Is it possible to revive dinosaurs? Jurassic World: Can We Resurrect Dinosaurs Like the Movie? Can we get DNA from fossils?
One of our readers commented with the question: “When will geneticists resurrect dinosaurs?” With the release of Jurassic World, as well as after numerous news about the successes of some groups of scientists, we decided to take on this topic and tell you news from the world of science regarding the resurrection of something that has long been dead. Let’s say in advance that we tried to voice mostly positive news.
So, resurrecting extinct species sounds a little sinister. Indeed, you immediately remember old horror films, where some crazy professor resurrects the dead through electrical influence and the infusion of some strange green liquids, and then a creepy laugh is heard and the monster gets out of control. , not otherwise.
But in reality, everything doesn’t look so creepy, and the goals pursued are quite noble. Extinct species can tell us a lot about the past of our planet, in addition, their recreation will once again prove that people can cope with completely different, at first glance, unresolved problems.
But it’s clear that everything can’t be done at once. And many scientists who speak positively about the possibility of resurrecting a dinosaur are first going to take on a task of a smaller scale, but, however, also from the realm of science fiction. This task is the resurrection of the mammoth. And now the search for its solution has been in full swing since the spring of this year. You can even observe a kind of race between different scientific groups that have taken up the task of resurrecting the disappeared animal.
Let us remember that mammoths became extinct about 10 thousand years ago, and appeared in the Pliocene era. Their height could reach 5.5 meters, and their weight could be about 12 tons. Based on mass, the mammoth was approximately twice as large as modern elephants in this parameter.
One of the groups is the George Church Research Group at Harvard. Church is a proponent of completely deciphering the mammoth genome in order to recreate the extinct species of elephants. Others believe it is possible to clone mammoths using remains found in permafrost.
We worked primarily with genes responsible for the survival of the body in low temperatures: genes for coat, large ears, subcutaneous fat and, above all, hemoglobin. Now we have healthy elephant cells with fragments of mammoth DNA at our disposal. We have not yet presented the results of this experiment in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but plan to do so soon.
George Church
Mammoths, according to the geneticist, will be able to stabilize the ecosystem of the Siberian tundra. A very noble task, and we hope it will become feasible in the near future. And hopes in this regard are quite justified.
Just recently, another research group led by Dr. Vincent Lynch, University of Chicago, completed the first phase of studying the mammoth genome. The resulting genes amazed scientists with their characteristics. For example, the TRPV3 gene helped animals live in permafrost conditions. Geneticists introduced this gene into the genome of laboratory rats, whose bodies were soon overgrown with fur. As a result, the rats preferred to live in the coolest areas of the enclosure.
At least three teams are currently working on reconstructing the mammoth genome, and if the experiments are successful, then in the future it will be possible to reconstruct other creatures, mainly from DNA found in fossilized remains.
It is worth noting that although such work is being carried out in a dynamic mode, we are unlikely to see its fruits next year.
Well, now for a little realism. Will we see real dinosaurs in our lifetime? Most likely no. For objective reasons. Even with such major breakthroughs in genetics, we are unlikely to be able to find good enough genetic material from extinct reptiles.
Although there is an optimistic forecast from the American paleontologist Jack Horner, he is also the chief scientific consultant of the film “Jurassic Park”. He is famous for his attempts to recreate dinosaurs and has also been successful in finding fossils containing blood vessels and soft tissue. But he, like many others, has not yet been able to find complete DNA. Therefore, Jack decided to take a different path, namely the rollback of evolution. With the help of genetic engineering, a scientist is going to return an ordinary chicken to the state of its distant ancestors. Horner believes that his project will be successful, and humanity is only a few years away from the return of dinosaurs.
I think we can achieve a set of genetic changes in a single embryo that will result in the animal successfully hatching and living a normal life, moving and functioning without problems. I will be very surprised if we don't do this within 10 years. And if we're lucky, we'll get it within the next five years, spending no more than five million dollars on the whole process.
