Skeptic Friends Network

Username:
Password:
Save Password
Forgot your Password?
Home | Forums | Active Topics | Active Polls | Register | FAQ | Contact Us  
  Connect: Chat | SFN Messenger | Buddy List | Members
Personalize: Profile | My Page | Forum Bookmarks  
 All Forums
 Our Skeptic Forums
 Creation/Evolution
 Jurasic Park?
 New Topic  Topic Locked
 Printer Friendly Bookmark this Topic BookMark Topic
Author Previous Topic Topic Next Topic  

Paulos23
Skeptic Friend

USA
446 Posts

Posted - 03/24/2005 :  16:38:36  Show Profile  Visit Paulos23's Homepage Send Paulos23 a Private Message
Looks like a great find.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=1&u=/nm/20050324/sc_nm/dinosaur_to_dc
[Moved to the Creation/Evolution folder - Dave W.]

You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as by being too trusting. -- Robert A. Heinlein

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. -- Aldous Huxley

H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard

USA
4574 Posts

Posted - 03/24/2005 :  16:51:46   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send H. Humbert a Private Message
Beat me to it. Damn, I think this is simply an amazing find. This is going to rewrite some textbooks for sure.


"A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true." --Demosthenes

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool." --Richard P. Feynman

"Face facts with dignity." --found inside a fortune cookie
Go to Top of Page

Plyss
Skeptic Friend

Netherlands
231 Posts

Posted - 03/25/2005 :  00:01:22   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Plyss a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Paulos23

Looks like a great find.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=585&e=1&u=/nm/20050324/sc_nm/dinosaur_to_dc



I predict the likes of Hovind will use this to claim dinosaurs are younger then science previously assumed.
Nevertheless, interesting find. It'll be fun to see how much of the DNA sequence has remained conserved.
Go to Top of Page

Dude
SFN Die Hard

USA
6891 Posts

Posted - 03/25/2005 :  00:36:16   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Dude a Private Message
Great stuff!


Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson

"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin

Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth
Go to Top of Page

BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard

3192 Posts

Posted - 03/25/2005 :  06:06:44   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send BigPapaSmurf a Private Message
Its not likely that DNA will be recovered as it tends to break down quite quickly, however this is a strange new case so who knows, maybe the strange process which preserved the flesh helped... I read that the material seemed mummified at the cellular level.

Of course there will still be a ton of information to gain from it no doubt.

"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History

"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini
Go to Top of Page

bloody_peasant
Skeptic Friend

USA
139 Posts

Posted - 03/25/2005 :  06:07:27   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send bloody_peasant a Yahoo! Message Send bloody_peasant a Private Message
Yep I heard this on NPR on the way home yesterday and was thinking the same thing about the YEC's making claims of how no tissue can survive for millions of years. Sad that a great discovery such as this will turn into ammunition for these folks :(.

Hmm I live near NC State and one of the researchers is from here, maybe I can get a chance to stop by and see them and ask some details on it :>

[Edited to add]
Some speculation on why the tissue could have survived for 70my.
Once buried the tissue would have been preserved from rotting and normal decomposition. However generally the process of fossilization essentially replaces all organic matter with minerals including bone. However in this case maybe something geochemically happened in the surrounding environment that halted the mineralization process after the outer layers were mineralized thus leaving the inner tissue in a kind of mineral cocoon.

Definitely be interesting to see if they can find some hints no to how these tissues survived the process though.

Cheers,
BP
Edited by - bloody_peasant on 03/25/2005 06:16:33
Go to Top of Page

filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 03/25/2005 :  06:16:32   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Mary Schweitzer who discovered the minute traces of haemoglobin cells in another T. rex fossil a few years back? If memory serves, she was a graduate student under Prof. Jack Horner at the time.

In any event, it's most interesting and I'm looking forward to science on the one hand and mindless but amusing blather on the other.


"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

Go to Top of Page

BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard

3192 Posts

Posted - 03/25/2005 :  06:36:34   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send BigPapaSmurf a Private Message
As for the ammo for YEC, really you are talking about people who could see a human pop out a thrid arm and argue that it was evidence against evolution.

