"Creationist are Liars"...? When they Steamroll Darwinian Evolution

[Subduction Zone]

Hello. Yikes. No need to get nasty.

Peace

Don't earn nastiness. There is no doubt that Armitage is an incredibly dishonest man. He probably would have lost his lawsuit. He was paid a relatively small fee to go away.

 

[Regiomontanus]

Don't earn nastiness. There is no doubt that Armitage is an incredibly dishonest man. He probably would have lost his lawsuit. He was paid a relatively small fee to go away.

Hello. Dude, I agree with you. Relax brother.

Peace

 

[Subduction Zone]

Hello. Dude, I agree with you. Relax brother.

Peace

Fine, creationists often try to claim this article as support for their beliefs when it only describes the "soft tissuue" found in a fossil. I may be a bit overly sensitive. Meanwhile a good article on this mess:


Skepticblog » A creationist mole and a sorry mess

 

[Regiomontanus]

Fine, creationists often try to claim this article as support for their beliefs when it only describes the "soft tissuue" found in a fossil. I may be a bit overly sensitive. Meanwhile a good article on this mess:


Skepticblog » A creationist mole and a sorry mess

Hello. That post (taking it at face value) explains a lot. He was just a technician with no actual scientific training and clearly just trying to push his pseudo-scientific agenda.

Peace

 

[exchemist]

Pretty much. And you illustrated that with a lying video. He did not "win his lawsuit". The university paid a nuisance to go away an amount that would cost less than the lawsuit.

Can you find one honest creationist? Bring them up one at a time and I will show you why they are not honest. I have yet to see one single honest and informed creationist.

I have encountered one, actually. He is or was an astronomer, amazingly. He admitted his YEC views required all kinds of special, miraculous hanky-panky with the Earth in order to explain away all the findings of geology and palaeontology, but had just decided to believe in that, come what may. He used to post on a forum that no longer exists called Christians in Science. The quality of discussion was on the whole quite good actually, helped by the presence of an academic biologist and an Anglican priest with a degree in geology. But it died out from lack of interest.

But in general you are right: creationists nearly always resort to dishonesty, as in the dishonest presentation of this case. There is an alternative perspective on this 3rd rate nutcase here: Encyclopedia of American Loons: #453: Mark Armitage

 

[exchemist]

Creationist receives six-figure legal settlement from public university
A creationist scholar recently received a six-figure settlement from California State University Northridge, a payout that resolved a 2-year-old lawsuit that alleged the scholar had been fired after discovering soft tissue on a triceratops horn and publishing his findings.

The plaintiff, Mark Armitage, had alleged religious discrimination and a violation of the Fair Employment and Housing Act in his suit, claiming in court documents that after his discovery – which supports a young Earth theory – some professors went on a successful “witchhunt” against him.

Armitage’s attorney, Alan Reinach, called the settlement “groundbreaking,” noting that in his decades practicing law he is unaware of any other favorable settlement of this nature on behalf of a creationist.

‘We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department!’

Armitage, who has some 30 publications to his credit and is past-president of the Southern California Society for Microscopy, was hired by the university in early 2010 to manage a wide variety of oversight duties for the biology department’s array of state-of-the-art microscopes, court documents state. He also trained students on how to use the complicated equipment.

Spoiler: Read More

In the summer of 2012, while at the world-famous dinosaur dig at Hell Creek Formation in Montana, Armitage discovered the largest triceratops horn ever unearthed at the site — complete with soft fiber and bone tissues that were stretchy.

He published his findings, first in the November 2012 issue of American Laboratory magazine, which published images of the soft tissue on its cover, and then online in February 2013 in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Histochemica, according to court documents.

The lawsuit contends that’s why Armitage’s employment at Cal State Northridge was terminated, with one professor allegedly storming into his office and shouting: “We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department!”

Campus officials told Armitage his job was only a “temporary appointment,” and claimed a lack of funding for his position.

‘To have CSUN associated with the creation heresy — that was the capital offense’
“When it became published and the university was associated with this,” Reinach said, referring to Armitage’s article reporting on the soft tissue, “that was intolerable.”

“To have CSUN associated with the creation heresy — that was the capital offense,” Reinach said, noting Armitage was fired a few weeks after the article was published.

He said the article had not gone into the implications of the discovery, only stated the findings. Reinach added the scholarly editors stood behind the publication of Armitage’s work. But it was still enough to rile up some professors at CSUN.

Reinach is executive director of the Church State Council, a nonprofit California-based public interest legal organization dealing with religious freedom issues with a focus on religious discrimination and employment.
In a telephone interview Monday with The College Fix, Reinach declined to state the exact amount of Armitage’s settlement, only that it was a six-figure dollar amount, “a substantial settlement representing about 15 times his annual part-time salary.”

