A mummified dinosaur with soft tissues
gabriel
www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/07/04/news-to-note-07042009#three
A "mummified" dinosaur with soft tissues fossilized-evidence of
watery disaster?
We first reported on the "mummy," named Dakota, back in March of
last year. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that not only the
bones, but also soft tissues such as skin, were fossilized. (This
is different from the preservation of unfossilized soft tissue
inside dinosaur bones, which we reported on most recently in
May.)
Scientists have now released a paper on Dakota, a hadrosaur, in
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, where they describe how
sediments formed a "mineral cast" that allowed for such
remarkable preservation, with even individual cell-like
structures retained. Even some organic material-specifically,
amino acids-remain, intermixed with the sedimentary minerals.
BBC News explains how the scientists believe the creature was
preserved so completely:
They believe that the dinosaur fell into a watery grave, with
little oxygen present to speed along the decay process.
Meanwhile, very fine sediments reacted with the soft tissues of
the animal, forming a kind of cement.
That explanation, of course, is most consistent with catastrophic
flooding. Yale University paleontologist Derek Briggs (who, by
the way, was one of the paleontologists who visited the Creation
Museum several days ago-see item 1) believes the amazing
preservation may not be so rare, either: "One can't be certain,
but I suspect that in many cases these kinds of skin impressions
have gone unnoticed and people have gone after the skeleton,
which is of course what you'd expect to be preserved. This kind
of discovery just demonstrates very clearly that soft tissue does
survive, that the processes involved are unusual but not
absolutely extraordinary-so there's no reason why this kind of
material won't be discovered again." Dakota is yet another
reminder of God's judgment by water, the result of which was a
fossil graveyard that covers the world.
============================================
A remarkably well-preserved fossil of a dinosaur has been
analysed by scientists writing in the journal Proceedings of the
Royal Society B.
They describe how the fossil's soft tissues were spared from
decay by fine sediments that formed a mineral cast.
Tests have shown that the fossil still holds cell-like structures
- but their constituent proteins have decayed.
The team says the cellular structure of the dinosaur's skin was
similar to that of dinosaurs' modern-day descendants.
A member of the duck-billed hadrosaur family, the fossil was
found in North Dakota in the US and has been nicknamed "Dakota".
Phil Manning of the University of Manchester and his
collaborators have been employing a number of techniques to tease
out as much information as they can from the fossil.
'Clean science'
They believe that the dinosaur fell into a watery grave, with
little oxygen present to speed along the decay process.
Meanwhile, very fine sediments reacted with the soft tissues of
the animal, forming a kind of cement.
As a result, the 66 million-year-old fossil still retains some of
the organic matter of the original dinosaur, mixed in with the
minerals.
The team found that although the proteins that made up the
hadrosaur's skin had degraded, the amino acid building blocks
that once made up the proteins were still present.
"We're looking at the altered products of proteins from the skin
of this animal, locked within the three dimensional mineralised
skin," Dr Manning told BBC News.
"You're looking at cell-like structures; you slice through this
and you're looking at the cell structure of dinosaur skin. That
is absolutely gobsmacking."
A study of the cell structures show that, like modern-day
crocodiles and birds, the skin was made up of two layers: a
surface epidermis against a deeper dermis layer made up of dense
connective tissue.
Although that finding is what might have been expected based on
the presumed lineage of the modern animals, Dr Manning said it is
"clean science".
"If you've got a hypothesis and you can't test it, it remains a
hypothesis. Now we've had an exceptionally preserved dinosaur
which has allowed us to ask that question and answer it for the
first time," he said.
Studies of the skin from across the fossil show that the skin was
thinner toward the flanks, between the tail and the hips, where
other hadrosaur fossils have shown bite marks. Dr Manning said
that region may have been the dinosaur's "Achilles heel".
"If you understand the distribution of these structures in the
skin of a prey animal, you can understand something about
predator-prey interactions, and it might explain some of the
hadrosaur fossils we see with these bite marks," he said.
Derek Briggs, a palaeontologist at Yale University and an expert
in exceptionally preserved fossils, praised the work, saying that
the important step was elucidating the mechanism by which such
fossils could be preserved.
"One can't be certain, but I suspect that in many cases these
kinds of skin impressions have gone unnoticed and people have
gone after the skeleton, which is of course what you'd expect to
be preserved," he told BBC News.
"This kind of discovery just demonstrates very clearly that soft
tissue does survive, that the processes involved are unusual but
not absolutely extraordinary - so there's no reason why this kind
of material won't be discovered again."
Dr Manning said that studies on Dakota were continuing apace on a
fossil he described as a pleasure to work with.
"Whereas most of us have to deal with disjointed sentences and
occasional fractured words to reconstruct the volumes of the
fossil record, you've got a whole chapter lying there and you can
flick through the pages at your leisure," he said.
Wombat
So, catastrophic flooding leads to anoxic conditions? Next time,
please engage what passes for your brain before hitting your keyboard.
Wombat
snip material Gabriel misunderstands
Dan Listermann
"Wombat" <tri...@multiweb.nl> wrote in message
news:c60122ea-2624-4835...@t33g2000yqe.googlegroups.com...
No, no, you did not understand. Bodies of water did not exist before the
Great Flood!
.
Devils Advocaat
I have a theory that bodies are just water's way of moving from one
place to another. :P
Andrew
> No, no, you did not understand. Bodies of water did not
> exist before the Great Flood!
"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the
waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God
made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under
the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament:
and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the
evening and the morning were the second day. And God said,
Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one
place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so." Genesis 1:6-9
"In the six hundredth year of Noah's life, in the second month,
the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the
fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of
heaven were opened. And the rain was upon the earth forty
days and forty nights. . And the flood was forty days upon
the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it
was lift up above the earth. And the waters prevailed, and were
increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face
of the waters. And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the
earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven,
were covered. Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail;
and the mountains were covered." Genesis 7:11-20
"For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God
the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water
and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being over-
flowed with water, perished.
But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word
are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment
and perdition of ungodly men." 2 Peter 3:5-7
Dan Listermann
"Andrew" <andrew....@usa.net> wrote in message
news:ZPudnXxMtYj6nM7X...@earthlink.com...
your Great Flood?
.
Andrew Cunningham
> "Dan Listermann" wrote in messagenews:bd944$4a526e41$4a53bf9f$80...@FUSE.NET...
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/enoch24.gif
If you look closely, you can see the windows of heaven.