Dino-brand tissues, twice as soft!
Mar 28th 2005Wallabynerd alert
For those who haven’t seen it yet, apparently they’ve found out that dinosaur bones (most notably a T. rex) may contain soft tissue:
Removal of the mineral phase reveals transparent, flexible, hollow blood vessels containing small round microstructures that can be expressed from the vessels into solution. Some regions of the demineralized bone matrix are highly fibrous, and the matrix possesses elasticity and resilience. Three populations of microstructures have cell-like morphology. Thus, some dinosaurian soft tissues may retain some of their original flexibility, elasticity, and resilience.
(from the original article in Science)
This was a big surprise for the postdoc who found the news item first — non-biologist, blithely accepts the standard view that dinosaurs last roamed the earth millions of years ago until the big meteor (or whatever) paved the way for us mammalian folks to take over. And so the lab talked about it the rest of the day. And much of the next.
At one point, he said something about “and of course the creationists have latched onto this as ‘evidence’”. It seems fairly straightforward — if tissue that’s 80 million years old is not expected to have soft tissue buried inside (reasonable), and if this tissue that we thought was 80 million years old *does* have soft tissue inside (fact), then are we *really* sure it’s 80 million years old? (Especially since fossilization doesn’t necessarily take millions of years — unless the dinosaurs wore hats too. Yes, that’s one of them creationist websites. For some reason, it’s difficult to find mentions of such in the “scientific” literature.)
I said as much — trying mostly just to point out that yes, this isn’t particularly surprising to those who really believe that the earth is much younger than the National Academy of Science wants its members to teach it is. I may have said a bit much, though, and showed my true colors as one of them wacky Bible-believing fundie types. (He did say something about “well, of course, you’re a Southern Baptist.”)