The university maintains Armitage was let go due to budgetary reasons, and that the public, Los Angeles-based university settled the case to avoid a costly, protracted legal battle.
In an emailed statement to The College Fix, campus spokesperson Carmen Ramos Chandler said California State University Northridge is “firmly committed to upholding academic freedom, free speech and a respect for all religious beliefs.”

As for the settlement, she stated: “The Superior Court did not rule on the merits of Mr. Armitage’s complaint, and this voluntary settlement is not an indication of any wrongdoing. The decision to not renew Mr. Armitage’s contract was based on budgetary considerations and a dwindling need for his services. The decision to settle was based on a desire to avoid the costs involved in a protracted legal battle, including manpower, time and state dollars.”

‘Vindication’
In response, Reinach said “technically they are right, the judge did not rule, in the settlement agreement there is no admission of guilt, and they have rehashed their claim that he was fired for budgetary reasons.”
dinasourSliderBut the attorney added that “in our view, they certainly would not have paid that kind of money if they did not recognize that we had them dead to rights. The state doesn’t put large, six-figure settlement money out unless they are really concerned they are going to lose.”

“The evidence was quite clear,” the attorney continued. “The stated reasons for saying they fired him were simply not true. There were lies and contradictions abounding from several of the key witnesses.”
One of the “smoking guns” was an email between campus officials suggesting they could ease Armitage out gracefully by making his part-time position full-time, Reinach said.
“Not only did it not support the notion that there was budgetary concerns, but in fact suggested to the contrary,” he told The Fix.

Reinach also pointed out that the settlement agreement was forged soon after Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Dalila Lyons issued in July a tentative ruling against the university’s request for summary judgment.
In an email to The College Fix, Armitage referred to a YouTube video he created about the settlement, which he called “vindication.”

He added he has been on two additional digs in Montana in recent years and “have found soft tissues at both of them.We are trying to get our papers published now. … I’m clearly being blackballed and that’s why I don’t want to give out too much information about our finds or the dinosaurs that we found them in.”

The interview is quite interesting.

Creationist Wins Lawsuit And Crushes Evolution.

He is not a "scholar" and he wasn't on the teaching staff, he was a lab technician. He is not a biologist, nor a palaeontologist.

The blurb deceitfully tries to big him up by saying used to teach students how to operate the "complicated equipment", i.e. electron microscopes. He managed to get a paper published, abusing the name of the university that employed him by implying he was a research academic there. Its "results" have not been corroborated, and it has come to light that his prior qualifications came from a fundamentalist junk college.

Now it seems the university has settled out of court to minimise costs, the waste of time and the distraction of management.

To claim this somehow "crushes evolution" is hilarious.

And in answer to the thread title, emphatically yes, creationists are liars, at least often, and definitely in this case. The extraordinary thing to me is that a creationist brings such a lousy and easily refuted claim to a forum like this one, which has several scientists regularly posting on it. What can you hope to achieve?

 

[nPeace]

What were Armitage's duties? Apparently he was a good microscopist. The article isn't clear on why he was fired.

Try this...
Cal State Northridge settles with Christian lab manager who said he was fired for creationist beliefs. Will case change academic science's approach to creationism?
Mr. Armitage said he complained verbally of religious discrimination to two administrators, who told him to forget about it and never investigated.

Two weeks after his article was published, and after Armitage allegedly was excluded from a secret meeting of a microscopy committee on which he served, Northridge fired Armitage. In the interim, a colleague told him he was the subject of a “witch hunt,” and suggested that he resign, according to the complaint.

The university argued that it acted due to budgetary adjustments and a declining need for Armitage’s services; he was a part-time, temporary employee, it said. But Armitage charged religious discrimination and wrongful termination in his 2014 lawsuit. His view is that faculty scientists didn’t want to be associated with a published creationist.

How did he explain how some 4,000 year old soft tissue found its way into rock dating 65-75 million years old?

That apparently was not the purpose of the video, or the interview, as far as I can tell.
To get the answer to that, you may have to go to the source, or look around.

Mr. Armitage is a YEC at the Creation Research Society (CRS), so I would guess his explanation would be in line with all the other YEC's explanations.
#3 Soft Tissue in Fossils
10 Best Evidences From Science That Confirm a Young Earth
...if creationists are right, dinosaurs died off only 3,000–4,000 years ago. So would we expect the preservation of vessels, cells, and complex molecules of the type that Schweitzer reports for biological tissues historically known to be 3,000–4,000 years old?

The answer is yes. Many studies of Egyptian mummies and other humans of this old age (confirmed by historical evidence) show all the sorts of detail Schweitzer reported in her T. rex. In addition to Egyptian mummies, the Tyrolean iceman, found in the Alps in 1991 and believed to be about 5,000 years old, shows such incredible preservation of DNA and other microscopic detail.

