:darwinsm:
Barbarian will spend hours arguing over nonsense because he knows it can help avoid a discussion over the evidence. When he accidentally shows his hand, what does he have? A busted flush.
Every time.
:mock: :blabla: barian
RSR's Annual Soft Tissue Show: The Deniers
- Thread starter Jefferson
- Start date
:darwinsm:
Barbarian will spend hours arguing over nonsense because he knows it can help avoid a discussion over the evidence. When he accidentally shows his hand, what does he have? A busted flush.
Every time.
:mock: :blabla: barian
Do blood vessels count as tissue? Apparently, dinosaur blood vessels have been observed: http://www.nature.com/news/molecula...ontroversial-claim-for-dinosaur-cells-1.11637
If you do a search of "dinosaur tissue" you'll get results from many sources, including reputable ones such as Nature, Smithsonian, National Geograpic, etc. All use the word "tissue" in their articles, for example:
Tissue fragments from a Tyrannosaurus rex femur are shown at left, when it is flexible and resilient and when stretched (arrow) returns to its original shape. The middle photo shows the bone after it is air dried. The photo at right shows regions of bone showing fibrous character, not normally seen in fossil bone.
Feather fibers are not tissue, any more than hair is tissue. However blood vessels would be. If it's tissue, the question would be easy to answer. Fix it in paraffin, take some slices, and look under a microscope. If you see cells in an orderly arrangement, the obvious conclusion is that it's tissue.
So far, I don't see any papers on that. I'd be interested in seeing one.
Schweitzer has been quoted:
Whether preservation is strictly morphological and the result of some kind of unknown geochemical replacement process or whether it extends to the subcellular and molecular levels is uncertain.
I found the article from which that was taken. There's more to read on this page:
http://tinyurl.com/or488vo
Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, cautions that looks can deceive: Nucleated protozoan cells have been found in 225-million-year-old amber, but geochemical tests revealed that the nuclei had been replaced with resin compounds. Even the resilience of the vessels may be deceptive. Flexible fossils of colonial marine organisms called graptolites have been recovered from 440-million-year-old rocks, but the original material--likely collagen--had not survived.
Science, vol. 307:1852
You should e-mail the authors and tell them where they have gone wrong. :up:
(Barbarian cites literature showing that what was thought to be tissue is actually material that replaced the tissue)
Stipe sulks:
Show me the paper, with author, and I'll be happy to discuss it with them.
Stipe sulks:
Show me the paper, with author, and I'll be happy to discuss it with them.
musterion
Well-known member
So what's the evolutionists' approach on this so far:
a. Deny the soft tissue really is soft tissue; rather some invasive organic material (mold, algae, etc) totally unrelated to the fossil.
b. Admit the soft tissue really is soft tissue, but not from the specimens in which they were found.
c. Propose an unprecedented mechanism whereby soft tissue can survive intact for 70-100 million years in dirt and rock.
d. Do a reverse Piltdown: make accusations of creationist fakery and say the finds are to be ignored as such.
Since we know "e" is totally off the table, what's their game plan?
a. Deny the soft tissue really is soft tissue; rather some invasive organic material (mold, algae, etc) totally unrelated to the fossil.
b. Admit the soft tissue really is soft tissue, but not from the specimens in which they were found.
c. Propose an unprecedented mechanism whereby soft tissue can survive intact for 70-100 million years in dirt and rock.
d. Do a reverse Piltdown: make accusations of creationist fakery and say the finds are to be ignored as such.
Since we know "e" is totally off the table, what's their game plan?
Let's see what Musty brings for us:
Translation: The Evil Barbarian is resorting to citing research, again.
Didn't see that one. Musty had a busy imagination.
So far, no one has been able to show that. Preservation of organic material turns out to be possible if there's sufficient iron in the mix. But no one has yet shown tissue.
Sounds a bit paranoid.
See what research has found so far. As you see, no tissue yet. It's at least theoretically possible. But if you want to show it, here's what you do:
Get some of the material, stain it, and fix it in paraffin.
Make some slices and look under a microscope.
If you see cells in an organized structural pattern, then by histological data, it's tissue.
No one seems to have done that yet. I think I know why.
Here's your chance, Barbarian. No need to e-mail anyone; you can create an account and edit out the errors by yourself. :chuckle:
The following quote from the Rationalwiki article supports Barbarian's position:
Considering that the simplest definition of "soft tissue" is "organic material that isn't bone," there's an awful lot covered by the term that doesn't really belong in the same category as muscle fibres, for example.
