RSF's 2012 List of Not So Old Things

* Dinosaur Soft Tissue, Adam & Eve in DNA, 3rd Stage Supernovas Nowhere, Carbon 14 Everywhere: Welcome to RSF's 2012 List of Not So Old Things! Real Science Friday co-hosts Fred Williams and Bob Enyart observe their annual tradition by updating their growing list of scientific observations that challenge those who claim that the earth is millions of years old. Many of these scientific finds demand a re-evaluation of supposed billion-year ages:

* "65-million" Year Old T. rex Soft Tissue: North Carolina State University discovered original biological tissue from a supposedly 65-million year old Tyrannosaurus Rex thighbone, with transparent and pliable blood vessels containing red blood cells!  See these photos at Smithsonian Magazine and at MS-NBC, and then see a 2007 Nat'l Geographic report, a 2009 Nat'l Geo. confirmation, and the Hell Creek Formation excavation site worked by famed paleontologist Jack Horner of Montana State University. In 2011 ten leading universities and institutes including Harvard, the University of Manchester, and the University of Pennsylvania published in PLoS One, a peer-reviewed journal, that they have verified that presumed dinosaur material is indeed original biological tissue from a dinosaur! Combined with the research on Egyptian mummies that established 10,000 years as an upper limit for how long such biological molecules could survive, this is another reason why creationists refer to dinosaurs as missionary lizards. Interestingly, PZ Myers recently mocked RSF and repeated the now widely-discredited evolutionist hope that the "soft-tissue" dinosaur finds were "biofilm" contamination from bacteria. But as 60 Minutes shows and Bob Enyart sums it up, "This is dinosaur."

* Iron-clad "Dinosaur-era" tissue from "70-million year old" Mosasaur: In this peer-reviewed report by researchers including from Lund University in Sweden and Southern Methodist University in Dallas, scientists confirm another biological tissue discovery using sophisticated techniques to rule out modern contamination, bio-film, etc., concluding that original biological collagen exists in a small bone from an extinct marine reptile called a Mosasaur. Yet according to a report in Science Magazine as it relates to the discoveries of dinosaur tissue, scientists calculate the maximum survival time of collagen not in millions but in thousands of years.

* More Soft Dinosaur Tissue, Now from an "80 Million" Year Old Hadrosaur: Consistent with the expectations of biblical creationists, according to Nat'l Geographic, there's yet another discovery of soft tissue in a dinosaur, this time, a hadrosaur, with soft blood vessels, connective tissue, and blood cell protein amino acid chains partially sequenced at Harvard University. This allegedly 80-million year-old non-fossilized duck-billed dinosaur tissue was discovered by a team led by researchers at North Carolina State University. Harvard, et al., wanted to get some soft dinosaur tissue so they put together a team and just went out and found some. Consider all the potential soft tissue, and perhaps even DNA, lost to humanity because of secular universities ignoring previous claims by young-earth creationists due to the false evolutionary timescale which so biased paleontologists that they would never even look for non-decomposed original biological tissue inside of dinosaur bones.

* Now Biological Material from a "150-Million" Year Old Archaeopteryx: One would think that these "dinosaur-era" finds would be trumpeted as the scientific discovery of our age. But as late as 2012, so many evolutionists whom we talk to at RSF:
1) have never even heard of these developments
2) initially deny them (soft-tissue deniers)
3) assume that it must be creationists who claim to have found them, and
4) repeat, as PZ Myers did when criticizing Real Science Friday, the repeatedly debunked claims that these are not dinosaur tissue but bacterial biofilm contamination.

Now The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports the discovery of various types of original biological material in archeopteryx feathers and bones that allegedly has survived for 150 million years.

The New Scientist report, Soft tissue remnants discovered in Archaeopteryx, put it:

It boasts more than just... impressions of long-gone feathers. One of the world's most famous fossils... Archaeopteryx – also contains remnants of the feathers' soft tissue. ... "It's amazing that that chemistry is preserved after 150 million years." ... palaeontologists had long thought that only impressions remained. [But] "There is soft-tissue chemistry preserved in places that people didn't expect it," says [geochemist Roy] Wogelius.  [RSF: Unlike the other soft-tissue discoveries, with this specimen, not enough biological material was discovered to call it tissue but only remnants of tissue. For excerpts and a comprehensive list of the major peer-reviewed journal papers confirming these discoveries, see RealScienceFriday.com/dinosaur-soft-tissue.]