We conclude that the preservation of vessels, cells, and complex molecules in dinosaurs is entirely consistent with a young-earth creationist perspective but is highly implausible with the evolutionist’s perspective about dinosaurs that died off millions of years ago.

How does this "steamroll" evolution?

Let me put it this way.
DNA has a half-life of about 521 years, according to previous research, which means that an organism's DNA would be completely destroyed within 7 million years after its death.

Dino DNA Lasts Longer Than Thought
...researchers had not been able to determine the oldest possible DNA they could get from the fossil record because DNA's rate of decay had remained a mystery.

Now scientists in Australia report they've been able to estimate this rate based on a comparison of DNA from 158 fossilized leg bones from three species of the moa, an extinct group of flightless birds that once lived in New Zealand. The bones date between 600 and 8,000 years old and importantly all come from the same region.

Temperatures, oxygenation and other environmental factors make it difficult to detect a basic rate of degradation, researcher Mike Bunce, from Murdoch University's Ancient DNA lab in Perth, explained in a statement.

"The moa bones however have allowed us to study the comparative DNA degradation because they come from different ages from a region where they have all experienced the same environmental conditions," Bunce said.

Based on this study, Bunce and his team put DNA's half-life at 521 years, meaning half of the DNA bonds would be broken down 521 years after death, and half of the remaining bonds would be decayed another 521 years after that, and so on. This rate is 400 times slower than simulation experiments predicted, the researchers said, and it would mean that under ideal conditions, all the DNA bonds would be completely destroyed in bone after about 6.8 million years.

6.8 million years is a marked difference from 65 million years.
The question I find more interesting is... How far back will they stretch or move the average time DNA is preserved after an organism's death?

(CNN)It might be the oldest soft tissue sample ever found. Researchers discovered ancient collagen and protein remains preserved in the ribs of a dinosaur that walked the Earth 195 million years ago.
No, this doesn't mean "Jurassic Park" is about to become a reality. But finding such well-preserved organic remains from one of the oldest dinosaurs, a Lufengosaurus, is unprecedented.

"This finding extends the record of preserved organic remains more than 100 million years," the researchers said in their study, published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday.
Previously found collagen fragments dated back 75 million or 80 million years ago. The location of the newly discovered collagen was also surprising.
"Usually, people have looked and found collagen in the big, massive limb bones, not in the more delicate ribs," said Robert Reisz, one of the authors of the study and a paleontologist at University of Toronto Mississauga.

Utilizing the most rigorous testing methods to date, researchers from North Carolina State University have isolated additional collagen peptides from an 80-million-year-old Brachylophosaurus. The work lends further support to the idea that organic molecules can persist in specimens tens of millions of years longer than originally believed and has implications for our ability to study the fossil record on the molecular level.

Why would that recorded time be correct, as opposed to the dating of the rock being incorrect?
Note. They are not dating the tissue by some mechanism that will read how old it is, but rather they date it based on their estimations of the age of the dinosaur's fossils.

Put a creationist in this spot, and I am sure the skeptics wouldn't waste a second before accusing them of moving the goal post.

Look at all the possibilities presented.
Soft tissue found in 75 million-year-old dinosaur bones is a big deal for paleontology
Dinosaur fossils may have more to share with us than originally thought. By analyzing poorly preserved dinosaur bone fragments, scientists have found structures that closely resemble red blood cells and collagen fibers, proteins found in various types of tissues. The finding is exciting because it contradicts a widely held belief that only exceptionally well-preserved fossils harbor soft tissues. And the fact that 75 million-year-old fossils hold these kinds of cells means that we may find similar tissues in other not-so-well-preserved bone fragments — a finding that could drastically increase our knowledge of dinosaur biology, behavior, and evolution.

...the researchers were able to identify tiny structures that are probably red blood cells and collagen fibers belonging to the dinosaurs — something they never expected to find. The researchers confirmed the finding by comparing the red blood cell-like structures in the dinosaur bones to emu blood cells; birds and dinosaurs are distant relatives after all.

This isn't the first such discovery; researchers have been able to find soft tissues like this in other fossils. What sets this study apart is the fact that the researchers were able to find these materials despite the fact that the fossils weren't exceptionally well preserved. And before this finding, the researchers note in the study, the oldest un-degraded collagen ever recorded was about 4 million years old.

There's one important limitation that's worth noting, however. It's possible that the red blood cells don't belong to the dinosaurs at all, Bertazzo says; contamination from other animals can't be ruled out. "Even if it is quite unlikely that someone or some bird cut themselves and bled on the fossil at any point in time and right on the spot we took the smaller bit off, this is always a possibility."

