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Author Topic:   Soft Tissue Surviving 65 Million Years?
Percy
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Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 4 of 77 (508789)
05-16-2009 7:26 AM
Reply to: Message 3 by slevesque
05-16-2009 2:25 AM


slevesque writes:
Lab experiments with the best possible preservation conditions (no oxygen, no bacteria, etc.) have come with maximum ages of 3 millions years at 0C, less then 200 000 years at 10C and less then 15 000 years at 20C.
Where does this information come from?
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 12 of 77 (508914)
05-17-2009 7:34 AM
Reply to: Message 10 by slevesque
05-17-2009 4:31 AM


I'm not sure you understand what the replies are saying. There's no special pleading in science. The result is unexpected, that's why it's being treated skeptically. You're claiming that the result contradicts what we currently know about the survivability of protein. We're wondering where your information comes from, specifically this:
slevesque in Message 1 writes:
Lab experiments with the best possible preservation conditions (no oxygen, no bacteria, etc.) have come with maximum ages of 3 millions years at 0C, less then 200 000 years at 10C and less then 15 000 years at 20C.
If it's what Malcolm and Mr Jack tracked down (Table 1 in Biomolecules in fossil remains: Multidisciplinary approach to endurance), then the source is unpublished, which means it not only hasn't been replicated, it hasn't even been peer reviewed for suitability for publication. Plus the degree to which their laboratory conditions match actual fossil conditions has to be assessed.
As suspected, research into the survivability of soft tissue is in its infancy. If research eventually indicates its impossible then the claims of intact dinosaur protein will have to be discarded. If not then we learn more about dinosaurs.
--Percy

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 15 of 77 (509038)
05-18-2009 8:09 AM
Reply to: Message 13 by slevesque
05-18-2009 1:52 AM


slevesque writes:
But they are intact enough to have sequenced it and compared it to bird proteins, so in any case, their actual presence cannot really be discarded.
And Coragyps appears to agree with you when he says research proves protein can survive for millions of years but that we don't yet understand how this could happen. But the replication requirement of science tells us to await confirmation by other labs before accepting an unusual and/or unexpected finding.
What I was actually trying to communicate to you is that it isn't a matter of significance to most of us which way this goes. If the research holds up then that's great, because it provides another avenue to knowledge of long extinct life. And if it doesn't hold up then while it would be disappointing, all it would mean is what we thought might be a route to greater knowledge doesn't exist. There are no large implications.
This contrasts with your own view, where you view ancient protein from dinosaurs as the loose thread that unravels views that underpin an ancient earth and a long evolutionary history for life. The implications loom much larger for you and evangelical Christianity in general than for science.
The best example that illustrates the cheek and chutzpah of the evangelical position is radiometric dating. If the dinosaurs actually lived up until a few thousand years ago then radiometric dating is wrong. If radiometric dating is wrong then what we know of radioactive decay is wrong. If radioactive decay is wrong, then much of atomic theory is wrong. If atomic theory is wrong, then much of physics is wrong.
Another example is geology. If the dinosaurs actually lived up until a few thousand years ago then much of what we know about sedimentology is wrong. If sedimentology is wrong then much of what we know about how the earth formed is wrong, which means we're also wrong about sea floor striping and magnetic reversals and plate tectonics and ancient asteroid strikes.
I could go on about cosmology, but I think you get the point, which is that the fabric of science has great strength and resilience because the threads of many different fields run everywhere, interweaving every field of science with every other field. One tiny "How in the world could this have ever happened?" is just an opportunity to increase our understanding. Puzzles, mysteries and problems are science's greatest resource, and the universe appears to provide us with an unending supply. In other words, dinosaur protein is unlikely to provide the evidence that will finally legitimize the young Earth wishes of evangelical Christians.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Fix grammatical error.

