No Doubts Left: It's Dinosaur Protein

Mary Schweitzer’s team reports the most rigorous techniques yet to certify collagen in dinosaur bone. But will evolutionists finally give up their beloved millions of years?

Since 2005 and even earlier, Dr. Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State has boldly charged against fossilized dogma, proving the existence of soft tissue in dinosaur bones. She still believes they are millions of years old, but has faced criticism and (more often) silence from her stubborn, incredulous colleagues. This response hasn’t fazed her. If anything, it has stimulated her to prove she’s right. Now, the latest press release from NC State announces, “80-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Collagen Confirmed.” Here’s their interpretation that rescues long ages by assertion:

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.

Brachylophosaurus was a mid-size hadrosaur, taller than a human. Before arguing whether it really is 80 million years old, it’s necessary to be absolutely certain that this is original soft tissue, not former tissue now turned into stone (‘permineralized’). Schweitzer’s team has already presented more than enough evidence in multiple papers since her notorious “60 Minutes” interview in 2010 that left the host gasping and Jack Horner dumbfounded (notice the response of the scientific community). Now she drives the last nail in the coffin of doubts.

Schweitzer and her colleague, postdoc Elena Schroeter, collected this dinosaur sample from Montana for the purpose of confirming soft tissue. Here’s how they prepared the bone, and what they found inside:

“We collected B. canadensis with molecular investigation in mind,” Schweitzer says. “We left a full meter of sediment around the fossil, used no glues or preservatives, and only exposed the bone in a clean, or aseptic, environment. The mass spectrometer that we used was cleared of contaminants prior to running the sample as well.”

The sample material came from the specimen’s femur, or thigh bone. Using mass spectrometry, the team recovered eight peptide sequences of collagen I, including two that are identical to those recovered in 2009, and six that are new. The sequences show that the collagen I in B. canadensis has similarities with collagen I in both crocodylians and birds, a result we would expect for a hadrosaur, based on predictions made from previous skeletal studies.

“We are confident that the results we obtained are not contamination and that this collagen is original to the specimen,” Schroeter says. “Not only did we replicate part of the 2009 results, thanks to improved methods and technology we did it with a smaller sample and over a shorter period of time.”

That’s the bombshell. Now, what will be the aftermath among evolutionary paleontologists?

“Our purpose here is to build a solid scientific foundation for other scientists to use to ask larger questions of the fossil record,” Schweitzer adds. “We’ve shown that it is possible for these molecules to preserve. Now, we can ask questions that go beyond dinosaur characteristics. For example, other researchers in other disciplines may find that asking why they preserve is important.”

The carefully-worded statement betrays no commitments to age. Though fully aware of how young-earth creationists use her findings, she has never stated any doubts about millions of years. Suffice it to say that no paleontologist believed it was possible for original biological material to remain even a fraction of that time; upper limits were in the hundreds of thousands of years, maybe a million years max, but nobody, of course, has ever witnessed even those shorter ages. So what will evolutionists do? We predict two responses: (1) “Well, golly, I guess dinosaur tissue can last 80 million years! How ’bout that!” (2) “Now that we have dinosaur protein to study, it will shed light on evolution.”
The paper is published in the Journal of Proteome Research.

Update 1/29/17: The University of Texas at Austin describes exceptional preservation of early Jurassic marine fossils in Canada, including “soft body parts” said to be 183 million years old. The article does not make it clear whether original biomolecules are present, so we should assume they are permineralized impressions of soft parts pending further information. Still, the diversity and detail in these deposits is remarkable for animal remains buried 183 million Darwin Years ago.

You may be wondering, how can smart people be so stubborn when faced with evidence this powerful? Never underestimate the dogmatism of evolutionists. For them, it’s not about following the evidence where it leads; it’s about maintaining a story.

Compare this case with decades of evidence against the big bang. Bob Enyart maintains a richly-documented page “Evidence Against the Big Bang” and he just produced a lengthy, well-documented video by that title (highly recommended). In both resources, he shares 9 powerful empirical evidences against the big bang, undercuts the 3 leading “proofs” of the big bang (i.e., their widely-advertised “predictions”), and lays out the incredible fine-tuning of the universe that points to a Creator. He documents every point from the world’s leading journals, citing dozens of pro-big-bang scientists from Einstein to Lawrence Krauss. Impressive work for a radio host and pastor of a Bible church! He’s clearly done his homework. Enyart catches the cosmologists and reporters in contradictions and lies, repeating things they know are not true. Yet despite all this incontrovertible evidence that’s out there, big bangers doggedly maintain their narrative and foist it on the unwitting public. This has gone on for nearly a century. In other words, you can prove them wrong again and again with the best evidence, and they won’t give up.

There’s too much at stake for any Darwinian moyboys to quit, even if they agree that these are original proteins from dinosaurs. Unrepentant sinners will go down with the ship rather than face the Creator every person knows is there (Romans 1:20). Their story that dinosaurs died 65 million years ago will live in infamy until all the DODO bigots and DOPE heads go extinct themselves. Our only hope is to reach children and young people not yet indoctrinated into the Grand Myth, and convince our friends and neighbors outside the Darwin Castle to stand strong against the Myth. We do that with facts, logic and persuasion. Strong evidence has power to influence anyone with an open mind and courage to follow it.