And being able to identify structures like red blood cells and collagen in "unexceptional" fossils isn't going to lead to dinosaur de-extinctions — at least not any time soon. "At the moment we have no evidence for any DNA," says Susie Maidment, a paleontologist at Imperial College London and a co-author of the study. DNA is much smaller than collagen fibers and red blood cells, which means that it degrades more easily. "However, who knows what we might find in the future," she says.

Now that the study has been published, the scientists want to understand this type of preservation better. "How far back in time does it extend? Is it restricted to a particular type of burial environment?" Maidment asks. They also hope to find out how this type of preservation occurs.

The discovery could have a big impact on fossilization science. "Before this discovery, as a palaeontologist, I ‘knew’ that it was not possible for soft tissues to be preserved over geologic timescales, except in exceptionally rare circumstances," Maidment explains. "What is most exciting for me is the potential this opens up: if we are able to find these tissues in other specimens, and replicate the results, it indicates this type of preservation might even be the ‘norm.'"

With so many possibilities, anything is possible.

 

[nPeace]

This is infantile squabbling between religionists and scientists. I don't care if someone is an Atheist or The Pope. Adults learn to hold different points of view without animosity.

I don't find this to be an argument between religionist and scientist.
How does one separate the two? Some people do automatically think that religion is against science - which is not the case.

If a scientist is religious, he obviously does not separate science from religion. I have found that this is what debaters who argue against religion tend to do. They often somehow arrive at the conclusion that religious people are making an argument against science.
I think this is based on what David Berlinski said on Science, Philosophy, and Society... from the first minute and thirty fifth second..

Scientist do their job - that is they look for evidence.
That appears to be what this scientist Mark Armitage was doing.
He found evidence which he presented in papers, just as he did with all his other research. He did not mention religion in any of his papers. As he always did prior, he did a professional job.

There is a little bio on Mr. Armitage, on Creation.com. Mark H Armitage - creation.com
Mark H. Armitage earned a BS in Education from Liberty University and an MS in Biology (parasitology), under Richard Lumsden (Ph.D. Rice and Dean of Tulane University’s graduate program) at the Institute for Creation Research in San Diego, CA. He later graduated Ed.S. in Science Education from Liberty University and is a doctoral candidate there.

Mark grew up in a military family and lived in Venezuela and Puerto Rico for 15 years. He became a Christian when he was a college senior, studying plant pathology at the University of Florida, and his family withdrew support from him.


Mark Armitage was allegedly accused because of his religious association - ‘We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department!’

I am not in any way associated with YEC, although that would make no difference from this perspective, and I don't believe religion and science are divided, nor do many other Christians.

James Tour, is reputable scientist, who values his work, and values highly, his religious beliefs. He considers them both compatable.
The man is a brilliant scientist. Many people would consider that an understatement.
I'm impressed by his credentials.

Biography:
James M. Tour, a synthetic organic chemist, received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Syracuse University, his Ph.D. in synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry from Purdue University, and postdoctoral training in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University. After spending 11 years on the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina, he joined the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in 1999 where he is presently the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering. Tour has about 650 research publications and over 200 patents, with an H-index = 129 and i10 index = 538 with total citations over 77,000 (Google Scholar). He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015. Tour was named among “The 50 Most Influential Scientists in the World Today” by TheBestSchools.org in 2014; listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch.com in 2014; recipient of the Trotter Prize in “Information, Complexity and Inference” in 2014; and was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, June, 2014. Tour was named “Scientist of the Year” by R&D Magazine, 2013. He was awarded the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, 2012, Rice University; won the ACS Nano Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society, 2012; was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, June, 2011; and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2009. Tour was ranked one of the Top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade, by a Thomson Reuters citations per publication index survey, 2009; won the Distinguished Alumni Award, Purdue University, 2009; and the Houston Technology Center’s Nanotechnology Award in 2009. He won the Feynman Prize in Experimental Nanotechnology in 2008, the NASA Space Act Award in 2008 for his development of carbon nanotube reinforced elastomers, and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society for his achievements in organic chemistry in 2007. Tour was the recipient of the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching in 2007. He also won the Small Times magazine’s Innovator of the Year Award in 2006, the Nanotech Briefs Nano 50 Innovator Award in 2006, the Alan Berman Research Publication Award, Department of the Navy in 2006, the Southern Chemist of the Year Award from the American Chemical Society in 2005, and The Honda Innovation Award for Nanocars in 2005. Tour’s paper on Nanocars was the most highly accessed journal article of all American Chemical Society articles in 2005, and it was listed by LiveScience as the second most influential paper in all of science in 2005. Tour has won several other national awards including the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in Polymer Chemistry and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in Polymer Chemistry.

