Dino Soft Tissue

Does anyone remember the headline of the Calgary Herald on April 13, 2007? I’ll give you a hint: “T-Rex Becomes Today’s Chicken”. A quick summary of the article is that researchers have decoded the genetic material of a T-Rex and found its closest evolutionary relative is a chicken. The irony of seeing a mighty T-Rex related to a chicken made the punchline of many late-night talk shows.

But I think the true significance of this was overlooked. Back in 2005, Dr. Mary Schweitzer made a significant discovery¹. She found soft dinosaur tissue in a fossil bone that was allegedly 65 million years old. How soft is soft? On the TV program 60 Minutes, Dr. Schweitzer was shown physically stretching the tissue with tweezers proving that the tissue had neither rotted away or permineralized. The soft tissue had intact blood vessels with red blood cells along with proteins and DNA, which is how researchers could compare the T-Rex and chicken’s DNA.

So, the burning question is, “How can soft tissue with DNA and proteins survive for tens or hundreds of millions of years?” Well, it simply can’t.

Let me explain. Studies show that even with the most ideal form of preservation (no exposure to water, radiation, bacteria or enzyme attack and temperature held at a continuous -5 degrees Celsius), DNA should be able to retain its form for 6.8 million years² (more realistic data estimates it between 10,000 to 100,000 years³).

However, I don’t think Whirlpool or Frigidaire existed back then or can design a refrigerator that could last that long. According to the laws established by chemistry and biology, these organic materials should have completely degraded.

The most obvious conclusion is that dinosaurs cannot be millions of years old. This follows a Biblical creation account in which the world is measured in thousands of years and not billions of years.

1. Smith, Calvin. “Dinosaur Soft Tissue.” Com, 20 Apr. 2020, creation.com/dinosaur-soft-tissue. Accessed Feb 22, 2022.
2. Kaplan, M. “DNA has a 521-year half life”. Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 10 Oct 2012, https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2012.11555. Accessed Feb 22, 2022.
3. Poinar, H. N., and Stankiewicz, B. A. “Protein Preservation and DNA Retrieval from Ancient Tissues.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, The National Academy of Sciences, 20 July 1999, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC17532/#:~:text=It%20has%20been% 20suggested%2C%20based,environments%20(11%E2%80%9313). Accessed Feb 22, 2022.