* The Scablands: cover thousands of square miles of eastern Washington and against fierce geologists claims of slow formation over millions of years, there is now overwhelming evidence as presented even in a NOVA TV show that the Scablands formed rapidly from catastrophic Lake Missoula regional flood.

* The Heart Mountain Detachment: in Wyoming just east of Yellowstone, this mountain did not break apart slowly by uniformitarian processes but in only about half-an-hour as widely reported including in the evolutionist LiveScience.com, "Land Speed Record: Mountain Moves 62 Miles in 30 Minutes." The evidence indicates that this mountain of rock covering 425 square miles rapidly broke into 50 pieces and slide apart over an area of more than 1,300 square miles in a biblical, not a "geological," timeframe. 

* "150 Million" year-old Squid Ink Not Decomposed: This ink had dehydrated but had not decomposed! The British Geological Survey's Dr. Phil Wilby, who excavated the fossil, said, "It is difficult to imagine how you can have something as soft and sloppy as an ink sac fossilised in three dimensions, still black, and inside a rock that is 150 million years old." And the Daily Mail states that, "the black ink was of exactly the same structure as that of today’s version." And Wilby added, "Normally you would find only the hard parts like the shell and bones fossilised but... these creatures... can be dissected as if they are living animals, you can see the muscle fibres and cells. It is difficult to imagine... The structure is similar to ink from a modern squid so we can write with it..." Why is this difficult for evolutionists to imagine? Because as Dr. Carl Wieland writes, "Chemical structures 'fall apart' all by themselves over time due to the randomizing effects of molecular motion."

* Rare School of Jellyfish Fossilized: Previously, seven sedimentary layers had been described as taking a million years to form. And because jellyfish have no skeleton, it is rare to find them among fossils. But now, a school of jellyfish fossils have been found in those same seven layers in central Wisconsin, showing that they were not deposited over a million years, but during a single event and quickly enough to trap a school of jellyfish.

* Yellowstone Petrified Tree Strata: The National Park Service took down their incorrect sign that had claimed petrified trees in a dozen different strata had proved that millions of years had passed during the rise and fall of successive forests. But the petrified trees there had no root systems, and the trees were clearly transported by water and settled into rapidly deposited sediments just as had occurred in Spirit Lake after Mount St. Helens erupted. Bob Enyart had the honor of working with the head ranger at a National Park (had dinner at his home; discussed how this sign could be removed), and he corresponded with his colleagues at Yellowstone and urged them to correct or remove the sign. They removed it. See also AIG. (The National Park Service responded to a Freedom of Information Request from RSF but so far all we've accomplished is to determine that the thumbnail photo above is not the historic sign that has been removed. We'll continue to pursue this but if you have a photo or a link to one of the sign in question, please send it along to Bob@KGOV.com for it was taken down before the Internet became popular, and so we haven't been able to find it online.)

* Asiatic vs. European Honeybees: These two populations of bees have been separated supposedly for seven million years. A researcher decided to put the two together to see what would happen. What we should have here is a failure to communicate that would have resulted after their "language" evolved over millions of years. However, European and Asiatic honeybees are still able to communicate, putting into doubt the evolutionary claim that they were separated over "geologic periods." For more, see the Public Library of Science, Asiatic Honeybees Can Understand Dance Language of European Honeybees.

* Carlsbad Cavern: New Mexico, Nat'l Park Service sign said 260 MYA, then 8MYA, then 2MYA, and then they took down the sign that had claimed that formation took millions of year. On Bob Enyart's family vacation in 2005 the heard on site what you can hear from Carlsbad's official audio tour, which now states that the, "rate of formation depends on the amount of available water." See RSF 11-7-08 at KGOV.