James is not against science, in the same way that religionists are not against science.

You are right though, we should as adults, know how to disagree, and not get acid, or angry, at the other person.

 

[nPeace]

Finding 4,000 year old triceratops tissue, in no way proves YEC. It only is evidence that the triceratops found, lived relatively recently. Even saying that though, is anathema to current scientific understanding....according to them, triceratops went extinct about 65 mya.

But the evidence to the contrary, is there. (Like coelecanth, sorta).

And more will be found.

BTW, I'm pretty sure the OP is not a YEC.

It is surprising to many. So there is excitement to all scientist, including those who believe that these findings support previous suggestions.
How a 195-million-year-old dinosaur bone could still have soft tissue in it

I suspect though that for a long time there will be disagreements.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Try this...
Cal State Northridge settles with Christian lab manager who said he was fired for creationist beliefs. Will case change academic science's approach to creationism?
Mr. Armitage said he complained verbally of religious discrimination to two administrators, who told him to forget about it and never investigated.

Two weeks after his article was published, and after Armitage allegedly was excluded from a secret meeting of a microscopy committee on which he served, Northridge fired Armitage. In the interim, a colleague told him he was the subject of a “witch hunt,” and suggested that he resign, according to the complaint.

The university argued that it acted due to budgetary adjustments and a declining need for Armitage’s services; he was a part-time, temporary employee, it said. But Armitage charged religious discrimination and wrongful termination in his 2014 lawsuit. His view is that faculty scientists didn’t want to be associated with a published creationist.


That apparently was not the purpose of the video, or the interview, as far as I can tell.
To get the answer to that, you may have to go to the source, or look around.

Mr. Armitage is a YEC at the Creation Research Society (CRS), so I would guess his explanation would be in line with all the other YEC's explanations.
#3 Soft Tissue in Fossils
10 Best Evidences From Science That Confirm a Young Earth
...if creationists are right, dinosaurs died off only 3,000–4,000 years ago. So would we expect the preservation of vessels, cells, and complex molecules of the type that Schweitzer reports for biological tissues historically known to be 3,000–4,000 years old?

The answer is yes. Many studies of Egyptian mummies and other humans of this old age (confirmed by historical evidence) show all the sorts of detail Schweitzer reported in her T. rex. In addition to Egyptian mummies, the Tyrolean iceman, found in the Alps in 1991 and believed to be about 5,000 years old, shows such incredible preservation of DNA and other microscopic detail.

We conclude that the preservation of vessels, cells, and complex molecules in dinosaurs is entirely consistent with a young-earth creationist perspective but is highly implausible with the evolutionist’s perspective about dinosaurs that died off millions of years ago.


Let me put it this way.
DNA has a half-life of about 521 years, according to previous research, which means that an organism's DNA would be completely destroyed within 7 million years after its death.

Dino DNA Lasts Longer Than Thought
...researchers had not been able to determine the oldest possible DNA they could get from the fossil record because DNA's rate of decay had remained a mystery.

Now scientists in Australia report they've been able to estimate this rate based on a comparison of DNA from 158 fossilized leg bones from three species of the moa, an extinct group of flightless birds that once lived in New Zealand. The bones date between 600 and 8,000 years old and importantly all come from the same region.

Temperatures, oxygenation and other environmental factors make it difficult to detect a basic rate of degradation, researcher Mike Bunce, from Murdoch University's Ancient DNA lab in Perth, explained in a statement.

"The moa bones however have allowed us to study the comparative DNA degradation because they come from different ages from a region where they have all experienced the same environmental conditions," Bunce said.

Based on this study, Bunce and his team put DNA's half-life at 521 years, meaning half of the DNA bonds would be broken down 521 years after death, and half of the remaining bonds would be decayed another 521 years after that, and so on. This rate is 400 times slower than simulation experiments predicted, the researchers said, and it would mean that under ideal conditions, all the DNA bonds would be completely destroyed in bone after about 6.8 million years.

6.8 million years is a marked difference from 65 million years.
The question I find more interesting is... How far back will they stretch or move the average time DNA is preserved after an organism's death?

(CNN)It might be the oldest soft tissue sample ever found. Researchers discovered ancient collagen and protein remains preserved in the ribs of a dinosaur that walked the Earth 195 million years ago.
No, this doesn't mean "Jurassic Park" is about to become a reality. But finding such well-preserved organic remains from one of the oldest dinosaurs, a Lufengosaurus, is unprecedented.

"This finding extends the record of preserved organic remains more than 100 million years," the researchers said in their study, published in the journal Nature Communications on Tuesday.
Previously found collagen fragments dated back 75 million or 80 million years ago. The location of the newly discovered collagen was also surprising.
"Usually, people have looked and found collagen in the big, massive limb bones, not in the more delicate ribs," said Robert Reisz, one of the authors of the study and a paleontologist at University of Toronto Mississauga.

