Creationists lie about the T. Rex soft tissue data
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Pirate modeYou may recall the recent discovery of soft tissue in dinosaur bone…as you might expect, the creationists are crawling all over themselves to misinterpret it. This newspaper article, Creationists welcome fossil find , lists a few of the usual frauds and their responses:
Schweitzer made international news on March 24 when she unveiled what looks like soft tissue and remnants of blood cells and blood vessels in a T. rex leg bone found in Montana. Paleontologists said such remains could open a new research direction, maybe even dinosaur DNA studies, in their field.
One young-Earth group, Answers in Genesis, celebrates Schweitzer's Tyrannosaurus rex find with two articles on its Web site, several photos from her paper in the journal Science, and a promo that reads: "Breaking Dino News ... but will the evidence convince them?"
Speakers with the Institute for Creation in California will emphasize Schweitzer's findings in future talks they deliver to college campuses, community groups and churches.
"We think this is really very powerful evidence," said co-founder Duane Gish, a biochemist and 30-year creationism activist.
As early as 1997, Answers in Genesis circulated word of Schweitzer's previous find of possible blood cell remnants preserved in dinosaur bone, in its Creation Magazine. Again, the group presented her research as proof of the Earth's youth.
"It sounds preposterous -- to those who believe that these dinosaur remains are at least 65 million years old," wrote Australian Carl Wieland of Answers in Genesis International. "It is of course much less of a surprise to those who believe Genesis."
These guys are all spouting nonsense, of course. This find is not evidence by any stretch of the imagination for a young earth; the geology of the region where these fossils were found is very well characterized, and the specimens are unambiguously on the order of 70 million years old. These are not intact, unchanged cells; degradation and quite possibly some substantial kinds of chemical replacement have occurred. The real questions are about chemistry and conditions and the constitution of these tissue fragments. Throwing out most of the discipline of geology, as would be required if these rocks were 6000 years old, is not on the table.
Here's the bottom line:
Horner, Schweitzer's one-time teacher and a co-author of the Science paper, said frequent attention from creationists takes a toll on the Raleigh scientist, who is also a paleontology curator at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences.
"An argument with a creationist is virtually impossible," he said. "They pick and choose whatever piece of data they like. These people are just beating up on her."
Beating up on scientists is OK. We're supposed to be able to defend our work against hostile challenges. What creationists do is something different, though: they lie. They are pounding on Schweitzer with their mangled distortions of the evidence, and that's just not kosher.
The response from AiG, et al, is, of course, no surprise. The hypocritical thing about it is that while they may trumpet the discovery of possible soft tissue as evidence that the fossil is younger than we may think (indeed, the older the fossil, the less likely the preservation of soft tissue, so the reasoning there isn't 100% insane -- scientists simply have other overwhelming evidence that the fossil is extremely old, and don't just latch on to one less than reliable indicator), they would never point out the odd fact that dinosaur remains are never (well, now almost never) found with preserved soft tissue, whereas other '6000 year old' fossils *are*. Why is that? I mean, if dinosaurs, mammoths, giant sloths, and so forth, are all creatures that lived around 6000 years ago, you'd expect to find fossils in similar states of preservation, at similar rates.
Creation 'scientists' cannot simultaneously be both 'not stunned' by the soft tissue discovery and unperplexed by the fact of the extreme rarity of such a discovery.