SOFT TISSUE (INCLUDING FLESH) FOUND IN FOSSILS

While making recent presentations, I have been receiving more and more questions about whether or not we have found any more soft tissue or flesh in fossils since Dr. Mary Schweitzer found Tyrannosaurus rex red blood cells in 1992 and T. rex flesh in 2005.

Actually, such findings were made long before Dr. Schweitzer’s famous discoveries in Montana, and they are continuing to be found at a faster and faster rate as paleontologists start to actively look for them. Of course, evolutionary paleontologists had never really actively looked for soft tissues before, or at least if they found them they never published them, because they believed that, according to their theory, no such remains could possibly be found.

The same may be said for trying to date dinosaur fossils using Carbon-14. We cannot measure Carbon-14 beyond a supposed 103,000 years. Since evolutionary believing scientists “know” that dinosaur bones are too old (65 million or more years) for Carbon-14 to exist in fossil remains, they had never bothered to test for Carbon-14 in dinosaur bones - they didn’t want to spend the money for a test that they “knew” would find nothing.

This is why you cannot get the truth from evolutionary “consensus scientists”. They do not look for what they believe does not exist. Real scientists look for what has not yet been discovered and then publish the results in order to increase the total body of knowledge and thereby benefit everyone.

Soft tissues have been found in numerous dinosaur and other creature’s fossils, and many of these tissue specimens have been found to contain measurable radiocarbon, Carbon-14. These Carbon-14 tests have yielded dates of only 18,000 to 50,000 thousands of years old. But, according to evolutionists, the rocks that these fossils were found in are millions of years old.

Great hostility has been directed by evolutionists toward their fellow evolutionists who dared to publish these legitimate findings. In 2006, after Dr. Mary Schweitzer published her findings of flesh in a reputedly 68 million year old T. rex, Discovery Magazine published an article that demonstrates the typical evolutionary response:

“‘The most likely source of these proteins is the once-living cells of the dinosaur,’ she [Schweitzer] wrote in a 1997 paper...That article, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [Schweitzer et al., 1997], sparked a small flurry of headlines... Opponents say, ‘I just don’t believe it.’ She was having a hard time publishing in journals.

Jeffrey Bada, an organic geochemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, cannot imagine soft tissue surviving millions of years. He says the cellular material Schweitzer found must be contamination from outside sources ... radiation would have degraded it’s body. Bada says: ‘Bones absorb uranium and thorium like crazy. You’ve got an internal dose that will wipe out biomolecules.

She [Schweitzer] acknowledged that one reviewer told her, ‘he didn’t care what the data said: he knew that what I was finding wasn’t possible.’ I wrote back and said, ‘Well, what data would convince you?’ And he said, ‘None.’”                   [Emphasis added]

(Yeoman, B. 2006. Schweitzer’s dangerous discovery. Discover, April 27, 2006.)

Can short-lived biochemicals and soft tissue be found in reputedly millions of year old remains? Yes, they can! Unmistakable evidence of proteins such as collagen and hemoglobin, along with red blood cells and bone cells, have been found in dinosaur remains and in other fossil organisms. Yet, these molecules and structures could not possibly have lasted for even one million supposed years under even the best of preservation conditions. Bone collagen held at a steady annual temperature of 10⁰ C will completely disintegrate under the best possible preservation conditions after only 300,000 to 900,000 supposed years.

(Buckley, M., and M.J. Collins. 2011. Collagen survival and its use for species identification in Holocene-Lower Pleistocene bone fragments from British archaeological and paleontological sites. Antiqua 1:e1.)

In 2015, a team of biomedical and geological scientists found 10 proteins, including myosin, actin, tubulin, histone H2A and tropomyosin, in a fossil hadrosaurid, a duck-billed dinosaur supposedly 80 million years old.

(Cleland, T. P. et al. 2015. Mass Spectrometry and Antibody-Based Characterization of Blood Vessels from Brachylophosaurus canadensis. Journal of Proteome Research. 14 (12):5252-5262.

n 2007, Michael Collins and his colleagues found Moa DNA found in New Zealand and using rigorous investigation of 158 fossil specimens determined that the half-life of the DNA was only 521 years. The half-life is probably much shorter as their method of dating used evolutionary assumptions and the disproven Carbon 14 dating technique. With these factors in mind then, the decay of DNA would be even faster. Regardless, whether we use the 521 years or less, clearly DNA cannot exist in fossils reputedly multi-million years old.

Yet, reports of DNA from dinosaur fossils and other remains of even “older” materials continue to be reported, although seldom published because of the secular biases in the scientific journals. After all, why would an evolutionary believing scientist search for, much less publish, something that would only threaten their careers? Could this be the reason that in her article on finding soft osteocytes (bone cells) Schweitzer (2013) and her team noted finding “chemical signatures” matching DNA in a supposedly 65 to 145 million year old Cretaceous T. rex fossil bone, rather than actually sequencing the DNA?

