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Paulos23
Skeptic Friend
USA
446 Posts |
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H. Humbert
SFN Die Hard
USA
4574 Posts |
 Posted - 03/24/2005 : 16:51:46 [Permalink]
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Beat me to it. Damn, I think this is simply an amazing find. This is going to rewrite some textbooks for sure.
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"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 |
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Plyss
Skeptic Friend
Netherlands
231 Posts |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2005 : 00:36:16 [Permalink]
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Great stuff!
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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 |
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2005 : 06:06:44 [Permalink]
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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 |
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bloody_peasant
Skeptic Friend
USA
139 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2005 : 06:07:27 [Permalink]
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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 |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2005 : 06:16:32 [Permalink]
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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.
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"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! 
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BigPapaSmurf
SFN Die Hard
3192 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2005 : 06:36:34 [Permalink]
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| 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 |
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pfretzschner
Skeptic Friend
USA
67 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2005 : 09:05:07 [Permalink]
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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 |
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Wendy
SFN Regular
USA
614 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2005 : 09:33:35 [Permalink]
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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
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2005 : 12:03:04 [Permalink]
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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.
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"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!
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2005 : 12:22:41 [Permalink]
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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”.
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"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!
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Dr. Mabuse
Septic Fiend
Sweden
9688 Posts |
Posted - 03/25/2005 : 13:57:22 [Permalink]
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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. |
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