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 17 of 77 (509151)
05-19-2009 2:50 AM
Reply to: Message 16 by slevesque
05-19-2009 2:00 AM


It is not impossible that somewhere dinosaurs still live, or at least lived relatively recently, but that doesn't bear on this research. The Schweitzer T-Rex, based upon dating of the geologic layers in which it was discovered, is 68 million years old. If it is impossible for proteins to survive that long then there's only one reasonable possibility: Schweitzer is mistaken. The other possibility that vast swathes of physics and geology and cosmology are all mistaken, while not impossible, is extremely remote.
--Percy

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 Message 16 by slevesque, posted 05-19-2009 2:00 AM slevesque has replied

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 Message 19 by slevesque, posted 05-19-2009 3:35 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 22 of 77 (509191)
05-19-2009 8:56 AM
Reply to: Message 19 by slevesque
05-19-2009 3:35 AM


Then the other possibility would be that the sediment is not as old as believed. You don't have to throw away all cosmology and geology for that to be true. Although geology would be changed I agree.
Rather than me repeating what I just said, please see Message 15, the last three paragraphs, and especially the part about every field of science being interwoven with every other field.
Although I doubt this would happen, I would be curious to see the result of carbon dating on that dinosaur bone.
First, radiocarbon dating can only be used for organic material that is less than about 60,000 years old because the half-life of 14C is relatively short, around 5500 years off the top of my head. By the time half the radioactive 14C has decayed a dozen times, there's no detectable amount left. In other words, all organic material older than 60,000 years has no significant levels of 14C left, which leads to...
Second, this means that ancient dinosaur bones will date to around 60,000 years old using radiocarbon dating, or perhaps a bit younger if the background radioactivity level was above average such as can occur in some coal and iron rich layers. Elevated levels of background radiation produce small amounts of 14C.
The chance Schweitzer is mistaken is slim to none. When the announcement of the T-rex soft tissues were announced, many people simply said she was mistaken, contamination etc. But in her recent finding (the Hadrosaur) she took extreme car about this so that no one could invoke contamination as a possible explanation of the data.
Again, rather than me repeating what I just said, please see Message 15, paragraph one, about independent confirmation. Schweitzer's team can repeat their studies as many times as they like, they still represent a single research team at a single lab. Replication requires that other research teams are able to reproduce the results.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 19 by slevesque, posted 05-19-2009 3:35 AM slevesque has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 24 by slevesque, posted 05-22-2009 2:12 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 26 of 77 (509495)
05-22-2009 7:33 AM
Reply to: Message 23 by slevesque
05-22-2009 2:00 AM


Re: Special Pleading / Dragons
slevesque writes:
I suggest that the random movements of electrons in the collagen would have it break down slowly but steadily, to the point it could not possibly be sequenced.
I think this is a very common expectation among scientists, which is why the result is such a surprise.
You will have to wait for CMI...
Why are you writing to a religious organization (Creation Ministries International) for scientific information? They'll tell you what you want to hear, a sort of scientific apologetic for conservative Christianity, but they won't provide you accurate scientific information about protein survival rates. Are you somehow under the impression that they have their own laboratories conducting research on protein longevity but that they aren't publishing in the technical literature, and that therefore you have to write to them for scientific information that only they have because since they don't publish you won't find it on the web? Did I mention I have a bridge for sale...
Although some dinosaurs could fly...
Unless you're including birds and bird predecessors among the dinosaurs, no dinosaurs could fly. You might be thinking of pterosaurs, which were reptiles, not dinosaurs.
--Percy

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 Message 23 by slevesque, posted 05-22-2009 2:00 AM slevesque has replied

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 Message 28 by slevesque, posted 05-23-2009 4:10 AM Percy has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 27 of 77 (509498)
05-22-2009 7:51 AM
Reply to: Message 24 by slevesque
05-22-2009 2:12 AM


