More fossils with soft tissue

[otseng]

In the thread Soft Tissue in Tyrannosaurus rex, soft tissue was found in T Rex that was suppossedly older than 68 million years. Now soft tissue has been found in a fish that is suppossedly 380 million years old.

The fish's remarkably well-preserved soft tissues include bundles of muscle cells, blood vessels, and nerve cells. They were found during recent electron microscope scans, the research team reported last week in the British journal Biology Letters.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... issue.html

Though the article is not clear on if the soft tissue is mineralized or not, it would seem to imply that it is not. Either way, it is amazing that soft tissue can remain on a fish for over a third of a billion years.

The article also cites the first fossilized bone marrow.

Fossilized bone marrow has been discovered in ten-million-year-old frogs and salamanders from an ancient lake bed in Spain, scientists announced Friday.

The specimens are the first examples of fossilized bone marrow ever to be discovered. They are so well preserved that the original color of the tissue is still visible.

And when traces of such tissues are found, the original organic matter has usually been replaced by minerals during fossilization.

Not so with the Spanish amphibians.

"The marrow is organically preserved," McNamara said. "The original color of the marrow is preserved."

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... -bone.html

For debate:
What do soft tissue findings show in regards to the TOE (theory of evolution) and with the CM (creation model)?

[micatala]

This link here explains who the 'soft' tissue is sensationalised. It still is 'soft' but actully fossilized. This is misrepresnted by the 'creationsists'

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dinosaur/flesh.html

The article you cite infers that it is the news media that would be "sensationalizing".

A significantly better video was presented on MSNBC, and is linked from Scientists recover T. rex soft tissue 70-million-year-old fossil yields preserved blood vessels. No "Jurassic Park" footage, but here again, Schweitzer made easily misinterpreted statements contradicted by her published work. Just one example was her statement that the contents of vessels could be readily "squeezed out." Since she offered no laboratory procedure as a context, this left the impression that these remains just popped out of the bone as fresh as if the dinosaur died yesterday.

The print media have been a little better in their reportage. The Los Angeles Times ran the story on the 25th (front page below the fold) and used three microphotographs from the Science article. But even here, they referred to the recovered material as "fresh" at the same time describing the weeks long labor need to recover and reconstitute them.

So, unless creationists have infiltrated MSNBC and the Los Angeles Times, it would be a false accusation that creationists have sensationalized it.

I would agree that these discoveries have been siezed upon by the creationists. But to say that creationists say that it is fresh and thus sensationalizing is a misplaced accusation.

Perhaps it is fair to say that both some media organizations and some creationists have mischaracterized or sensationalized these findings. Some of the mischaracterizations seem to be the product of sloppy work, abetted by Schweitzer's own mistatements. It is probably also true that some of the mischaracterizations are intentional.

Part of the moral of the story to me is how easy it is for misinformation to get out there, both intentionally and unintentionally, and how often this happens. Certainly I am of the view that huge amounts of what is put out by creationist organizations falls into the realm of misinformation, sometimes in the form of distorted information, and sometimes merely because of selective omission of information.

Scientists, of course, are not immune from this phenomenon either, as I think we see here to some extent. However, the intentionality and the motives when there is intentionality are different.