Posted on 03/24/2005 12:04:54 PM PST by wallcrawlr
WASHINGTON — For more than a century, the study of dinosaurs has been limited to fossilized bones. Now, researchers have recovered 70-million-year-old soft tissue, including what may be blood vessels and cells, from a Tyrannosaurus rex.
If scientists can isolate proteins from the material, they may be able to learn new details of how dinosaurs lived, said lead researcher Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University.
"We're doing a lot of stuff in the lab right now that looks promising,'' she said in a telephone interview. But, she said, she does not know yet if scientists will be able to isolate dinosaur DNA from the materials.
The soft tissues were recovered from the thighbone of a T. rex, known as MOR 1125, that was found in a sandstone formation in Montana. The dinosaur was about 18 years old when it died.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
HMmmm....
I've gotten that in this thread!
;^)
No true Scotsman..........
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1371273/posts?page=1
Citation of Jesus Seminar "scholars" is hardly credible.
I stand corrected. Even Norman Geisler now concedes that what once was considered a possible fragment of an autograph was probably early 2nd Century. However, in my search to verify the date of P52, I found that there are 5 fragments from Qumran dated pre 70 AD: 7Q6? (Mark), 7Q15 (Mark), 7Q5 (Mark), 7Q7 (Mark) and 7Q6? (Acts). The Mark fragments are from the 50s and the Acts fragment is from the 60's. Therefore P52 is no longer the earliest known fragment of the NT.
Enste has performed a good service to the scholarly community in providing a full dossier of a debate that has gone on for some thirty years, and in exposing the weaknesses of the hypothesis 7Q5 = Mark 6:52-53, which has been the foundation for the broader "NT at Qumran" hypothesis. In most cases he takes up arguments adduced by scholars in the 1970s; but he presents them as part of a comprehensive critique, and especially in response to Thiede's ongoing efforts to promote and expand the hypothesis. He refrains from proposing an alternative identification, though several have been proposed (e.g., Zech 7:4-5; 1 Enoch 15:9d-10), and observes that 7Q5 may be part of a hitherto unknown text. His real purpose is to expose the weakness of the hypothesis 7Q5 = Mark 6:52-53, and he has succeeded in showing that this identification is highly unlikely.
In 1949 some friends and I came upon a noteworthy news item in Nature, a magazine of the Academy of Sciences. It reported in tiny type that in the course of excavations on the Kolyma River a subterranean ice lens had been discovered which was actually a frozen stream-and in it were found frozen specimens of prehistoric fauna some tens of thousands of years old. Whether fish or salamander, these were preserved in so fresh a state, the scientific correspondent reported, that those present immediately broke open the ice encasing the specimens and devoured them with relish on the spot.
The magazine no doubt astonished its small audience with the news of how successfully the flesh of fish could be kept fresh in a frozen state. But few, indeed, among its readers were able to decipher the genuine and heroic meaning of this incautious report.
Gnostic or any other myth should be ignored, other than for academic exercise. So much time wasted on this theme, it should all be rejected, not just the gnostic dummies.
The gnostics were just another group of bullshooters, they knew nothing about T-Rex or his tissue.
I doubt this is real T-Rex tissue surviving for 70 million years. This just gives false hopes to creatoids.
Trusting in a faithful God, as I do, eliminates the need to worry that God would allow human fallibility to be involved in either the keeping or translation of His Word, or the delivery of the Gospel to other men, or even on myself for maintaining my own salvation. God is soverign and faithful and wonderful and His very name is worthy to be praised.
I don't want to get too involved in this debate, but I'd just like to point out that, according to tradition, Mark was not an eyewhitness. Rather, he was a close associate of Peter's and wrote his Gospel in Rome based on Peter's teaching. I don't think he was a native of the Holy Land, so it's not surprising that he does not know the geographical details.
Anyway, why are you gentlemen discussing the Gospels on an evolution thread? The two subjects have nothing to do with one another. Why not move this discussion somewhere else?
Eh, it wasn't my intention to start such a debate (the conversation... evolved ;) ), but like any thread here, within a couple hundred posts it'll have absolutely nothing to do with the original topic.
Just a pet peeve, but what you really mean is radiometric dating must be off in every case by millions of years. Carbon dating can't be used for items with an age of more than about 50,000 years. All in all, though, I would have to agree with you that the scientific evidence points toward a universe much older than 6000 years. YEC'ers will point to results where the radiometric dating of a 50 million year old object is off by say 5 million years, and somehow think that proves their point. However there's a pretty big problem with their idea even if a supposedly 50 million year old item is really "only" 45 million years old.
Actually, even in an aerobic environment, organic materials can be preserved indefinately. What people are forgetting is that the primary cause of decay of material from once-living organisms on earth is bacteria. If the material is fully encapsulated in a shell of mineralized material, such as was the case with this find, it's not unreasonable to expect that it could survive for millions of years. I would suspect that having soft tissue trapped inside fossilized bone would be a pretty rare occurance, however, which is why we haven't seen more finds such as this.
Nor, I believe, does the Lord let you into heaven based on whether you believe He created all the different species of life simultaneously or over time using a process of evolution. I also don't believe that He would deny someone heaven because they think that science is a pretty good way to try to understand His creation. Personally, I think science is part of His creation, and therefore, if it conflicts with Scripture, then we must either have our science wrong, our understanding of Scripture wrong, or both. I really don't understand the anti-science themes that seem to be prevalent in Fundamentalist Christianity today.
If God told them to start having babies, why did they wait to have babies until after the fall? He told them to have babies, but not to have babies NOW. The naming of the animals proves nothing, BTW. Have you never heard a child speak?
If decay-causing bacteria are kept away, what physical principle prevents once living tissue from surviving for 70 million years? Please don't try to give me a second law of thermodynamics argument for this one since it won't fly.
I think you missed the point, at least for the argument that I am making personally. My argument is that the Bible is full of things that need to be interpreted by us. It may be inerrant, but we are not. Therefore, arguments from the Scriptures may not be the best arguments. I will concede, for example that the Bible doesn't say that Adam was an infant at creation. But neither does it say that he was fully grown. It's a case that's open to interpretation.
Completely irrelevant. How long does human soft tissue last when completely enclosed in mineralized material and bacterial exposure is prevented?
Perhaps you think this particular point is a good example of "difficulties" in bible interpretation. I don't. You are just being irritating and trying to make excuses not to believe the bible.
That was my point exactly. Then biblewonk threw the Bible in. No disrespect meant but I do not put a whole lot of store in it. If some don't like that that is their problem.
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