Utilizing the most rigorous testing methods to date, researchers from North Carolina State University have isolated additional collagen peptides from an 80-million-year-old Brachylophosaurus. The work lends further support to the idea that organic molecules can persist in specimens tens of millions of years longer than originally believed and has implications for our ability to study the fossil record on the molecular level.

Why would that recorded time be correct, as opposed to the dating of the rock being incorrect?
Note. They are not dating the tissue by some mechanism that will read how old it is, but rather they date it based on their estimations of the age of the dinosaur's fossils.

Put a creationist in this spot, and I am sure the skeptics wouldn't waste a second before accusing them of moving the goal post.

Look at all the possibilities presented.
Soft tissue found in 75 million-year-old dinosaur bones is a big deal for paleontology
Dinosaur fossils may have more to share with us than originally thought. By analyzing poorly preserved dinosaur bone fragments, scientists have found structures that closely resemble red blood cells and collagen fibers, proteins found in various types of tissues. The finding is exciting because it contradicts a widely held belief that only exceptionally well-preserved fossils harbor soft tissues. And the fact that 75 million-year-old fossils hold these kinds of cells means that we may find similar tissues in other not-so-well-preserved bone fragments — a finding that could drastically increase our knowledge of dinosaur biology, behavior, and evolution.

...the researchers were able to identify tiny structures that are probably red blood cells and collagen fibers belonging to the dinosaurs — something they never expected to find. The researchers confirmed the finding by comparing the red blood cell-like structures in the dinosaur bones to emu blood cells; birds and dinosaurs are distant relatives after all.

This isn't the first such discovery; researchers have been able to find soft tissues like this in other fossils. What sets this study apart is the fact that the researchers were able to find these materials despite the fact that the fossils weren't exceptionally well preserved. And before this finding, the researchers note in the study, the oldest un-degraded collagen ever recorded was about 4 million years old.

There's one important limitation that's worth noting, however. It's possible that the red blood cells don't belong to the dinosaurs at all, Bertazzo says; contamination from other animals can't be ruled out. "Even if it is quite unlikely that someone or some bird cut themselves and bled on the fossil at any point in time and right on the spot we took the smaller bit off, this is always a possibility."

And being able to identify structures like red blood cells and collagen in "unexceptional" fossils isn't going to lead to dinosaur de-extinctions — at least not any time soon. "At the moment we have no evidence for any DNA," says Susie Maidment, a paleontologist at Imperial College London and a co-author of the study. DNA is much smaller than collagen fibers and red blood cells, which means that it degrades more easily. "However, who knows what we might find in the future," she says.

Now that the study has been published, the scientists want to understand this type of preservation better. "How far back in time does it extend? Is it restricted to a particular type of burial environment?" Maidment asks. They also hope to find out how this type of preservation occurs.

The discovery could have a big impact on fossilization science. "Before this discovery, as a palaeontologist, I ‘knew’ that it was not possible for soft tissues to be preserved over geologic timescales, except in exceptionally rare circumstances," Maidment explains. "What is most exciting for me is the potential this opens up: if we are able to find these tissues in other specimens, and replicate the results, it indicates this type of preservation might even be the ‘norm.'"

With so many possibilities, anything is possible.

Can you try to avoid the Gish Gallops and limit your copy and paste? The latter is against the rule here when done to excess have you have done here.

By the way, why bring up DNA? No one has claimed to have found any. That is quite the red herring on your part.

And the Christian geologist that first found "soft tissue" was also one that came up with an explanation of how it lasted roughly 70 million years. I could link the source, but you would have to promise to clean up your act first.

 

[Subduction Zone]

It is surprising to many. So there is excitement to all scientist, including those who believe that these findings support previous suggestions.
How a 195-million-year-old dinosaur bone could still have soft tissue in it

I suspect though that for a long time there will be disagreements.

There may be disagreements on how they were preserved. There is no real disagreement on the ages Creationists have no explanation for the sorting and layering of the various strata.

 

[Ellen Brown]

Intellectual honesty and critical thought are pretty damn important. It's irresponsible and dangerous to pretend that all points of view are equally valid regardless of how rational or substantiated they actually are.

I didn't say they were equally as valid. A "life truth" is that we can be sure we are right, and some times the very next hour we find that is not so. It is best to be gracious to one another. Admittedly, it has taken me close to a century to learn that.

 

[nPeace]

Hello. That post (taking it at face value) explains a lot. He was just a technician with no actual scientific training and clearly just trying to push his pseudo-scientific agenda.

Peace

I'm not sure a person with no scientific training would be publishing a peer review paper.

