Dinosaur Bones Preserve Original Hemoglobin
Hemoglobin molecules found
in two different dinosaurs:
more evidence that evolutionist’s
deep-time belief is problematic
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
The preservation of soft tissue in dinosaurs is of central importance in the creation-evolution controversy for several reasons. One major one is that evolution requires an enormous amount of time to occur. Furthermore, as more difficulties are encountered defending evolution, one very common way to deal with them is to increase the amount of time available for evolution to take place: “One of the main objections that have been raised [to evolution] holds that there has not been enough time for all of the species complexity that we see to have evolved by random mutations.”[1]
So, their solution is simply to add more time to the evolution story/timeline/narrative. In December 2010, Bernard Wilf and Warren G. Evans of the University of Pennsylvania, a mathematician and a biologist respectively, tried to defend deep time. In their PNAS paper, “There’s Plenty of Time for Evolution,” they admitted that
“Biological evolution is such a complex process that any attempt to describe it precisely in a way similar to the description of the dynamic processes in physics by mathematical methods is impossible.”[2]
They should review the fact that estimates of the time required for evolution have been increasing for the past three centuries. As knowledge of the complexity of life grew, evolutionists needed more time for it, although it could be, in some cases, partly because scientists thought there was evidence for an older earth.
Changes in the Age of the Earth
In 1779, the Comte du Buffon estimated that Earth was about 75,000 years old.[3] In 1900, the age of the Earth was estimated by the prominent physicist John Joly to be from 80 to 100 million years old.[4] When I was in elementary school, I learned that the age of the Earth was about two billion years old, less than half the current estimate.[5]
The current estimate, proposed in 1978, is 4.5 billion years, an increase of 2.25 times in only 28 years! Arthur Holmes first proposed the age of about 4.6 billion years in his 1978 textbook.[6]
This estimate is derived primarily from the radiometric dating of meteorites and moon rocks, which are believed to have formed at roughly the same time as the Earth. This revision indicates that the purpose for the longer timeline was not only to allow for more time for evolution; it may have been part of the motivation to preserve belief in gradualism.
Assumptions in Radiometric Dating
Radiometric dating has been challenged from several quarters.[7] Observations do show that a significant amount of radioactive decay has occurred in the Earth’s crust. Most scientists do not dispute this, but creationists question the assumptions held by the scientific establishment. For instance, creationists ask whether radioactive decay rates have been constant through history. The assumption that radioactive decay rates have been constant throughout history is an a priori assumption that scientists cannot unequivocally prove or disprove. For this reason, the assumption by creationists that the decay rates have not been constant is a valid concern.[8]
Assuming the 4.6-billion-year-old earth timeline, the age of dinosaurs must fit neatly into it. The current belief is that dinosaurs lived from the Late Triassic, about 240 to 230 million years ago, to the end of the Cretaceous period, around 66 million years ago. Thus, according to evolutionists, dinosaurs existed on earth for 66 to 170 million years.
The Discovery of Soft Tissue in Dinosaurs
Structure of hemoglobin molecule containing four iron atoms that allow it to transport oxygen. (Illustra Media)
In 2005, North Carolina State University paleontologist Mary Schweitzer found soft, flexible tissue, including blood vessels and proteins, inside the leg bone of what evolutionists claim is a 68-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus rex bone. Since then, soft tissue, including collagen, blood vessels, hemoglobin, osteocalcin, actin, tubulin, and other cell remnants have been documented in a growing number of fossils in many different dinosaur groups that lived in different geological periods.[9]
In fact, soft tissue has now been found in hundreds of dinosaur fossils, strongly questioning the evolutionists’ claim that they lived around 65 to 170 million years ago.[10] From the science of forensic archaeology, we know that soft tissue in typical burial conditions can last anywhere from a few months to over 50 years. Multiple factors, such as heat, insect activity, microbial activity, burial depth, soil type, oxygen levels, moisture, pH, and bioturbation can significantly influence how quickly soft tissues decompose.[11]
Consequently, finding soft tissue in bones claimed to be over 65 million years old has created a major conundrum for evolutionists. In order to preserve their worldview, they must find an explanation for it. Evolutionists’ main response to the soft tissue evidence is simply to assert that soft tissue under natural conditions can remain as soft tissue for as long as 240 to 230 million years! This is begging the question.
Vessels isolated from a Tyrannosaurus cortical bone by demineralization in EDTA (ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid) preservative. These pictures of soft tissue belie the claim that these tissues are from 65 to 230 million years old. Images from the NC State press release, 10 Sept 2025.
Latest Study Finds Hemoglobin
In one of the most recent studies (10 Sept 2025), a team used Resonance Raman spectroscopy (RRS) to confirm partial hemoglobin preservation in dinosaur remains. The scientist, Mary Schweitzer, and her students at North Carolina State University, researched one attempted explanation, namely that the presence of iron from the dinosaur’s hemoglobin helped to preserve the proteins by creating cross-links that, evolutionists claim, help to stabilize soft tissue.[12] Their study claims to have found support for the view that hemoglobin can preserve soft tissue to the level that it looks like it was just a few years old when actually it was over 65 million years old.