*  Now It's Allegedly Two Million Year-Old Leaves: "When we started pulling leaves out of the soil, that was surreal, to know that it's millions of years old..." sur-re-al: adjective: a bizarre mix of fact and fantasy. In this case, the leaves are the facts. Earth scientists from Ohio State and the University of Minnesota say that wood and leaves they found in the Canadian Arctic are at least two million years old, and perhaps more than ten million years old, even though the leaves are just dry and crumbly and the wood still burns!

* Lihir Gold Deposit: in Papua New Guinea, evolutionists assumed the more than 20 million ounces of gold in the Lihir reserve took millions of years to deposit, but as reported in Science magazine geologists can now demonstrate that the deposit could have formed in thousands of years, or far more quickly!

* Box Canyon, Idaho: Geologists now think Box Canyon in Idaho, USA, was carved by a catastrophic flood and not slowly over millions of years with 1) huge plunge pools formed by waterfalls; 2) the almost complete removal of large basalt boulders from the canyon; 3) an eroded notch on the plateau at the top of the canyon; and 4) water scour marks on the basalt plateau leading to the canyon. Scientists calculate that the flood was so large that it could have eroded the whole canyon in as little as 35 days. Creation Magazine, Sept. – Nov. 2008 page 7 from Science 23 May 2008, pp. 1067-1070

* Manganese Nodules Rapid Formation: Allegedly, as claimed at the Wikipedia entry from 2005 through 2012: "Nodule growth is one of the slowest of all geological phenomena – in the order of a centimeter over several million years." Wow, that would be slow! And a Texas A&M Marine Sciences technical slide presentation says, “They grow very slowly (mm/million years) and can be tens of millions of years old.” But according to a World Almanac documentary they have formed "around beer cans," said marine geologist Dr. John Yates in the 1997 video Universe Beneath the Sea: The Next Frontier. There are also reports of manganese nodules forming on World War II ships. See more at TOL and in the print edition of the Journal of Creation.

* "6,000 year-old" Mitochondrial Eve: As the Bible calls "Eve... the mother of all living" (Gen. 3:20), genetic researchers have named the one woman from whom all humans have descended "Mitochondrial Eve." But in a scientific attempt to date her existence, they openly admit that they included chimpanzee DNA in their analysis in order to get what they viewed as a reasonably old date of 200,000 years ago (which is still surprisingly recent from their perspective, but old enough not to strain Darwinian theory too much). But then as widely reported including by Science magazine, when they dropped the chimp data and used only actual human mutation rates, that process determined that Eve lived only six thousand years ago! In Ann Gibbon's Science article, "Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock," rather than again using circular reasoning by assuming their conclusion (that humans evolved from ape-like creatures), they performed their calculations using actual measured mutation rates. This peer-reviewed journal then reported that if these rates have been constant, "mitochondrial Eve… would be a mere 6000 years old." See also the journal Nature and creation.com's "A shrinking date for Eve," and Walt Brown's assessment. Expectedly though, evolutionists have found a way to reject their own unbiased finding (the conclusion contrary to their self-interest) by returning to their original method of using circular reasoning, as reported in the American Journal of Human Genetics, "calibrating against recent evidence for the divergence time of humans and chimpanzees,"  to reset their mitochondrial clock back to 200,000 years.

* Even Younger Y-Chromosomal Adam: (Although he should be called, "Y-Chromosomal Noah.") While we inherit our mtDNA only from our mothers, only men have a Y chromosome (which incidentally genetically disproves the claim that the fetus is "part of the woman's body," since the little boy's y chromosome could never be part of mom's body). Based on documented mutation rates on and the extraordinary lack of mutational differences in this specifically male DNA, the Y-chromosomal Adam would have lived only a few thousand years ago! (He's significantly younger than mtEve because of the genetic bottleneck of the global flood.) Yet while the Darwinian camp wrongly claimed for decades that humans were 98% genetically similar to chimps, secular scientists today, using the same type of calculation only more accurately, have unintentionally documented that chimps are about as far genetically from what makes a human being a male, as mankind itself is from sponges! Geneticists have found now that sponges are 70% the same as humans genetically, and separately, that human and chimp Y chromosomes are  "horrendously" 30% different. (See also Why Was Canaan Cursed?)