Mark Hollis Armitage
Department of Biology, California State University, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330-8303, USA

He supposedly published two papers.
Scopus - Cookies Disabled

I'll research it.

I found these.
Mark Armitage - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science
Kevin L. Anderson - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science

It appears to me that the college one receives certificates from is an issue.

I will look into it a bit more.

This is a reputable scientist.
Mary Higby Schweitzer
Mary Higby Schweitzer is a paleontologist at North Carolina State University, who lead the groups that discovered the remains of blood cells in dinosaur fossils and later discovered soft tissue remains in the Tyrannosaurus rex specimen MOR 1125, as well as evidence that the specimen was a gravid female when she died.

Schweitzer previously announced similar discoveries in 1993. Since then, the claim of discovering soft tissues in an ancient fossil has been disputed by some molecular biologists. Later research by Kaye et al. published in PLoS ONE (30 July 2008) challenged the claims that the material found is the soft tissue of Tyrannosaurus. A more recent study (October 2010) published in PLoS ONE contradicts the conclusion of Kaye and supports Schweitzer's original conclusion. Evidence for the extraction of short segments of ancient DNA from dinosaur fossils has been reported on two separate occasions. The extraction of protein, soft tissue, remnant cells and organelle-like structures from dinosaur fossils has been confirmed. Blood-derived porphyrin proteins have also been discovered in a mid Eocene mosquito fossil.

After my research, I'll see how things are swing.
Take care.

 

[Regiomontanus]

I'm not sure a person with no scientific training would be publishing a peer review paper.

Mark Hollis Armitage
Department of Biology, California State University, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330-8303, USA

He supposedly published two papers.
Scopus - Cookies Disabled

I'll research it.

I found these.
Mark Armitage - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science
Kevin L. Anderson - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science

It appears to me that the college one receives certificates from is an issue.

I will look into it a bit more.

This is a reputable scientist.
Mary Higby Schweitzer
Mary Higby Schweitzer is a paleontologist at North Carolina State University, who lead the groups that discovered the remains of blood cells in dinosaur fossils and later discovered soft tissue remains in the Tyrannosaurus rex specimen MOR 1125, as well as evidence that the specimen was a gravid female when she died.

Schweitzer previously announced similar discoveries in 1993. Since then, the claim of discovering soft tissues in an ancient fossil has been disputed by some molecular biologists. Later research by Kaye et al. published in PLoS ONE (30 July 2008) challenged the claims that the material found is the soft tissue of Tyrannosaurus. A more recent study (October 2010) published in PLoS ONE contradicts the conclusion of Kaye and supports Schweitzer's original conclusion. Evidence for the extraction of short segments of ancient DNA from dinosaur fossils has been reported on two separate occasions. The extraction of protein, soft tissue, remnant cells and organelle-like structures from dinosaur fossils has been confirmed. Blood-derived porphyrin proteins have also been discovered in a mid Eocene mosquito fossil.

After my research, I'll see how things are swing.
Take care.

Hello. I was just going by that blog post that SZ linked to. It was obviously biased but I was assuming it gave an accurate description of his academic credentials. Of course one does not need a doctorate to publish original research; a student of mine who was still an undergraduate contributed enough to one of my papers to get his name listed as co-author. But honestly, the person being discussed in this thread is far out of the mainstream of science (to put it kindly) and his views are not supportable.

You and I are both followers of the Way. But nevertheless I am convinced evolution is real. I see no conflict between science and being a follower of Jesus.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I'm not sure a person with no scientific training would be publishing a peer review paper.

Mark Hollis Armitage
Department of Biology, California State University, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge, CA 91330-8303, USA

He supposedly published two papers.
Scopus - Cookies Disabled

I'll research it.

I found these.
Mark Armitage - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science
Kevin L. Anderson - CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science

It appears to me that the college one receives certificates from is an issue.

I will look into it a bit more.

This is a reputable scientist.
Mary Higby Schweitzer
Mary Higby Schweitzer is a paleontologist at North Carolina State University, who lead the groups that discovered the remains of blood cells in dinosaur fossils and later discovered soft tissue remains in the Tyrannosaurus rex specimen MOR 1125, as well as evidence that the specimen was a gravid female when she died.

Schweitzer previously announced similar discoveries in 1993. Since then, the claim of discovering soft tissues in an ancient fossil has been disputed by some molecular biologists. Later research by Kaye et al. published in PLoS ONE (30 July 2008) challenged the claims that the material found is the soft tissue of Tyrannosaurus. A more recent study (October 2010) published in PLoS ONE contradicts the conclusion of Kaye and supports Schweitzer's original conclusion. Evidence for the extraction of short segments of ancient DNA from dinosaur fossils has been reported on two separate occasions. The extraction of protein, soft tissue, remnant cells and organelle-like structures from dinosaur fossils has been confirmed. Blood-derived porphyrin proteins have also been discovered in a mid Eocene mosquito fossil.