One is reminded that all secular experiments trying to prove that life could form by abiogenesis - rocks/chemicals becoming alive by random chance - have utterly failed. Dr. Stanley Miller tried from his time as a doctoral student under Dr. Harold Urey in 1952 until his death in 2007 to fine first a DNA and later an RNA method for abiogenesis and concluded that it was impossible. In nature complicated biochemicals essential to life, like proteins and nucleic acids, spontaneously break down into smaller and smaller components, the converse of what would be needed in nature to form living organisms by random chance. Science is against evolution happening.

Yet, evolutionists steadfastly dogmatically believe by faith that such a mechanism did occur in the past, but they do not have one shred of evidence to support it in the present. Why? Because evolution is a religion not science. Unfortunately, the public is for the most part unaware of this information.

Dr. Mary Schweitzer sequenced collagen protein found in a dinosaur fossil bone at Hell Creek, Montana. Collagen is an essential component of bone, epithelial and other tissues. It is not known to be made by microbes. Schweitzer’s team imaged proteins specific to vertebrates. Specifically, she used a hadrosaur femur and worked with an outside laboratory to confirm the findings. They found collagen, elastin and laminin. (Schweitzer, 2009)

We now know that DNA, collagen, elastin, and laminin have been authenticated as existing in fossil dinosaur remains as well as in other organisms supposedly predating the dinosaur era on the evolutionary time scale.

What about whole soft tissues found in supposedly ancient remains? We have been finding them for years!

On the evolutionary time scale, the Cenozoic era is supposedly from 65 million years ago to the present time. No recognizable proteins should exist in these layers. Yet, one Siberian mammoth bone yielded 126 protein types. (Capelini et al., 2012)

On the evolutionary time scale, the Mesozoic era is supposedly 250 to 65 million years ago. No soft tissues should exist in these layers, but they have yielded the largest number of soft tissue fossil finds.

In a 1966 issue of the evolutionary journal Nature electron micrographs of dinosaur tissues were published. (Pawlicki et al., 1966) In 2008, using the same technique, another team of paleontologists imaged dinosaur collagen fiber bundles from a Psittacosaurus found in China. (Lingham-Soliar, 2008).

In South Africa, a researcher found and published original color skin pigments from a different Chinese Psittacosaurus. The pigments included carotenoids and melanins. (Lingham-Soliar and Plodowski, 2010). Again, in 2010, a fossil mosasaur found in Kansas was found to contain decaying skin and red blood cells with original red hemoglobin. (Lindgren et al., 2010).

In 2013, Chinese researchers found protein inside a bone from a fossil Lugengosaurus embryo. The fossil was assigned to the Jurassic era by evolutionists, supposedly 200 to 145 million years old. (Reisz et al., 2013). A fossil Tarbosaurus bataar fossil bone was found in the Gobi Desert in 1998 by Polish researcher Roman Pawlicki. He published excellent micrographs of the bone tissues. (Pawlicki and Wowogrodzha-Zagorske, 1998, p. 76)

Pawlicki’s report stated that “the descriptions of the vascular canals in dinosaur bones and the bones of modern reptiles is the same.” This is simply another in a long line of serious challenges to evolutionary beliefs.

In 2001, Mark Armitage found and verified fresh-looking tissues in a T. rex bone. (Scanning electron microscope study of mummified collagen fibers in fossil Tyrannosaurus rex bone. Creation Research Society Quarterly 38:61-66.)  In 2003, another team sequenced some non-collagen protein fragments from an Iguanodon bone that was in the collection of the Natural History Museum of London. (Embery, et al. 2003. Identification of Proteinaceous material in the bone of the dinosaur Iguanodon. Connective Tissue Research 44(suppl. 1): 41-46.)

Prior to Dr. Mary Schweitzer’s initial finding of T. rex non-fossilized tissues, amino acids had been found in the bone of a Seismosaurus from New Mexico. (Gurley, et al. 1991. Proteins in the fossil bone of the dinosaur, Seismosaurus. Journal of Protein Chemistry 10:75-90.) Yet amino acids were found in fossil shells during research going all the way back to 1970. This research was published in the most prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Akiyama, M. et al. (67:1097-1100.)

Indeed, in 1980 Ralph Wyckoff wrote in Biochemistry of Amino Acids (p. 19) that “work with dinosaur remains demonstrated that enough protein for analysis could often be recovered from bones and teeth as old as the Jurassic.” According to the evolutionary dating scale that would be between 208 to 144 million supposed years ago. Yet, it is impossible for biological materials to exist for that time span.

