Since the late 1990s, with increasing frequency, evidence of primordial biological material in dinosaur bones has percolated up through the scientific journals.
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 the classification of Caudipteryx as a “feathered
dinosaur,” but for present purposes, its assumed age is what matters. The fossil from the Jehol Biota in China is claimed to be 125 million years old, well before the alleged extinction event 66 million Darwin years ago. And yet the Chinese scientists report finding (and photographing) collagen fibers and cell nuclei with chromatin intact. Chromatin is the combination of histone proteins and DNA that make up chromosomes.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." CEH