Barbarian is a walking contradiction. His sole aim is to keep the thread away from the evidence, so he talks about any nonsense he thinks he can get mileage out of.
The fact remains that after millions of years, everything should be rock.
Stipe thinks he's finally got a winner:
Well, let's take a look. From that site:
On rare occasion, as alluded to in the above categories, organic tissue will survive unchanged by the millennia.
O.K. that can happen for thousands of years, yes. So far, so good.
However, as a general rule, this becomes even rarer as time goes on since the organism died. Common mechanisms include freezing in glaciers and permafrost, preservation in amber, burial in anaerobic conditions, and general inaccessibility to microbes.
Hmm... as noted earlier, the cell nuclei in amber were replaced by resin. So that would be wrong, if they said "millions of years." But they didn't.
Organic molecules—if left undisturbed for thousands if not millions of years—are believed to spontaneously degrade into their component, smaller molecules.[7] However, there is little consensus within the scientific community as to how long this takes. In many cases, traces of organic tissue have been discovered in fossils many millions of years older than the upper limit allowed for by lab experiments.
This is also true. For example, the T-rex had no tissue left, but some heme (a fragment of hemoglobin molecule) was identified. Still no claim of tissue lasting for millions of years.
Nice try, though.
Well, let's take a look. From that site:
On rare occasion, as alluded to in the above categories, organic tissue will survive unchanged by the millennia.
O.K. that can happen for thousands of years, yes. So far, so good.
However, as a general rule, this becomes even rarer as time goes on since the organism died. Common mechanisms include freezing in glaciers and permafrost, preservation in amber, burial in anaerobic conditions, and general inaccessibility to microbes.
Hmm... as noted earlier, the cell nuclei in amber were replaced by resin. So that would be wrong, if they said "millions of years." But they didn't.
Organic molecules—if left undisturbed for thousands if not millions of years—are believed to spontaneously degrade into their component, smaller molecules.[7] However, there is little consensus within the scientific community as to how long this takes. In many cases, traces of organic tissue have been discovered in fossils many millions of years older than the upper limit allowed for by lab experiments.
This is also true. For example, the T-rex had no tissue left, but some heme (a fragment of hemoglobin molecule) was identified. Still no claim of tissue lasting for millions of years.
Nice try, though.
musterion
Well-known member
Ah, good ol' option (a).
You have defined option (a) as, "Deny the soft tissue really is soft tissue." The Barbarian has provided us with the following fool-proof method to determine if this material is, in fact, soft tissue:
Fix it in paraffin, take some slices, and look under a microscope. If you see cells in an orderly arrangement, the obvious conclusion is that it's tissue.
But like he says, so far that hasn't been done. Or if it has been done, those results have not been published. Until such results are published, it cannot conclusively be said that soft tissue has been found.
Why hasn't Mark Armitage done this yet?
musterion
Well-known member
(Musty is shown that "tissue" has a specific meaning that excludes the material found in fossils)
Musty mutters:
Translation: "The Evil Barbarian is resorting to facts, again.
Musty mutters:
Translation: "The Evil Barbarian is resorting to facts, again.
(User Name notes that so far an actual test for tissue in the fossil material hasn't been done)
Musty asks:
It hasn't? (link to some pictures of big chunks of material, but no photomicrographs)
Nope. Hasn't.
Any competent histology lab could do it. You do a series of solvent/paraffin treatments, to embed the material on paraffin, use a microtome to cut sections, clear it and stain it and take a look under a microscope.
And then, if you see cells organized into tissue, you've got it. Dense connective tissue, for example, would look something like this:
Simple to do. But hasn't been done. I'm guessing that they already know that they won't find tissue.
Musty asks:
It hasn't? (link to some pictures of big chunks of material, but no photomicrographs)
Nope. Hasn't.
Any competent histology lab could do it. You do a series of solvent/paraffin treatments, to embed the material on paraffin, use a microtome to cut sections, clear it and stain it and take a look under a microscope.
And then, if you see cells organized into tissue, you've got it. Dense connective tissue, for example, would look something like this:
Simple to do. But hasn't been done. I'm guessing that they already know that they won't find tissue.
GuySmiley
Well-known member
That doesn't support Barbarians position at all. That statement allows for the organic material found to be called soft tissue. Barbarian should go correct that site.
So we're wandering off into semantics. But this is what it means in biology:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tissue
If you don't use words as they are used by others, you'll always have miscommunications problems.
Let's differentiate between "tissue A" (the definition above) and "tissue B" (any sort of organic material).
Then we can move on. Clearly, the fossils have "tissue B", under those definitions.