Darwinists Try Another Excuse for Dinosaur Soft Tissue

They can’t deny it exists, but their
commitment to Deep Time requires an
explanation— anything that “could” work

— Another paper tries to explain soft tissue preservation in dinosaurs. Does it succeed? —

Applying a phenomenon in quantum mechanics called the Pauli Exclusion Principle, researchers at MIT dreamed up a new theory and “tested” it with computer models. The Pauli Exclusion Principle forbids extra electrons from filled orbitals in atoms. These physicists claim that certain twists in three-stranded collagen fibrils put amino acids into close contact where Pauli Exclusion comes into play, resulting in tight contacts that keep out water. They know that the half-life of proteins in the presence of water is about 500 years. Their theoretical water-excluding process keeps the collagen dry, and voila! It “could” last for millions of years! We investigate this claim.

MIT chemists explain why dinosaur collagen may have survived for millions of years (4 Sept 2024, MIT News). Press office Darwin disciple Anne Trafton summarizes the research that was funded by the “National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation” which, as everyone knows, have no agenda or bias at all. Their motives are as pure as Darwin’s!

Collagen, a protein found in bones and connective tissue, has been found in dinosaur fossils as old as 195 million years. That far exceeds the normal half-life of the peptide bonds that hold proteins together, which is about 500 years.

A new study from MIT offers an explanation for how collagen can survive for so much longer than expected. The research team found that a special atomic-level interaction defends collagen from attack by water molecules. This barricade prevents water from breaking the peptide bonds through a process called hydrolysis.

Faced with falsification of Deep Time after soft tissue has been discovered in numerous dinosaur bones and other fossils, the Darwinians know that their worldview is at stake. They admit that intact proteins have been found in a T. rex bone alleged to be 80 million Darwin Years old, and in a sauropodomorph fossil that is alleged to be almost 200 million years old. It means that the observed half-life of a protein is about a millionth of the alleged age of the dinosaur collagen.

Ronald T. Raines, a chemist at MIT, knows this is a desperate problem. His team with three colleagues looked at all the possible explanations to keep these bones old.

“I can’t discount the contributions from other factors, but 200 million years is a long time, and I think you need something at the molecular level, at the atomic level in order to explain it,” Raines says.

One statement in this press release reveals a weakness. It only works (if at all) for collagen. But collagen is not the only kind of soft tissue found in dinosaur bones.

This sharing of electrons has also been seen in protein structures known as alpha helices, which are found in many proteins. These helices may also be protected from water, but the helices are always connected by protein sequences that are more exposed, which are still susceptible to hydrolysis.

“Collagen is all triple helices, from one end to the other,” Raines says. “There’s no weak link, and that’s why I think it has survived.”

The press release does not state how Raines and his team tested their explanation. One thing is obvious: they did not test it for 200 million years.

Soft tissue remains in dinosaur bones are not limited to collagen. What do these remains, reported in 2020, look like?

Pauli Exclusion by n→π* Interactions: Implications for Paleobiology (Yang et al., 4 Sept 2024, ACS Central Science). This is the formal paper. Let’s start by counting the hedging words and evaluating the perhapsimaybecouldness index.

• Numerous factors have been proposed for the extraordinary longevity of collagen. The abundance of the protein, its highly cross-linked structure, and its inaccessibility to proteases could play roles.
• In addition, the mineral matrix within bones could deter the extraction of collagen and its subsequent exposure to hydrolytic conditions. None of these putative explanations is definitive, and none provides a physicochemical basis for the resistance of the peptide bonds in collagen to hydrolysis. [I.e., we need to start over with another explanation.]
• Accordingly, the engagement of a π* orbital in an n→π* interaction could protect peptide bonds from hydrolysis.
• These isomers have n→π* interactions that could protect their solvent-accessible ester carbon from attack by a water molecule by Pauli exclusion.
• Thus, the “weakest links” in the collagen triple helix could be most protected by n→π* interactions.
• This protection, which arises from the Pauli exclusion principle, could underlie the preservation of ancient collagen.

A look at their testing procedure shows that they did NOT test the protection on actual collagen, any protein, or even on a polypeptide. They only evaluated the presence of an n→π* interaction between one amino acid (proline) and an ester to evaluate its stability against hydrolysis. Then they used computer models to evaluate whether such interactions could provide protection. None of three possible interactions they tested supplied perfect protection indefinitely.

Most notably, their conclusion shows that the authors assumed the dinosaur collagen was millions of years old, not that the date of the fossils was up for discussion!

Using both experimental and computational tools, we have discovered that n→π* interactions protect prolyl esters from hydrolysis. This discovery has implications for the stability of collagen, which is replete with n→π* interactions and has remained intact for (at least) hundreds of millions of years, exceeding the half-life of a peptide bond by a millionfold or more. The stability conferred by n→π* interactions upon collagen─modern and ancient─can guide the design of exceptionally stable, long-lived materials.

To naive readers assuming Deep Time like the authors, if a proposed explanation “could” explain the longevity of dinosaur proteins, then it “does” explain it – especially if they cannot read any rebuttal of the claim.

As we like to remind our readers, Deep Time is not a solution to Darwin’s problems. Deep Time is the problem.

Given the censorship of journals against Darwin skeptics (and especially against doubters of Deep Time), these four authors will probably never have to answer hard questions. Let’s ask them anyway.

• • Did they prove that a theoretical protection for 3 orders of magnitude is sufficient to explain longevity for 8 orders of magnitude? No.
  • Did they prove that all peptides in collagen have the n→π* interactions to theoretically offer protection against hydrolysis? No.
  • Does their “explanation” work for strands of collagen not tightly wrapped in triple helices? No.
  • Did they test their hypothesis on real proteins or polypeptides? No; they only gave excuses why it is too hard to test those.
  • Did they observe their ester bonds remaining resistant to water attack for any significant length of time? No, not even a millionth of the time they believe it “could” protect them.
  • Did they present a reasonable basis for assuming that their explanation could account for the longevity of dinosaur proteins in realistic fossil conditions like being drenched in groundwater, enduring temperature swings, and being subject to bioturbation and geological changes? No.
    
  • Did they evaluate all the published findings of dinosaur soft tissue, and then graph longevity vs. assumed age? No.
  • Did they explain the longevity of other kinds of dinosaur soft tissue, including blood vessels, blood cells, osteocytes, and even DNA? No.
  • Did they face any peer reviewers who are not Darwinists? No.
  • Did they face any peer reviewers who are not moyboys? No.
  • Did they question the alleged age of dinosaur soft tissue? No. They assumed it.
  • Did they admit that the discovery of intact dinosaur protein was unexpected? Yes.
  • Did they, or will they, review the literature from creation scientists showing why long-age explanations do not work? Highly doubtful. They did not cite any of them in their references.
    
  • Did they seek the truth about dinosaur soft tissue without bias? Apparently not. Their goal was to “explain” why one protein (collagen) “could” have survived tens or hundreds of millions of years.
  • Did they bamboozle their readers with only the appearance of science? Probably.

We expect that this cherry-picked “explanation” for long ages for “some” of proteins will go the way of all the other proposals that moyboys have used (iron links, bacteria, toast, magic, etc.) to dodge the unexpected, surprising, shocking discovery of intact soft tissues in dinosaur bones. Don’t let them get away with dodgeball. Keep this issue on the front burner. It has the potential to pull the rug out from under the entire Darwinian house of cards.

Recommended Reading: See Brian Thomas’s big list at ICR of published reports of intact soft tissues in fossils. Notice that they are not all collagen, and that some of the dates go back to more than 250 million Darwin Years.