* Genome "History" Contradicts Alleged Tree of Life: RSF loves to report on the scientists who are sequencing the entire genomes of more and more species. For not only do Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosomal Adam provide strong evidence for biblical creationism, but so does the chimpanzee Y chromosome and the genomes of  kangaroos, worms, and sponges which are 70% human :)

* Spiral Galaxies: after their alleged billions of years the spiral arms of “pinwheel” galaxies should now be deformed, since as has been known for decades, the speed of the arms does not align with the galaxy centers, so there is “missing billions of years” of deformation in spiral galaxies. Atheistic astronomers have great difficulty even explaining where our own Moon came from, let alone the entire universe, and they admit they can’t even figure out which formed first, stars or galaxies, showing that their Big Bang theory does not merit the absolute trust that millions put in it. Thus far from being able to explain how the universe could form apart from God, they are groping in the dark. See RSF 7-25-08 at KGOV.

* Supernova Remnants: an explosion appeared in the night sky in 1054 A.D. as a supernova remnant (SNR) in the Crab Nebula. Evolutionary scientists have measured and calculated the expected rate that stars would explode. However, if the universe is billions of years old, the vast majority of SNRs (like the Crab Nebula) that should exist, are missing! Instead, the number of SNRs corresponds well to the expected number if the universe is less than 10,000 years old, especially considering that astronomers have not found a single SNR at Stage 3 (a great diameter)! Of course, if the universe is young, there should be no State 3 SNRs! Listen to this Real Science Friday program at KGOV.com!

* The Missing Big Bang Shadow: The missing "shadow" of the Big Bang from behind nearby galaxies is a prediction of biblical creationism. Yet the Astrophical Journal reported that no shadow was detected after averaging measurements from NASA data for 31 galaxy clusters. As a Huntsville, Alabama scientist Dr. Richard Lieu stated, "Either... the Big Bang is blown away or ... there is something else going on'." Other evidence consistent with a not-so-old universe includes connected galaxies, galaxy clusters, the missing gas and dust of intracluster medium (ICM) in globular clusters of hundreds of thousands of stars purportedly emitting matter from solar winds for billions of years, and nearby blue stars!

* Saturn’s Rings: do not show the stability predicted by their presumed 50 to 100 million year-old age, but have changed significantly since man’s first mappings. See RSF 4-10-06 at KGOV.

* Earth's Magnetic Field Rapid Decay: Disproving any notion that magnetic "reversals" must occur over long periods, as documented by Dr. Walt Brown, Evidence Suggesting Extremely Rapid Field Variations During a Geomagnetic Reversal, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 1989; Earth's Field Flipping Fast, New Scientist, 1992; New Evidence for Extraordinarily Rapid Change of the Geomagnetic Field During a Reversal, Nature 1995. "At one time the orientation of the earth's magnetic field changed rapidly by up to 6 degrees per day for several days," Brown, 2008. Regarding the rapid decay of the earth's magnetic field, for which careful worldwide measurements exist since 1900, with the data curve consistent with the decay rate going back to measurements from 1835 to the 20th century, see RSF's Spiders & Termites & Magnets!

* Polystrate Fossils: In a thousand locations including the Fossil Cliffs of Joggins, Nova Scotia, polystrate fossils such as trees span many strata disproving the claim that the layers were deposited slowly over millions of years. See CRSQ June 2006, ICR Impact #316, and RSF 8-11-06 at KGOV.com

* Fossils with Protein, DNA and Bacteria: While these kinds of discoveries were mostly just winked because of the old-earth evolutionary assumptions, now that original dinosaur tissue has been confirmed, the existence of biological material and even living bacteria in allegedly million-year-old specimens should be acknowledge and re-assessed. As listed by Dr. Walt Brown…
- allegedly 17 million  year old magnolia leaf contains DNA (Scientific American 1993)
- allegedly 120 million  year old insect fossil contains DNA  (Nature 1993)
- allegedly 200 million  year old fish fossil contains DNA (Science. News 1992)
- allegedly 30 million  year old bee fossil contains LIVING bacteria (Science 1995)
- allegedly 600 million  year old rock contains LIVING bacillus (Nature 2000).

