Rhino Proteins Challenge Deep Time: Dinos Next?

Multi-million-year claims
tremble under the weight
of new soft tissue reports

 

This week, Nature shocked the scientific world with reports of 18-million-year old proteins found on rhinoceros teeth from Kenya. Adding to the surprise is the fact that Kenya is hot, and such remains should have decayed millions of years ago. Reporters claim these proteins are the “oldest proteins yet recovered” from bones—which is not true, because fossilized collagen and other proteins from dinosaur bones had already made sensational headlines since 2005 and earlier. What’s new is that moyboy scientists are becoming more open to the idea that even dinosaur proteins could be found. So will they give up on Deep Time?

Let’s look at the news and see.
But first, watch the Short link here.

Oldest proteins yet recovered from 18-million-year-old teeth (New Scientist, 9 July 2025). Harvard paleontologist Daniel Green tells about his adventure digging up fossils in Kenya to find preserved protein remains.

The odds weren’t good – Rift Valley “has been one of the persistently hottest places in the world for going back over 5 million years”, says Green. This harsh and unforgiving climate creates “a very challenging environment for [protein] preservation”.

Mass spectrometry performed on the material at the Smithsonian led to identification of proteins said to be from “ancestors” of today’s African megafauna.

Surprisingly, he found fragments of proteins that were complete enough to provide important taxonomical information. This revealed that the teeth had belonged to prehistoric ancestors of elephants and rhinos: proboscideans and rhinocerotids, respectively. Cleland is enthusiastic about being “able to put even these older species into the tree of life with their modern relatives”.

Fossil teeth yield 18-million-year-old proteins, offering new clues to mammal evolution (Harvard University, via Phys.org, 9 July 2025). The idol of Charley is on the minds of all those involved in this report, eroding their logic, fossilizing their hearts, and keeping blindfolds over their eyes.

Proteins degrade over time, making their history hard to study. But new research has uncovered ancient proteins in the enamel of the teeth of 18-million-year-old fossilized mammals from Kenya’s Rift Valley, opening a window into how these animals lived and evolved.

Eighteen million years of diverse enamel proteomes from the East African Rift (Green et al., Nature, 9 July 2025). The source paper is open-access for those interested. “We identify likely modifications that support the ancient age of these proteins, and some of the oldest examples of advanced glycation end-products yet known.”

Previous palaeoproteomic studies of enamel, bone and eggshell have extended the Cenozoic record of peptide sequences to the Pliocene (3.8 Ma) and possibly even earlier, including samples from tropical and subtropical sites. These studies show that a variety of proteins can be detected into deep time and that dental tissues, which entomb protein fragments into a dense bioapatite composite during the biomineralization process, can extend the ancient proteomics record into earlier phases of the Cenozoic and beyond.

Here we report the recovery and identification of small proteomes from fossil remains derived from several palaeontological assemblages that formed over 18 million years in the Turkana Basin, Kenya, one of the warmest places on Earth.

Ancient rhino tooth protein recovery illuminates family tree (Univ of York via Phys.org, 9 July 2025). A similar rhinoceros protein discovery from the permafrost in Canada has been assigned dates over 20 million years old. The press office views this as a victory for evolution that will open the door to evolutionary studies of “phylogenetically informative” biomaterials:

The successful extraction and sequencing of ancient enamel proteins from a fossilized rhino tooth extends the timescale for recoverable, evolutionary-informative protein sequences by ten-fold compared to the oldest known ancient DNA.

In 2019, the University of York thought proteins 1.9 million years old were remarkable. The old record was “no more than four million” years old, the article claims. Now, the record is “more than 20 million years” –

The new study, published in the journal Nature, significantly expands that window, demonstrating the potential of proteins to persist over vast geological timescales under the right conditions.

Phylogenetically informative proteins from an Early Miocene rhinocerotid (Nature, 9 July 2025). This is the source paper from Nature, also open access. The whole focus of these two papers is evolution, not on the problem of getting proteins to last for millions of years. No; they imagine instead that it opens the door for all kinds of new phylogenetic (evolutionary) inferences: i.e., stories about which animals evolved from what ancestors.