"...things I have neither seen nor experienced nor heard tell of from anybody else; things, what is more, that do not in fact exist and could not ever exist at all. So my readers must not believe a word I say." -Lucian on his book True History

"...They accept such things on faith alone, without any evidence. So if a fraudulent and cunning person who knows how to take advantage of a situation comes among them, he can make himself rich in a short time." -Lucian critical of early Christians c.166 AD From his book, De Morte Peregrini
Go to Top of Page

pfretzschner
Skeptic Friend

USA
67 Posts

Posted - 03/25/2005 :  09:05:07   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send pfretzschner a Private Message
Funny how similar my thoughts were. When I heard the news (also on NPR) I thought "This is so freakin' cool!" My next thought was of Dr. Dino, "Dr." Baugh, Hovind et al. and how they'd make hay out of this.
The hell with those guys. This is SO DAMN COOL!
Edited by - pfretzschner on 03/25/2005 09:05:59
Go to Top of Page

Wendy
SFN Regular

USA
614 Posts

Posted - 03/25/2005 :  09:33:35   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Wendy a Yahoo! Message Send Wendy a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by filthy

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Mary Schweitzer who discovered the minute traces of haemoglobin cells in another T. rex fossil a few years back? If memory serves, she was a graduate student under Prof. Jack Horner at the time.


You have a good memory, filthy. To say her discovery was controvercial would be a huge understatement! Here's a link to some interesting reading:

Dino Blood and the Young Earth

Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do on a rainy afternoon.
-- Susan Ertz
Go to Top of Page

filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 03/25/2005 :  12:03:04   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message
quote:
Originally posted by Wendy

quote:
Originally posted by filthy

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Mary Schweitzer who discovered the minute traces of haemoglobin cells in another T. rex fossil a few years back? If memory serves, she was a graduate student under Prof. Jack Horner at the time.


You have a good memory, filthy. To say her discovery was controvercial would be a huge understatement! Here's a link to some interesting reading:

Dino Blood and the Young Earth

Of course! Gary Hurd's page at TO. I remember now -- dunno why I didn't make the connection.

Much of the YEC crowd is still foaming about that one, claiming that it is impossible for organic traces such as those to have lasted 65+ million years -- therefore, the animal must have been killed in the flood, or some-such. They, who never saw the bone in contention, also claimed that actual blood cells were found.

This is an exciting discovery. Now that I'm off hiatus, mostly, I'm going to again start monitoring the cult sites. I think that AiG will be especally cautious with this one. They picked up a few, minor burns from being hasty with the last.

And it is important to keep in mind that, at the current writing, no one is certain of exactly what they have. The only tentative predictions I can make is that there will be a lot more broken fossils littering the labs and that, perhaps, we are witnessing the genesis of a whole, new area of research.


"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

Go to Top of Page

filthy
SFN Die Hard

USA
14408 Posts

Posted - 03/25/2005 :  12:22:41   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send filthy a Private Message
Nope, I was wrong. Again. Carl Weiland M.D. of AiG has already jumped in, ill-considered conclusions at full throttle.
quote:
Still soft and stretchy
Dinosaur soft tissue find—a stunning rebuttal of “millions of years”

by Carl Wieland, AiG–Australia

25 March 2005

We previously announced the discovery of what seemed to be microscopic red blood cells (and immunological evidence of hemoglobin) in dinosaur bone (see Sensational dinosaur blood report! and response to critic).1 Now a further announcement, involving the same scientist (Montana University's Dr Mary Schweitzer) stretches (pun intentional) the long-age paradigm beyond belief.

Not only have more blood cells been found, but also soft, fibrous tissue, and complete blood vessels. The fact that this really is unfossilized soft tissue from a dinosaur is in this instance so obvious to the naked eye that any scepticism directed at the previous discovery is completely “history”.




"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)

"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres


"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude

Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,

and Crypto-Communist!

Go to Top of Page

Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend

Sweden
9687 Posts

Posted - 03/25/2005 :  13:57:22   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Dr. Mabuse an ICQ Message Send Dr. Mabuse a Private Message
quote:
Mary Schweitzer

Ahh... When I first read that name, red waring lights started to flash, but I couldn't put it context.
Thanks filthy for reminding me.

Dr. Mabuse - "When the going gets tough, the tough get Duct-tape..."
Dr. Mabuse whisper.mp3

"Equivocation is not just a job, for a creationist it's a way of life..." Dr. Mabuse

Support American Troops in Iraq:
Send them unarmed civilians for target practice..
Collateralmurder.
Go to Top of Page
  Previous Topic Topic Next Topic  
 New Topic  Topic Locked
 Printer Friendly Bookmark this Topic BookMark Topic
Jump To:

The mission of the Skeptic Friends Network is to promote skepticism, critical thinking, science and logic as the best methods for evaluating all claims of fact, and we invite active participation by our members to create a skeptical community with a wide variety of viewpoints and expertise.


Home | Skeptic Forums | Skeptic Summary | The Kil Report | Creation/Evolution | Rationally Speaking | Skeptillaneous | About Skepticism | Fan Mail | Claims List | Calendar & Events | Skeptic Links | Book Reviews | Gift Shop | SFN on Facebook | Staff | Contact Us

Skeptic Friends Network
© 2008 Skeptic Friends Network Go To Top Of Page
This page was generated in 0.46 seconds.
Powered by @tomic Studio
Snitz Forums 2000