* Carbon-14 Found Everywhere It's Not Supposed To Be: Carbon-14 decays in only thousands of years and therefore cannot last for millions. Thus evolutionists did not expect to find C-14 EVERYWHERE it shouldn't be if the earth were old (Answers Jan - Mar 2011). Carbon-14 is found in petrified wood, coal, oil, limestone, graphite, natural gas, amber, marble, deep ground water, dinosaur fossils, and even in supposedly billion-year-old diamonds! A secondary assumption by old-earth scientists proposed that the C-14 in diamonds (coal, etc.) must have come from C-13 and neutron capture. However, as a geologist with a background in nuclear physics explained to RSF, it is the heavier elements beginning with Sodium that readily absob neutrons and that the relatively light element of Carbon is used to slow down neutrons but in practice light elements like Carbon-13 do not capture neutrons. And as Dr. Paul Giem writes, "since nitrogen-14 captures neutrons 110,000 times more easily than does carbon-13," samples with even tiny amounts of nitrogen would dramatically increase carbon dates, such that, "If neutron capture is a significant source of carbon-14 in a given sample, radiocarbon dates should vary wildly with the nitrogen content of the sample." Giem adds, "I know of no such data." Recognizing the scarce crustal radioactivity as reported by the U.S.G.S. for coal, basalt, shales, granite, fly ash, etc., Dr. Jonathan Sarfati builds upon Dr. Giem's research arguing that neutron capture could account for less than one 10,000th of the C-14 in diamonds (see these peer-reviewed calculations), and similarly, there would have to be thousands of times more uranium, thorium, etc. throughout the earth's crust everywhere that these globally dispersed materials are found. RSF offered famed paleontologists Jack Horner and Mary Schweitzer a grant of $23,000 to carbon date their biological dinosaur tissue, which money RSF saved thanks to the peer-reviewed papers that are now carbon dating and finding plenty of modern carbon in soft-tissue dinosaur fossils! That Mosasaur (above, shown by researchers to have original biological material and not  contamination, also contained five percent modern carbon! Radiocarbon also exists even in supposedly million-year-old two-mile deep natural gas wells (CRSQ Fall 2007): "Once again, fossil gas is not carbon-14 dead. Thus, the age of the gases is on the order of thousands, not millions of years.” See RSF 3-28-08. C-14 in specimens supposedly millions or a billion years old is so ubiquitous that it is longer an anomaly. And while old-earthers had hoped they could attribute it to contamination, Dr. John Baumgardner, of Los Alamos National Labs has documented in Dec, 2010 Creation Matters that C-14 exists even in the hardest naturally-occurring, contamination-resistant substance on earth, within diamonds. The earth is young.

* Wet Sand Hardens into Stone in Hours: According to scientists at Murdoch University, experiments prove that rocks don't need eons to harden but by adding soil bacteria to "soft sand," in a couple hours they end up with "something resembling marble more than sandstone." See RSF's Oops show; Science Alert and Creation Magazine, September 2010.

* Even Faster Rocks: As listed in Dec, 2010 Creation Matters, radiometric dating by Rubidium-Strontium gives a 1.3 billion year age for lava atop the Grand Canyon which would be 300 million years older than the precambrian basalt at the bottom of the canyon, as reported by Steven Austin, Ph.D. Also, the Potassium-Argon dating method incorrectly indicates that certain minerals hardened into stone 350,000 years ago, when in reality they solidified just recently, in 1986, from lava that flowed six years after the enormous 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. And some of the mineral within the then ten-year old rock was wrongly dated as two million years old.

* Yikes! Millions of Years are MISSING Here: According to evolutionary geologists, there are MORE THAN 100 MILLION YEARS MISSING in the extraordinarily regular and straight layers of the Grand Canyon. The supposed geological layers entirely missing from the beautifully formed Grand Canyon strata, according to the National Park Service, include the Ordovician and the Silurian. The flat boundaries between strata provide hard evidence proving that millions of years of erosion DID NOT OCCUR, and that therefore, those millions of years DID NOT PASS, neither in the canyon nor anywhere on Earth. Also, the enormous side canyons, many of which would be major tourist attractions if they had formed elsewhere on Earth, have no river, Colorado or otherwise, to explain their existence, for they were formed by the rapid drainage of groundwater in the weeks after the flood catastrophically formed after the breach of a natural dam. The Grand Canyon formed rapidly.