We must remember, too, that during the Flood of Noah the water coming up from below was in the area of between 400⁰ F and 900⁰ F. This hot water would have caused far faster biochemical decay in sedimentary layers than today’s climate would indicate. Thus, when we factor in a biblical approach to the analysis of non-fossilized biological tissues we can easily see how they could be interpreted as being only 4,500 years old.

The heat of the waters of Noah’s Flood would also have “cooked” biological materials into carbonaceous residues. This is exactly what we find in the world famous Burgess Shale fossil beds in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia. These fossil beds are dated by evolutionists as Cambrian (supposedly 508 million years old). We find heat altered biochemicals in these deposits that indicates that the mud which buried the millions of now fossil organisms found there was very hot. These findings do not agree with the very slow and gradual “cool” processes indicative of the various evolutionary theories.

In 2014, the current record holder for the oldest known original tissue found in fossil materials was found in a Siberian drill core sample of Ediacaran strata, supposedly 635 to 542 million years old on the evolutionary time scale. (Moczydlowska et al., 2014) The core contained still flexible, proteinaceous remains of marine tube worms. The worm casings were not mineralized and the material was virtually identical to living marine tube worms. These structural chitin polysacchrides could not possibly survive a period of over 500 million years without total molecular breakdown.

(Moczydlowska et al., Journal of Paleontology 88:224-239. 2014)

One of the most interesting recent finds of soft tissue inside of fossil bone was made by Mark Armitage on May 12, 2012. Soft fibrillar bone tissue was discovered inside the fossil brow horn of a Triceratops horridus. The fossil horn was found in the famous Hell Creek Formation near Glendive, Montana. This is a world famous area for finding fossil dinosaur remains.

The soft material was present in pre- and post-decalcified bone. (Mori, H., et al., A new Arctic hadrosaurid from the Prince Creek Formation (lower Maastrichtian) of northern Alaska, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 2015. The horn contained several small sheets of lamellar bone matrix that had become part of the solid bone horn. Observed within the matrix were visible bone cells (osteocytes). There were even multiple layers of intact bone cells including elegant filipodial interconnections and obvious secondary branching. Two specific kinds of bone cells were discovered. There was no sign of permineralization in the tissues.

In 2015, scientists from the University of Alaska uncovered a new species of hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur) in the Liscomb bone bed, Prince Creek formation, on the North Slope. The formation is dated by evolutionists as supposedly 69 million years old. Astonishingly, the researchers admitted that the bones were “unpermineralized”, meaning that the bones were basically “fresh” bones. Amazingly, (of course) the reports in the liberal media fail to mention the “freshness” of the bones. If the evolutionary dating were correct, these bones could not possibly be unfossilized for 69 million years.

(Mori, H., et al., A new Arctic hadrosaurid from the Prince Creek Formation (lower Maastrichtian) of northern Alaska, Acta Palaeontologica Polonica, 2015.

Again, in 2015, in a limestone quarry in Spain, a small rat-like mammal fossil was found. Why is this important? The fossil had well-preserved internal organs. Yet according to evolutionists the fossil was 125 million years old. According to the report on the find it pushed back the record for well-preserved organs, fur and skin “by more than 60 million years.” More importantly, the organs were exactly the same as mammals alive today. This poses a serious problem for evolutionists and their beloved time-lines.

In opposition to the prediction of Charles Darwin, that no entirely soft tissue organism could be fossilized, we have found hundreds of fossil squids and jellyfish. These fossils are claimed to be up to 505 million years old. Remarkably, inside a few of the fossil squid we have been able to recover usable ink from their ink sacs. While the ink is not the same as material from living cells, it is the product of living cells. It should be impossible to reconstitute and use the ink if it really were as old as evolutionists claim.

Last, but hardly least and equally important, we have found radioactive Carbon 14 inside dinosaur and dinosaur era fossils. This should be impossible as Carbon 14 residues supposedly cannot be measured beyond 103,000 years old. In addition, for Carbon 14 to be found in fossils requires that organic, soft tissues, be present in the specimen.

In 2011, a fossil fish from the Green River Formation in Wyoming, and claimed to be 49 to 50 million years old, was radiocarbon dated as 26,110 years old. At the same time, a fossil paddle fish was removed from the same Formation, and yet it was radiocarbon dated as 33,530 years old.

Mummified wood found on Axel Heiberg Island in 1986, and claimed to be Eocene (34 to 56 million years old) was radiocarbon dated as 39,720 old.

Three hadrosaur fossil bones from the Hell Creek Formation and neighboring Lance Formation, supposedly 66 to 100 million years old have been radiocarbon dated as 20,850, 25,550 and 32,420 years old. The Triceratops horn bone mentioned previously was also radiocarbon dated with a result of 33,570 years old. Finally, a fossil lizard was found in Permian strata (252 to 298 million supposed years old) but radiocarbon dated as 49,470 years old.

Clearly evolutionary time frames are utterly false!