Specifically, they used light waves to identify a molecule’s energetic ‘fingerprint’ to confirm the presence of heme bound both to globin proteins and minerals associated with iron oxidation.[13] They argue that the binding serves to preserve soft tissue. The researchers began with the assumptions of evolution and deep time, however, and sought to explain the results within that belief. The main problem is that the Resonance Raman spectroscopy technique gave good results for the molecular structure, but no direct evidence that the iron in heme allowed a high level of preservation of the original tissue for over 65 million years. At best, it may have slightly reduced the decay rate. The images in the paper show preservation of the tissue itself, not just of molecules cross-linked by iron oxides.
Bone cells (osteocytes) discovered by Schweitzer, showing cell nuclei and connecting fibrils (filopodia) from a Brachylophosaurus (a hadrosaur, i.e., a duckbill dinosaur) that evolutionists claim is 80 million years old!
A similar claim about the preservation potential of iron was debunked years ago (Brian Thomas, ICR, 2023). The only foolproof way to determine if the iron heme achieves millions of years of preservation is to, (1) first evaluate the dinosaur tissue, then (2) bury it in the way it was thought to have been buried 65 million years ago, and then (3) after 65 million years, unearth it to determine if the soft tissue was preserved at a high level. Obviously, this type of experiment is impossible to do. An alternative would be to follow the above protocol and unearth the dinosaur a century later and then evaluate the soft tissue decay level. After a century, it would be expected that of iron was an effective preservative, very minor, or close to no decay, would have occurred. It would take generations of scientists to perform such a test.
In 2012, Kevin Anderson and Mark Armitage dug out a Triceratops brow horn in Hell Creek, Montana. When Mark opened up the horn, he discovered stretchy and pliable uncalcified soft tissue.[14] The discovery of these preserved organic materials is much more plausibly explained by the bones being thousands of years old, rather than tens of millions of years old. These discoveries challenge the very concept of ‘deep time,’ an absolutely critical component of evolution.[15]
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Conclusions
In the end, the iron preservation hypothesis does not solve the problem of how soft tissue could survive over 65 million years. Schweitzer’s idea is that iron-generated free radicals cause protein preservation, but in contrast, free radicals normally degrade proteins and other organic matter.
Creationists point to the presence of soft tissue and biomolecules like DNA as solid empirical evidence against an old Earth. Dr. Brian Thomas, in his University of Liverpool Ph.D. Dissertation, Ancient and Fossil Bone Collagen Remnants, confirms that many examples of collagen exist in dinosaur bones, concluding that the preservation level in the bones supports the notion that the bones are not even close to the assigned dates that evolutionists use to support their commitment to deep time.[16]
References
[1] Wilf, Herbert, et al., “There’s plenty of time for evolution,” PNAS 107(52):22454-22546 28 December 2010.
[2] Wilf, et al., 2010.
[3] Merrill, Ronald T., Our Magnetic Earth: The Science of Geomagnetism, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, p. 86.
[4] Dalrymple, G. Brent “The age of the Earth in the twentieth century: A problem (mostly) solved,” Special Publications, Geological Society of London 190(1):205–221, November 2001.
[5] Meister, Morris, et al., The Wonderworld of Science, Book Eight, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New York, NY, pp. 90, 96, 1950.
[6] Holmes, Arthur, Principles of Physical Geology, Wiley, New York, NY, 1978.
[7] Vardiman, Larry, et al., Radioisotopes and the Age of The Earth, Volumes 1 and 2, Institute for Creation Research, El Cajon, CA, 2000 & 2005.
[8] Macdougall, Doug, Nature’s Clocks: How Scientists Measure the Age of Almost Everything. University of California Press, Oakland, CA, 2009.
[9] Thomas, Brian, Ancient and Fossil Bone Collagen Remnants, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, England, 2019.
[10] For a partial, detailed list of the soft tissue finds in dinosaurs, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dinosaur_specimens_with_preserved_soft_tissue, July 2025.
[11] Long, B.J.N., et al, “Resonance Raman confirms partial hemoglobin preservation in dinosaur remains,” Proceedings of the Royal Society A, 10 September 2025. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2025.0175
[12] Schweitzer, M.H., “Soft tissue preservation in terrestrial Mesozoic vertebrates,” Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 39:187–216. Bibcode:2011AREPS..39..187S. doi:10.1146/annurev-earth-040610-133502, May 2011.
[13] Peake, Tracey, “Precise imaging technique confirms hemoglobin preservation in dinosaur bone,” press release from
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 10 September 2025.
https://news.ncsu.edu/2025/09/precise-imaging-technique-confirms-hemoglobin-preservation-in-dinosaur-bone/
The researchers used RR to target molecules with a heme-globin bond. They looked at samples from Brachylophosaurus, T. rex, demineralized modern ostrich bone and human blood.
“The signal increase shows that hemoglobin is present, but changes in the signal also allow us to see that as the hemoglobin degrades, goethite may form on the iron within hemoglobin,” Hallen says. “We can also pinpoint where the ring-like structure of heme is being damaged. And we saw this process in both modern and ancient samples, so we know that it happens fairly quickly after death.”
The results also rule out the possibility of sample contamination.
[14] Armitage, M.H., and K.L. Anderson, Acta Histochem 115:603–608, 2013.
[15] Episode 9, “Soft Tissue in Dinosaurs,” Is Genesis History?, https://isgenesishistory.com/soft-tissue/.
[16] Thomas, p. 134. See also his growing list of soft tissue discoveries in animals assumed millions of years old.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,900 publications in 14 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.