Jack Horner
Horner's idea was picked up by other biologists. For example, a research team led by Arhat Abzhanov of Harvard and Bhart-Anjan Bhullar of Chicago were able to produce chicken embryos with dinosaur faces by suppressing the development of the proteins that make beaks. Digital models of the skulls showed that the bones in many of them were similar to those of early birds (Archaeopteryx) and dinosaurs (such as Velociraptor).
Judge for yourself, we have already been able to create bird embryos with teeth and changed the structure of the head. Now we are working on the tail and paws. Therefore, I am confident that with the help of genetic engineering we will be able to create Kurosaurus in the next five to ten years. After all, birds are dinosaurs that have stopped developing.
Jack Horner
In any case, it seems to us that there are prospects in this direction. There is a big problem in recreating the genome of dinosaurs that went extinct millions of years ago, but perhaps the research really will go the other way - by rolling back evolution. What can come of this? Who knows, maybe nothing. But maybe we are still destined to see some small bastard from antiquity who will amaze us with its strangeness and dissimilarity to everything we have seen so far.
In the movie “Jurassic Park,” a scientist learned how to clone dinosaurs and created an entire amusement park on a desert island, where you could see a living ancient animal. However, the hypothesis about the possibility of cloning dinosaurs from fossil remains, which was so relevant after the release of the film “Jurassic Park,” ultimately turned out to be untenable.
Australian scientists led by Morten Allentoft and Michael Bunce from Murdoch University (Western Australia) have proven that it is impossible to “recreate” a living dinosaur.
Researchers radiocarbon dated bone tissue taken from the fossilized bones of 158 extinct moa birds. These unique and huge birds lived in New Zealand, but 600 years ago they were completely destroyed by the Maori aborigines. As a result of research, scientists have found that the amount of DNA in bone tissue decreases over time - every 521 years, the number of molecules is reduced by half.
The last DNA molecules disappear from bone tissue after about 6.8 million years. At the same time, the last dinosaurs disappeared from the face of the earth at the end of the Cretaceous period, that is, about 65 million years ago - long before the critical threshold for DNA of 6.8 million years, and there were no DNA molecules left in the bone tissue of the remains that archaeologists were able to find.
“As a result, we found that the amount of DNA in bone tissue, if kept at a temperature of 13.1 degrees Celsius, decreases by half every 521 years,” said research team leader Mike Bunce.
“We extrapolated this data to other, higher and lower temperatures and found that if you keep bone tissue at a temperature of minus 5 degrees, the last DNA molecules will disappear in about 6.8 million years,” he added.
Sufficiently long fragments of the genome can only be found in frozen bones no more than a million years old.
By the way, to date, the most ancient DNA samples have been isolated from the remains of animals and plants found in permafrost. The age of the found remains is about 500 thousand years.
It is worth noting that scientists will conduct further research in this area, since differences in the age of the remains are responsible for only 38.6% of the discrepancies in the degree of DNA destruction. The rate of DNA decay is influenced by many factors, including the storage conditions of the remains after excavations, the chemical composition of the soil, and even the time of year in which the animal died.
That is, there is a chance that in conditions of eternal ice or underground caves, the half-life of genetic material will be longer than geneticists assume.
Is it possible to clone a mammoth?
Scientists from the Yakut North-Eastern Federal University and the Seoul Center for Stem Cell Research signed an agreement to work together on cloning a mammoth. Scientists will try to revive the ancient animal using the remains of a mammoth found in permafrost. The mammoth is only about 60,000 years old and thanks to the cold it has been almost completely preserved. A modern Indian elephant was chosen for the experiment, since its genetic code is as similar as possible to the DNA of mammoths.
According to approximate forecasts of scientists, the results of the experiment will be known no earlier than in 10–20 years.
The topic of human cloning is developing not so much in a scientific way, but in a social and ethical one, causing controversy on the topic of biological safety, self-identification of a “new person”, the possibility of the emergence of defective people, also giving rise to religious controversy. At the same time, animal cloning experiments are being carried out and have examples of successful completion.
The world's first clone, the tadpole, was created back in 1952. Soviet researchers were among the first to successfully clone a mammal back in 1987. It was an ordinary house mouse.
