How Old is This Bone?

HOW OLD IS THIS BONE?Most people assume that fossil bones like those of dinosaurs must be very, very old to have turned to stone. However, most such bones have not been thoroughly "permineralized" (meaning the rock minerals have been deposited into all the spaces within the original bone) and that the amount of time that it takes for a bone to permineralize is highly variable since modern bones that fall into mineral springs can become permineralized within a matter of weeks. Moreover some unfossilized dinosaur bones still contained red blood cells and hemoglobin. "This protein deteriorates very rapidly... surely if dinosaurs died millions of years ago, then any trace of this protein would be long gone. To find unfossilized dinosaur bone is already an indication more consistent with a young age for the fossils. ...The evidence that hemoglobin has indeed survived:

· The tissue was colored reddish brown, the color of hemoglobin, as was liquid extracted from the dinosaur tissue.

· Hemoglobin contains heme units. Chemical signatures unique to heme were found in the specimens when certain wavelengths of laser light were applied.

· Because it contains iron, heme reacts to magnetic fields differently from other proteins - extracts from this specimen reacted in the same way as modern heme compounds.

· To ensure that the samples had not been contaminated with certain bacteria which have heme (but never the protein hemoglobin), extracts of the dinosaur fossil were injected over several weeks into rats. If there was even a minute amount of hemoglobin present in the T. Rex sample, the rats' immune system should build up detectable antibodies against this compound. This is exactly what happened in carefully controlled experiments.

Evidence of hemoglobin, and the still-recognizable shapes of red blood cells in unfossilized dinosaur bone is powerful testimony against the whole idea of dinosaurs living millions of years ago. It speaks volumes for the Bible's account of a recent creation." (Wieland, Carl, "Sensational Dinosaur Blood Report," Creation Ex Nihilo, vol. 19, pp. 42-43, 1997.)

"In 1967 a petroleum geologist discovered a large, half-meter-thick bone bed. As the bones were fresh, not permineralized, he assumed that these were recent bone. It took 20 years for scientists to recognize duckbilled dinosaur bones in this deposit as well as the bones of horned dinosaurs, and large and small carnivorous dinosaurs." (Helder, Margaret, 1992, "Fresh Dinosaur Bones Found," Creation Ex Nihilo vol. 14, p. 16.)

Buddy Davis (co-author of the book The Great Alaskan Dinosaur Adventure) describes how he traveled to the North Slope in Alaska where they explored the Liscomb Bone Bed. His expedition discovered thousands of frozen unfossilized dinosaur bones, some of them with ligaments still attached! This does not fit the evolutionary story of dinosaurs becoming extinct 60 million years ago. Other researchers have found similar frozen dinosaur bones. (K. Davies, "Duckbill Dinosaurs (Hadrosauridae, Ornithisichia) from the North Slope of Alaska," Journal of Paleontology, 61(1), 1987, pp. 198-200.)

Carbon 14 is used to date fossils and other rocks that were once living things. Very precise dating from mass spectrometer analysis has substantiated the presence of Carbon 14 in dinosaur bones. Some have suggested that the samples became contaminated with modern Carbon 14. But it has also substantiated that Carboniferous coal carefully extracted from deep within mines still contains Carbon 14! This is dramatic evidence of youthfulness since all of the detectable Carbon 14 should have decayed within 100,000 years. (Baumgardner, Fifth ICC Paper, 2003.)