slevesque writes:
Although it pretty much ends at radioactive decay and sedimentology. while I absolutly agree it would need good changes in our view of the former, I would suggest it would only involve some minor tweeks in the later, although I don't know the geologic position of the fossils. Some positions would require more adaptation then others.
Only ignorance could suggest that "minor tweeks" could reinterpret geological layers as indicating a young Earth. When you've figured out what those "minor tweeks" are you let us know. And of course the radiometric data alone is sufficient to doom any young Earth interpretation.
I believe that with the new technology in accelerated particules, they can go up to a maximum of 200 000-250 000 years old.
Not that I've heard, but you suggested using radiocarbon dating on dinosaur bones, which are a minimum of three orders of magnitude older than what radiocarbon dating can handle. I was trying to point out to you the inanity of proposing a technique useful only for material some tens of thousands of years old on material that is millions of years old. Other radiometric dating techniques must be applied for ages that are tens and hundreds of millions of years. The most common are various forms of potassium/argon dating, and rubidium/strontium dating.
I wasn't clear enough on this, but in her recent Hadrosaur discovery, she sent samples to two other labs for independant confirmation. She really did her homework so that no critics could neglect her data. I think this discovery is here to stay, and so a mechanism to preserve these proteins in 65 millions years old bones will have to be found eventually.
Indications are that your level of knowledge is inadequate for others to trust your intuitions regarding which results to trust, but regardless, replication requires results from more than one team at one lab. For example, if contamination was taking place in Schweitzer's lab, then the samples she sent for analysis at other labs would also be contaminated. For another example, there could be fraud.
Like you, I hope Schweitzer's results hold up because of the exciting opportunities it opens up for learning more about ancient life, but you can't let hope overrule reason. You have to await replication.
--Percy

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 Message 24 by slevesque, posted 05-22-2009 2:12 AM slevesque has replied

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 Message 29 by slevesque, posted 05-23-2009 4:31 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 31 of 77 (509654)
05-23-2009 7:23 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by slevesque
05-23-2009 4:31 AM


Hi Slevesque,
You appear to be proposing that dinosaur bones found with good soft tissue preservation indicate that the dinosaur lived thousands instead of millions of years ago, and that the impact on geology (of the revelation that the containing layers must also be thousands instead of millions of years old) would be minor. But you seem unaware of how much of science such a finding would call into question.
This is nowhere more clear than where you discuss the Mount St. Helens "strata," which are the result of volcanic mudflows, not lava flows. In other words, those "layers" are just dried out mud, not rock. Ten thousand years from they'll still just be dried out mud, and no geologist of the future would ever mistake these mudflows for distinct eruption events millions of years apart.
So obviously geologists today are not making this same mistake when they study geologically recent volcanic eruptions. It is difficult to make such mistakes because mudflows in rapid succession do not resemble ancient mud or lava flows. In the case of mudflows they have to be buried for a period in order to turn them to rock, and it takes considerable time to build up a sufficiently significant overburden, then more time to erode back down to the original mudflow to expose it for our scientists to study. Plus there's the confirming and more accurate evidence from radiometric dating.
I believe the dinosaur fossils with preserved soft tissue were found in sandstone, not basalt (solidified lava) and certainly not dried out mud. Sandstone represents a former coastal area, and distinct layers form very slowly from the accumulation of sand. Only if the sand layer becomes buried sufficiently deep can the overlying pressure transform it into rock, and this gradual burial takes a very long time. If it turns out that the sandstone layers in which these fossils were found were actually geologically very young then it would overturn all we know about the formation of sandstone.
And since sandstone layers are usually interspersed with shale and limestone, this would overturn all we know about those layers, too. For example, it is very common for sandstone layers to reside beneath limestone layers, and limestone layers form in shallow seas over thousands and thousands of years due to a consistent rain of calciferous material from dead organisms that occupied the waters above. A typical deposition rate for limestone is about a yard every 7500 years, so when you have a limestone layer like the Kaibab Limestone of the Grand Canyon that is about 100 yards thick you know that it took about 750,000 years to form.
And geological theories of how these layers formed are confirmed by the results of radiometric dating. If we're wrong about the age of the sandstone layer in which the Schweitzer dinosaur was found then we're not only wrong about geologic sedimentary processes, but also about much of physics. This is because although we divide science into a variety of fields of study, the reality is that they are all tightly interwoven. Any unraveling of as significant a part of the fabric as sedimentary processes or radiometric dating would force us to discard much of what we think we know throughout all of science. That's why your casual dismissal of the consequences of a young date for dinosaur fossils with soft tissue is so revealing of just how little you know.
--Percy

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 Message 29 by slevesque, posted 05-23-2009 4:31 AM slevesque has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by slevesque, posted 05-24-2009 2:45 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


(1)
Message 42 of 77 (509727)
05-24-2009 7:46 AM
Reply to: Message 35 by slevesque
05-24-2009 2:45 AM


