Since the late 1990s, with increasing frequency, evidence of primordial biological material in dinosaur bones has percolated up through the scientific journals.
At first, evolutionists ignored it. Then they impugned the motives of the researchers, like Mary Schweitzer. When she wouldn’t back down, and demonstrated her case with more tests, they acted as if expressions of surprise would suffice to change the subject. Then they tried to deny it was dinosaur tissue, claiming it was bacterial contamination that just happened to look like red blood cells and blood vessels. When cartilage was reported (which bacteria do not have), they invented implausible theories of how it could survive millions of years under special conditions of chemistry. All the while, more reports of soft tissue have kept coming, including micrographs of osteocytes, melanocytes, and even (gasp) DNA. Evolutionists and other believers in deep time had long been adamant that DNA could not last millions of years—only one million at most, but certainly not back to the time of dinosaurs.
Now that incontrovertible evidence of primordial DNA in dinosaurs has reached a tipping point, evolutionists have changed their strategy again – more on that after looking at the latest evidence.
Nuclear preservation in the cartilage of the Jehol dinosaur Caudipteryx (Nature Communications Biology). Some will dispute
Previous findings on dinosaur cartilage material from the Late Cretaceous of Montana suggested that cartilage is a vertebrate tissue with unique characteristics that favor nuclear preservation. Here, we analyze additional dinosaur cartilage in Caudipteryx (STM4-3) from the Early Cretaceous Jehol biota of Northeast China. The cartilage fragment is highly diagenetically altered when observed in ground-sections but shows exquisite preservation after demineralization. It reveals transparent, alumino-silicified chondrocytes and brown, ironized chondrocytes. The histochemical stain Hematoxylin and Eosin (that stains the nucleus and cytoplasm in extant cells) was applied to both the demineralized cartilage of Caudipteryx and that of a chicken. The two specimens reacted identically, and one dinosaur chondrocyte revealed a nucleus with fossilized threads of chromatin. This is the second example of fossilized chromatin threads in a vertebrate material. These data show that some of the original nuclear biochemistry is preserved in this dinosaur cartilage material and further support the hypothesis that cartilage is very prone to nuclear fossilization and a perfect candidate to further understand DNA preservation in deep time.
No one is disputing these claims. Since the paper is open access, you can look at the photos for yourself. The authors say,
Based on the size, the morphology, the location of the structures seen in the dinosaur cell and based on the H&E staining pattern of the avian cartilage cells, the most logical conclusion is that this Caudipteryx cell preserves an original dinosaur nucleus. It sits within the cell cytoplasm, is delimited by a nuclear membrane and further contains darker stained material showing the morphological characteristics of condensed chromatin threads.
Exceptional Fossil Preservation Suggests That Discovering Dinosaur DNA May Not Be Impossible (Forbes). If a science story gets reported in a business magazine like Forbes, it’s significant.
Organic molecule remnants found in nuclei of ancient dinosaur cells (Phys.org).
This means the 125-million-year-old dinosaur cell has a nucleus so well-preserved that it retains some original biomolecules and threads of chromatin….
…. So far, these methods have only worked for young fossils (not much older than about one million years), but they have never worked for dinosaur material. Dinosaurs are considered way too old to retain any DNA. However, the chemical data collected by the scientists from IVPP and STM suggest otherwise.
Even though more data must be collected, this study definitely shows that 125-million-year old fossil dinosaur cells cannot be considered 100% rock. They are not completely “stonified.” Instead, they still contain remnants of organic molecules.
Scientists find cells of a 125M year-old dinosaur that contains remnants of organic molecules (The Daily Mail). Alida Bailleul, one of the paper’s co-authors, had co-authored a paper in National Science Review (April 2020) claiming “Evidence of proteins, chromosomes and chemical markers of DNA in exceptionally preserved dinosaur cartilage.” Of the current find, she says,
‘Let’s be honest, we are obviously interested in fossilized cell nuclei because this is where most of the DNA should be if DNA was preserved,’ Bailleul explained.
‘So, we have good preliminary data, very exciting data, but we are just starting to understand cellular biochemistry in very old fossils. At this point, we need to work more.’
Switching Strategies
It’s become clear that evolutionists don’t have any options left to deny that this is original, primordial tissue from dinosaur fossils. The current paper admits this, and makes the problem even worse for deep time believers:
The preservation of cell nuclei in long extinct organisms is currently considered rare and exceptional. Due to the fragility of nucleic acids, nuclei are thought to degrade extremely rapidly after death (sometimes within hours postmortem), leaving almost no chance for these structures to enter the fossil record. However, the paleontological literature is full of histological reports of fossil tissues with exquisitely preserved nuclei and even sub-nuclear structures like nucleoli or chromosomes in multiple stages of cell division. These examples are numerous and include nuclei from permafrost-preserved Cenozoic mammals, Mesozoic dinosaurs, various Cenozoic, Mesozoic, and Paleozoic plants, and even embryo-like fossil cell clusters that are more than 600 Million years (My) old.
Q: So what are evolutionists to do? They didn’t predict this. They
The apparent strategy is to engage in cognitive dissonance: indeed, to embrace it. In other words, they’re saying, “We know that DNA cannot last long, but it did.” The paper demonstrates this:
These data show that some of the original nuclear biochemistry is preserved in this dinosaur cartilage material and further support the hypothesis that cartilage is very prone to nuclear fossilization and a perfect candidate to further understand DNA preservation in deep time." CEH