RE: [asa] Loading the ark (Ken Ham, t. rex blood)

" Thirdly, the "blood cells" are not cells still preserved as such.

Rather, they are iron-rich mineral grains that might plausibly be

highly altered derivatives of blood cells. Thus, they are mineralized

and fossilized.

Does that conflict with what is reported by Nova?:

From: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3411/01-ask.html

Excerpt:
On July 31, 2007, Mary Schweitzer answered selected viewer questions
about her discovery of what may be T. rex blood vessels and red blood
cells...

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On
Behalf Of David Campbell
Sent: Friday, November 30, 2007 12:47 PM
To: ASA
Subject: Re: [asa] Loading the ark (Ken Ham, t. rex blood)

> The problem, as I understand it, is that it is generally received that

> anything as old as t.rex is supposed to be fossilized. It is
impossible,

> supposedly, to have something that old that isn't fossilized.

That's the argument made by Ham et al. It's wrong on four counts.

First, "fossilize" is an ambiguous term. Some types of fossilization

involve mineral replacement, dissolution, etc. Others just involve

the aging of existing organism-produced structures, e.g., drying out,

getting frozen, gradual chemical alterations such as carbonization,

etc.

Secondly, there's nothing that requires something of a particular age

to undergo a certain amount or type of change-these are functions of

time plus the geologic settings it has encountered since the organism

died. For example, young earthers like to point to ongoing formation

of petroleum in the Gulf of California as proof it can form quickly.

It can, if there's high enough heat and pressure, and the Gulf of

California seafloor is heated by tectonic activity underneath and has

a very high sediment input, rapidly deeply burying organic material.

On the other hand, there's oil produced in Australia from Precambrian

sources-it's been shallowly buried at low temperature for over half a

billion years. More normal geologic conditions take about 100 million

years to make good oil deposits, about the age of a lot of rocks

around the Gulf of Mexico and around Arabia. Durable material like

wood, pollen, shells, and bones can be preserved in good condition for

hundreds of millions of years, but they can disappear in decades in

unfavorable settings.

Thirdly, the "blood cells" are not cells still preserved as such.

Rather, they are iron-rich mineral grains that might plausibly be

highly altered derivatives of blood cells. Thus, they are mineralized

and fossilized. I've collected some wood a bit older than T. rex. At

a glance, it looks similar to a charred log out of a campfire, except

that it is flattened. Give it enough time, and it would eventually

become coal, but that's still carbon from the original trees, not a

new mineral replacing it. There are remnants of the protein ligament

connecting the two valves of a clam that date back to the Ordovician,

over 400 million years old, and the tough organic outer layer of some

types of algal cells can be found in deposits over 1 billion years

old. Media (mainstream, not merely YEC) reports that the discovery of

protein remnants in dino bones shocked the paleo community are wrong.

Finally, one exceptionally preserved bit of dinosaur bone, even if it

did validly suggest that it was much younger than geologists thought,

does not automatically make the entire geologic record young.

-- 
Dr. David Campbell
425 Scientific Collections
University of Alabama
"I think of my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams"
 
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