Hi Slevesque,
I think you have to make up your mind whether you're advocating a young Earth or an old Earth. You were advocating an old Earth when arguing that some dinosaurs survived until just some thousands of years ago. Now you're advocating a young Earth when you argue that radiometric decay isn't constant. It wasn't so bad when you were advocating different positions in different threads, but now you're switching back and forth between different positions in the same thread.
slevesque writes:
I'll agree that maybe it would change a lot of things in our knowledge of geology. But this is the power of falsification, isn't it?
All science is tentative and open to falsification, but the falsifying evidence has to be at least the equal of existing evidence. We have several pieces of evidence from one lab of ancient soft tissue preservation sufficient to preserve details of protein structure. You prefer to reinterpret this as evidence of dating errors, proposing that this paltry amount of evidence could overturn the mountains of evidence from geology and physics.
As I've said a couple times now, you do not appear to know how much you do not know, else you wouldn't give this possibility serious consideration. Ask yourself these questions:
  • What is the one piece of evidence that establishes that the sun lies at the center of the solar system and is orbited by the planets?
  • What is the one piece of evidence that establishes that all matter and energy in the universe once existed in a space smaller than the size of a single atom billions of years ago?
  • What is the one piece of evidence that establishes that the Earth's crust is divided into about 20 plates that move about like an incredibly complex animated jigsaw puzzle?
  • What is the one piece of evidence that establishes that species are a result of descent with modification and natural selection?
The answer is the same for all these questions: there is no one piece of evidence. There aren't even any several pieces of evidence. In each case it took literally mountains of evidence to establish these theories.
And you're proposing that a few pieces of evidence from a single lab could overturn entire fields of science when you say things like this:
But now if it is shown that this collagen could not have lasted 65 millions years, then for the first time there would be a legitimate reasons to question the validity of the radiometric methods.
Now I understand that you are not aware of how much evidence has been gathered in support of these theories, but it is not within the power of a discussion board to provide several years of science education. This is a lack only you can remedy, if you're sufficiently motivated. Most creationists are not so motivated because, as polls tell us, the more you know the less likely you are to believe in creationism. For creationists, learning is a threat to belief.
This is also why it could be interesting to carbon date those fossils. If it turns out that it would give a carbon-14 amount within the error margin and so a date to the very limit of the dating technique, then it would be evidence that would favor the existence of a mechanism that can preserve collagen for vast amounts of time.
All it would prove is that collagen can survive for at least fifty or sixty thousand years, not fifty or sixty million years.
But if it turned out to give a carbon14 amount beyond the error margin (multiple dating on multiple bones would have to be done of course to prevent the possibility of contamination) then it would be in favor that maybe the fossil could actually be young.
Scientists are already familiar with the great amount of evidence supporting sedimentary processes and radiometric dating, and they wouldn't waste their time on such an exercise. Besides, dating of ancient organic material has been done a many times, usually on coal and oil deposits, and the results always come back at around fifty or sixty thousand years, the outer limits of radiocarbon dating.
Your dismissive reply to Cavediver in Message 39 indicates that you do not understand what would happen if billions of years of radioactive decay occurred in just a few thousand years. Think of it this way. What would happen to a car is you crashed it into a brick wall at 1 mph 60 times? Almost nothing, right? But what would happen if you crashed it into a brick wall at 60 mph just once? The car would be destroyed, right?
So what happens to rocks when exposed to the radiation from some contained uranium over a few billion years? Almost nothing, right? But what would happen to these rocks if exposed to all that billions of years of radiation compressed into just a few thousand years? They would melt, right? Probably even vaporize, right? The entire Earth would probably melt and then explode, right? See the problem?
You also apparently didn't understand Cavediver's other reference to astrophysics. When we peer out into space we see stars as they were millions and billions years ago, and the physical processes astrophysicists observe are the same ones we observe today here on earth. The laws of physics, including those governing radioactive decay, were the exact same in the past as they are today.
There were a lot of references in a short space in Cavediver's post, and you also missed the Oklo reference. Going from memory, this is a cave somewhere in the former USSR where evidence was found of a sufficiently rich natural deposit of uranium to sustain a continuous nuclear reaction. The rock melted. If radioactive decay were instead a million times faster then it would have exploded. But obviously it didn't explode because all we found were melted rocks containing uranium.
I'd have to refamiliarize myself concerning Cavediver's reference to alpha, but it represents another mountain of evidence for an ancient universe with physical laws that if they vary over time vary only a very tiny amount.
You know little of the evidence supporting current views within science. You see a piece of supposed creationist evidence like dinosaur protein and consider the possibility of a young age for that protein, then you weigh it against the contrary scientific of which you're aware and you find that you're not aware of any. So naturally you conclude that there's a strong possibility that the dinosaur protein is young. Your ignorance is leading you astray. Thinking uninformed by knowledge is called fantasy.
--Percy