* Death Valley Volcano No Longer Thought To Have Erupted Before the Creation of the Earth: According to the USGS, "The understanding of the timing of eruptions [in Death Valley] and the timing of the building up to eruptions is changing." Anti-biblical bias frequently leads scientists to a knee-jerk claim of events occurring tens of thousands or millions of years ago, which if true would falsify the Bible account of the creation week and the literal interpretation of Genesis presented by Jesus Christ Himself. According to USA Today, in this particular instance, the old claim that a Death Valley eruption occurred 10,000 years ago, which as Isaac Newton himself would have pointed out, would awkwardly have been prior to God's creation of the universe, actually occurred only 800 years ago, according to more careful scientific observations, as per the trend evident on this list-of-not-so-old-things!

* Allegedly "Billion-Year-Old" Mostly Left-Handed Amino Acids: Like hands and hockey sticks, some molecules are right or left handed. Life uses 100% left-handed amino acids to build proteins. The laws of chemistry demonstrate that after death, amino acids racemize to a 50-50 mixture of right- and left-handed acids with England's Royal Society publishing a time range for the natural process which, "produces totally racemized amino acids in 10(5)-10(6) [100,000 to 1,000,000] years in most environments on the Earth." (Researchers have even begun dating whale carcasses by the spherical growth patterns in the eye by measuring the percent of left-handed acids in each lens layer.) Yet scientists find a large percent of left-handed amino acids in Wyoming oil shale (in the Green River region) and also in the supposedly three-billion year old Fig Tree Chert (flint-like sedimentary rock that can contain small fossils) in South Africa. So just as scientists have begun reporting on the carbon dating of dinosaur soft tissue, and as they've found unracemized amino acids in Pleistocene egg shells, RSF joins with the Royal Academy (although for different reasons) in calling for continued biomolecule research on dinosaur fossils including in determining their degree of left handedness! While even brief heating can speed the racemization process, nonetheless, RSF predicts the widespread left-handedness in supposedly tens of millions of years old dinosaur tissue.

* Engineer's Canyon & Palouse River Gorge: Asking geology professors to explain the photo on the right, they would claim that over millions of years that small stream eroded the canyon. In reality, this is Engineers' Canyon that formed in two days of drainage from Spirit Lake after Mount St. Helens eruptions in the 1980s. The stream didn't cause the canyon; the canyon caused the stream (as is also with the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River).

* The Palouse River Gorge: In the southeast of Washington State, the Palouse River Gorge is one of many features formed rapidly by 500 cubic miles of water catastrophically released with the breaching of a natural dam in the Lake Missoula Flood (which gouged out the Scablands as described above). So hard rock can be breached and eroded rapidly.

MORE: And from a recent issue of Creation magazine as discussed on RSF:
- Fossil wood from England dated at 25,000 years by carbon-14 embedded in allegedly 183-million year old limestone
- Diamonds from Botswana carbon-14 dated at 55,000 years old mined from rock dated 2 billion years old
- Mount St. Helens rock that should date as solidifying 30 years ago but dating 350,000 to 2.8 million years old
- Mammal hair found in supposedly 100 million year old amber looks surprisingly "similar" to... modern hair
- Geologists say Uganda lava is just thousands of years ago but it's radioactively dated at 773 million years old

Today's Resource: Have you browsed through our Science Department in the KGOV Store? Check out especially Walt Brown’s In the Beginning and Bob’s interviews with this great scientist in Walt Brown Week! You’ll also love Dr. Guillermo Gonzalez’ Privileged Planet (clip), and Illustra Media’s Unlocking the Mystery of Life (clip)! You can consider our BEL Science Pack; Bob Enyart’s Age of the Earth Debate; Bob's debate about Junk DNA with famous evolutionist Dr. Eugenie Scott; and the superb kids' radio programming, Jonathan Park: The Adventure Begins! And Bob strongly recommends that you subscribe to CMI’s tremendous Creation magazine and Ken Ham's Answers magazine!  (And you can order Darwin's Dilemma DVD by calling BEL at 1-800-8Enyart.)