The most striking milestone in the history of cloning living beings was the birth of Dolly the sheep - this is the first cloned mammal obtained by transplanting the nucleus of a somatic cell into the cytoplasm of an egg devoid of its own nucleus. Dolly the sheep was a genetic copy of the donor sheep.
If under natural conditions each organism combines the genetic characteristics of its father and mother, then Dolly had only one genetic “parent” - the prototype sheep. The experiment was carried out by Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell at the Roslyn Institute in Scotland in 1996 and was a breakthrough in technology.
Later, British and other scientists conducted experiments on cloning various mammals, including horses, bulls, cats and dogs.
Are dinosaurs the same age as humans?
This idea has been around for a long time (I’ll try to explain it below). And, lo and behold, quite scientific information about the surviving organics in dinosaur bones. Agree, over 65 million years. any organic material will decompose into mineral substances, or petrify, and also acquire inorganic characteristics. But, despite this age, there are these facts:
For twenty years, researchers have been perplexed by discovering traces of DNA and radioactive carbon in the bones of dinosaurs that went extinct “millions of years ago.”
Many dinosaur fossils include fragments real bones that have not had time to mineralize, in other words, petrify. For many researchers, the contents of these bones came as a complete surprise. Since the 90s of the last century, scientists have made a number of discoveries, discovering dinosaur bones blood cells, hemoglobin, easily destroyed proteins and soft tissue fragments, in particular elastic ligaments and blood vessels. And what deserves special attention is DNA and radioactive carbon.
Evolutionists now face a monumental challenge to explain the supposed 65-million-year-old bones. As the doctor said Mary Schweitzer, involved in the discovery of blood cells, “If a blood sample changes beyond recognition after just a week, how could these cells survive?” And really, what kind? In an organism that died out millions of years ago, they, of course, would not be able to survive. They could only be preserved in remains that were quickly buried under catastrophic conditions and were under a layer of sedimentary rock. Which is perfectly explained by the global flood.
But since the evolutionary worldview occupies a strong position in scientific circles, it was enough to publish the results of such a study difficult. "One reviewer told me that it doesn't matter to him According to the data, this is simply not possible,” says Dr. Schweitzer. “In my response letter, I asked him: “Then what data will convince you?” - “None.”
Schweitzer recalls how her attention was initially drawn to the distinct cadaverous odor emanating from the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex found in the area. Hell Creek, Montana. When she mentioned it Jack Horner, an experienced paleontologist, he replied that all the bones from Hell Creek smell like that. The belief that dinosaur bones are millions of years old is so deeply rooted in the minds of paleontologists that none of them have ever did not pay attention to the atypical “smell of death” - right under their noses. Even Schweitzer herself, despite the many discoveries she has made, apparently cannot or does not want to move away from the established worldview. Note the chronology of discoveries made over two decades - the clear and consistent indications that that something is rotten in the paleontological kingdom with its theories about dinosaurs, extinct millions of years ago.
In 1993, unexpectedly, Mary Schweitzer discovered dinosaurs in the bones. blood cells.
In 1997, they discover hemoglobin, as well as distinguishable blood cells in the bones of a tyrannosaurus.
In 2003, traces protein osteocalcin.
In 2005, elastic ligaments and blood vessels.
In 2007, collagen(an important bone structural protein) in Tyrannosaurus rex bone.
In 2009, easily degradable proteins elastin and laminin, and again collagen in the duck-billed dinosaur. (If the remains were truly as old as they are usually dated, they would not contain any of these proteins.)
In 2012, scientists reported the discovery bone cells(osteocytes), proteins actin and tubulin, as well as DNA(!). (Calculated rates of decay of these proteins, and especially DNA, indicate that they could not have been preserved in dinosaur remains for the estimated 65 million years after their extinction.)
In 2012, scientists report the discovery of radioactive carbon. (Given how quickly carbon-14 decays, even if the remains were a hundred thousand years old, there should be no trace of it left!)