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 Message 35 by slevesque, posted 05-24-2009 2:45 AM slevesque has not replied

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 Message 45 by JonF, posted 05-24-2009 9:36 AM Percy has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 51 of 77 (510343)
05-30-2009 7:05 AM
Reply to: Message 48 by slevesque
05-30-2009 2:58 AM


slevesque writes:
I used the 50 000 years old age simply because that was the number bluescat48 used as a hypothetical maximum date. I think with the new mass accelerator technology, we can push carbon-14 dating up to 250 000 years old.
This is the second time you've said this, and for the second time, not that I've ever heard of. Accelerator mass spectrometry allows tinier, not older, samples to be dated.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 48 by slevesque, posted 05-30-2009 2:58 AM slevesque has replied

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 Message 52 by Coyote, posted 05-30-2009 8:31 AM Percy has not replied
 Message 54 by slevesque, posted 05-31-2009 2:19 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 57 of 77 (510446)
05-31-2009 9:17 AM
Reply to: Message 54 by slevesque
05-31-2009 2:19 AM


slevesque writes:
doesn't AMS count carbon-14 atoms almost individually, hence getting much greater precision ? (and so older ?)
I'll have to find that book where I read this
You can try to find that book if you like, but regardless of what it says it is unlikely that AMS could make possible radiocarbon dating to ages as great as 250,000 years because of two fundamental problems that work together to confound such a possibility:
  1. Background radiation from naturally occurring radioactive materials in the environment and from cosmic rays will always maintain some tiny amount of carbon in the sample as 14C. Call this the ambient level of 14C, and this ambient level measures out as maybe around 80,000 years. I assume the ages reported by labs correct for this. This is why labs require that the context of the sample be included, because some layers have higher background radiation than others. For example, geologic layers from the southwest of the United States are high in iron and uranium, causing any coal near such layers to date (before correction) to around 50,000 years old, sometimes even younger if radiation levels are higher.
  2. The advantage of AMS is also an inherent disadvantage. The narrow beam makes possible the dating of very tiny samples, but the narrow beam also means it can't date large samples. The proportion of 14C in a sample is very tiny (looking it up at Wikipedia I see the proportion of 14C in living material is about one atom out of every trillion). By the time 60,000 years have gone by, which at a half life of 14C of 5730 years is about 10 half-lives, the proportion of 14C will be one atom out of every thousand trillion, which is one in 1018 atoms.
    This means there's so few carbon atoms in the tiny sample that they cannot be reliably counter. One could use AMS to date larger samples by dividing a large sample into many small ones and then performing the test many times and adding the results together, but AMS is very expensive, and there's still the background radiation problem, and contamination becomes a very significant issue for dates older than 40 or 50 thousand years.
In other words, 250,000 years seems out of the question.
But that's not the issue. I'm only addressing this so that you can add it to the list of things you don't seem to know much about and thereby begin to understand that you should attach less certainty to your opinions.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Clarify 2nd point.

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 69 of 77 (510471)
05-31-2009 3:43 PM
Reply to: Message 67 by LucyTheApe
05-31-2009 2:43 PM


Re: Scoff
LucyTheApe, please, if you're not going to participate in discussion then you should not be posting to this thread. You especially should not be posting lots of short off-topic one-liner type messages, not here, not anywhere in the discussion forums. Capisce?
--Percy

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 Message 67 by LucyTheApe, posted 05-31-2009 2:43 PM LucyTheApe has replied

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