After my research, I'll see how things are swing.
Take care.

Yes, Mary Schweitzer is the Christian scientist that first discovered soft tissue. She is not a creationist. She gets rather angry with creationists that abuse her work. You should not conflate being Christian with being a creationist. That is an insult to many if not most Christians.

 

[columbus]

Scientist do their job - that is they look for evidence.
That appears to be what this scientist Mark Armitage was doing.

I am still looking for the part where you recognize that Mr. Armitage's video contains two lies in the title.
He did not win a lawsuit.
Right?
He did not steamroller evolution.
Right?
Armitage is a liar, you can read it right there in the title to his video.

His findings are doubtless interesting to scientists. They want to learn about them. But as we all know, from Piltdown Man and such, people will create frauds to support their beliefs. Let's see how well Armitage's beliefs hold up under scrutiny.

Tom

 

[Subduction Zone]

Hello. I was just going by that blog post that SZ linked to. It was obviously biased but I was assuming it gave an accurate description of his academic credentials. Of course one does not need a doctorate to publish original research; a student of mine who was still an undergraduate contributed enough to one of my papers to get his name listed as co-author. But honestly, the person being discussed in this thread is far out of the mainstream of science (to put it kindly) and his views are not supportable.

You and I are both followers of the Way. But nevertheless I am convinced evolution is real. I see no conflict between science and being a follower of Jesus.

The education at some schools is so poor that they lose accreditation, or never earn it in the first place. There are many diploma mills that give out "doctorates" for little more than a fee. Armitage's masters degree is from an unaccredited school The classic example of an unaccredited school that is used by at least one creationist is Patriot University. That fine institution where Dr. Kent Hovind earned his degree. Here is an image of the ivy covered building on its campus:

Please note that is not a single wide, no that fine institution is a double wide mobile home. Kent Hovind's "PhD dissertation" has a unique beginning as well. The first sentence is:

"Hello, my name is Kent Hovind". And a link to his 102 page feces, oops I mean thesis:

https://file.wikileaks.org/file/kent-hovind-doctoral-dissertation.pdf


I would suggest some sort of head protection since you will be banging your head against any hard objects with disbelief. And oven mitts might make the inevitable face palming more bearable as well.

 

[nPeace]

Hello. I was just going by that blog post that SZ linked to. It was obviously biased but I was assuming it gave an accurate description of his academic credentials. Of course one does not need a doctorate to publish original research; a student of mine who was still an undergraduate contributed enough to one of my papers to get his name listed as co-author. But honestly, the person being discussed in this thread is far out of the mainstream of science (to put it kindly) and his views are not supportable.

You and I are both followers of the Way. But nevertheless I am convinced evolution is real. I see no conflict between science and being a follower of Jesus.

I too see no conflict with science and religion, and if indeed I do find that this Mark character was dishonest, i surely would not support that. Dishonesty is rampant.

I usually spend much time researching a topic before posting, but I guess I took this one a bit casual.

I believe we should make the choice to go where the evidence leads.
I don't find any evidence for Darwinian evolution.
If you do, then you obviously won't be the first, nor last.
Take care.

 

[nPeace]

I am still looking for the part where you recognize that Mr. Armitage's video contains two lies in the title.
He did not win a lawsuit.
Right?
He did not steamroller evolution.
Right?
Armitage is a liar, you can read it right there in the title to his video.

His findings are doubtless interesting to scientists. They want to learn about them. But as we all know, from Piltdown Man and such, people will create frauds to support their beliefs. Let's see how well Armitage's beliefs hold up under scrutiny.

Tom

I don't agree with being dishonest, to support a belief. i see that going on both sides.

 

[Regiomontanus]

The education at some schools is so poor that they lose accreditation, or never earn it in the first place. There are many diploma mills that give out "doctorates" for little more than a fee. Armitage's masters degree is from an unaccredited school The classic example of an unaccredited school that is used by at least one creationist is Patriot University. That fine institution where Dr. Kent Hovind earned his degree. Here is an image of the ivy covered building on its campus:

Please note that is not a single wide, no that fine institution is a double wide mobile home. Kent Hovind's "PhD dissertation" has a unique beginning as well. The first sentence is:

"Hello, my name is Kent Hovind". And a link to his 102 page feces, oops I mean thesis:

https://file.wikileaks.org/file/kent-hovind-doctoral-dissertation.pdf


I would suggest some sort of head protection since you will be banging your head against any hard objects with disbelief. And oven mitts might make the inevitable face palming more bearable as well.

Hah. I had to stop at the top of the second page when he says "this covers, in a nutshell..."