To investigate the timing of Rhinocerotidae divergence and the potential for evolutionarily informative protein sequences to persist in deep time, we….

That was their target, and they would not be dissuaded from it. Rhinos evolved, and their rapidly-decaying proteins can last for millions of years, got it? Potato chips can fly here from Brazil! Believe!

Et Tu, Bronto?

Ancient proteins rewrite the rhino family tree — are dinosaurs next? (Nature, 9 July 2025). Normal people would reason that 18 million years is one thing, but 80 million years—that stretches credulity past the point of absurdity. Not for Nature. Prepare to believe impossible things!

Researchers have described proteins that they say are among the most ancient ever sequenced. Two teams, which analysed molecules from extinct relatives of rhinos and other large mammals, have pushed back the genetic fossil record to more than 20 million years ago.

The studies — out in Nature today — suggest that proteins survive better than researchers thought. This raises the possibility of gleaning molecular insights about evolutionary relationships, biological sex and diet from even older animals — maybe even dinosaurs.

“You’re just opening up a whole new set of questions that palaeontologists never thought they could get near,” says Matthew Collins, a palaeoproteomics specialist at the University of Cambridge, UK, and the University of Copenhagen.

One question, though remains off the table, and will remain so, until the current Darwine-drunk generation dies off, and a new sober generation of biologists and paleontologists rises up. That question: “Is deep time a myth?” Such a question is as far from their minds as Kenya from Canada. So intoxicated are they, that the only vision that arises in their inebriated imaginations is whether proteins from dinosaurs might give them more plots to tell about evolution.

Next step, dinosaurs

Proteins degrade in the heat. The rhino sample that Paterson and his colleagues analysed came from a polar desert where average temperatures are well below freezing, “the perfect place” for protein preservation, he says.

The Turkana Basin in Kenya could be considered one of the worst — and yet it is the source of fossils as old as 18 million years, from which a second team sequenced enamel proteins. Ground surface temperatures there can reach 70 °C, and climate records suggest Turkana Basin has been “one of the hottest places in the world for a very long time,” says Daniel Green, an isotope geochemist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who co-led the study.

The focus of these papers was on evolutionary relationships, writes Ewen Callaway between swigs in the Darwin pub at Nature.

The Kenyan enamel-protein sequences — from extinct relatives of rhinos, elephants, hippos and other creatures — fit with classifications made by palaeontologists on the basis of the fossils’ bone anatomy. But Green hopes that future studies of ancient proteins from Turkana will be able to solve some evolutionary mysteries, such as the origins of hippos.

How did hippos originate? By evolution. By mindless chance. By a series of unplanned accidents over millionssss of yearzzzzzzzz. This, students, is what they call understanding.

The two papers involved some 50 researchers committed to evolution. Matthew Collins of Cambridge is dancing at the possibilities for Darwinian just-so stories now. “What can you do with it? Everything. It’s like, wow!”

Time out for an evolutionary-informative
song from the CREV Funny Pages:

MY IMPOSSIBLE THINGS
To the tune of “My Favorite Things” from The Sound of Music

Dinosaur proteins and awkward convergence,
Lazarus taxa and rapid divergence,
Fossil explosions and lizards with wings,
These are among my impossible things.

Natural likeness to breeders’ selection,
Warm little ponds yielding living perfection,
Unguided flux from which everything springs,
These are among my impossible things.

When my God speaks, when ID swings,
When I’m feeling dumb,
I simply imagine impossible things,
And then I don’t feel so glum.

 

On a more possible note:

The Creation Research Society announced today that as part of its iDino (dinosaur soft tissue) Project, the venerable creation organization has obtained a DNA sequencer and hopes to use it for determining if DNA detected in dinosaur bones exists and, if so, if it is original to the dinosaur, not from contamination.