and the next... Realistically, at some point, they would end up either floundering outside of their scientific depth (some would say that's already happened) or they would actually begin to understand what science is.

Meanwhile, they conntinue to act as if their entire world would crumble if they let the slightest crack show in their facade. And they've probably seen what happens to other people who try to be honest about it: they are made to look like ignorant, superstitious fools, or they are honest and end up excommunicated by the likes of Pope goreMMM The Intolerant and his flock.

[Jeca]

You guys are idiots! Apparently the fact that all of your scientific information comes from "Jurassic Park" doesn't stop you from forming an opinion on any of it!

a)For the millionth time, no, it's not tissue on this dinosaur anymore-- it's fossilized, which is scientific for ROCK. You can't get DNA from it-- the tissue has been mineralized, which means that the once-dinoflesh atoms in Leonardo have been replaced one by one with those of the surrounding minerals, and the organics like carbon have been leached away long ago. DNA HAS been extracted in the tiniest of segments from trapped mosquitos, but the result is the equivalent of finding three words from the Bible and expecting to be able to reproduce the whole book. This is a different case-- the mosquito is not mineralized (i.e. NOT A ROCK) it's encased in amber. Cloning by this method is IMPOSSIBLE.

b) You CAN determine the age of that fossil!!!!! First of all, you can determine the sediments that its in-- above are layers of material that may contain mudcracks, little rain-craters, or even fossil sea creatures, and you can be sure that for that stuff to be on top, the stuff you are looking at must have come first (i.e. OLDER). SECONDLY, if there are any volcanic sediments there, you can determine the time they cooled by the decay stage of radioactive elements within the rock. If the volcanics are above this deposit you can BET the deposit is older than the date determined of the volcanics. This is a method that has been backed up with tree-ring dates, which even people like YOU don't argue with, as accurate, and you can BET this is the basis of the age given in the article.

c) Why is everything always some big conspiracy by the evil and malicious THEY? Most every scientist you will run across, be it a paleonologist, a chemist, a physicist, an astronomer... etc. believes in a god, and has some form of religion. Religion and science are not mutually exclusive. Indeed they exist in different realms entirely, unless you take a written work that has been translated and re-translated since the beginnings of written civilization under countless political leanings, has many conflicting versions, and has been proven wrong many times (remember the whole thing about the sun being commanded to stand still? the sun doesn't move-- the earth does, but this book doesn't say so. Anyone here want to argue that the sun orbits the earth?) as literal FACT. Why does the fact that most people believe in a higher power but arrive at their own conclusions about the world based on evidence that is IN this world threaten you so?

I guess I should just be glad you guys even BELIEVE in dinosaurs, despite the fact that we find them all the time.

[balrog666]

BWAAAAAAHAHAHA!

I'm flattered, but are you sure you meant to send that delightful screed to me?

[Kenny Bunk]

Some scientist you are, pal!
Duck billed dinosaurs are the ancestors of the Web Hubbell family, and therefore of the Chelsea Clinton line.

As such the remains of these rarely found creatures do not prove Evolution. They prove Devolution.

[Kev-Head]

It proves the Flood of the Bible. Quick & deadly.

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Note: this topic is from October 2002. Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
·Dogpile · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Discover · Nat Geographic · Texas AM Anthro News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · Google · · The Archaeology Channel · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·