In Canada, on the territory of the Dinosaur Park, scientists were able to discover structures in the bones of a Cretaceous dinosaur that resemble red blood cells and collagen fibers. The findings allow us to take a new look at the structure of the body of ancient living beings. In order to find traces of organic matter, cells and other elements of dinosaur flesh, researchers have come up with a special method of analyzing photographs taken using electron and ion microscopes. The latter is used in the IT industry when looking for defects in chips.
Thus, the British made this amazing discovery not due to the discovery of fossils, but thanks to a unique method of analyzing dinosaur remains, as well as exhibits from the Natural History Museum in the capital of Great Britain that had been forgotten for a hundred years.
Scientist Sergio Bertazo Together with his colleagues, while studying poorly preserved bones of ancient reptiles, he noticed rather unusual ovoid formations with a very dense core. They immediately came to mind red blood cells.
Researchers began to compare them with a drop of blood from a living ostrich - in an ion mass spectrometer they resembled the red blood cells of an emu.
Scientists immediately seized on an argument in favor of the warm-blooded nature of extinct dinosaurs.
Another bone fragment revealed fibrous structures similar to a spiral of collagen fibers. Since the structure of this protein varies among different groups of animals, paleontologists have the opportunity to formulate a new tool for classifying reptiles.
The experts used several analytical techniques. The location and composition of soft tissues in the fossilized remains were determined using an electron microscope. Next, laboratory assistants used an ion beam to dissect the samples and examine their structure.
"Now we need further research because we want to find out what the structures we see inside dinosaur bones might actually be. However, we believe that they are comparable to red blood cells and collagen fibers. And if we can confirm this, then we will have a new way to delve into the past of dinosaurs and understand how they grew and developed," he said. Bertazo.
Paleontologists reported their discovery in the journal Nature Communications.
Well, now I propose to look at where and how dinosaur bones are found.
Dinosaur Graveyards
Dinosaur cemeteries in China
Hill disturbed by road builders, bones found
Elsewhere in China. The skeleton does not rest at great depth, as it should be. After all, over 60 million years, the soil level above it should accumulate a huge amount (dust fall and erosion, which brings soil material)
Also a small depth
In general, the skeleton is on the surface
Dinosaur eggs found in fossilized clay in China
Mexico:
Archaeologists have excavated the largest dinosaur cemetery on the planet in Mexico. In an area of 200x50, a total of 14 skeletons were found:
Judging by the location of these bones, the dinosaur was caught in a “meat grinder.”
Bones in the hillside
Dinosaur Park in Alberta County (Canada):
This age is given to dinosaurs also because their bones are found on the slopes of these hills:
Geologists have data on the age of these layers. After all, they accumulated over millions of years... But for some reason they do not accept an almost instantaneous period of formation of layers, as shown during the cataclysm. Although some scientific circles accept the hypothesis of the death of dinosaurs during a cataclysm - from the fall of an asteroid. But she did not receive development and a slender model.
Dinosaur cemeteries are found at a certain latitude. Most likely, only this climate in these latitudes suited them. Just like elephants in our time need a huge food supply of savannas, dinosaurs with their size needed lush vegetation. To the north of the giants lived mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses. And my opinion is that mammoths and dinosaurs lived around the same time. They were destroyed by one global cataclysm with consequences in the form of a giant wave and flood. It may not have been in late historical times, but man already existed at that time.
Gobi Desert:
Bones are almost on the surface
This copy seemed to have been around a couple of years ago.
And this one floated here recently in geological time.
Dinosaur egg from Mongolia
Different types of dinosaurs died at the same time. Before the disaster everyone was the same
Is it clear to me that there is a possibility that the dinosaurs found near the surface are not 65 million years old? And then the motives become clear Ica stones :
It is possible that this is a fantasy from those times, or maybe not?
Dinosaur on the wall of a temple in Cambodia:
And more modern:
There are many cases that I collected in my time cryptozoology. Perhaps in the West someone still does this. In our country, this is mainly done by such enthusiasts as the Cosmopoisk group.
About dragons Nikolay Levashov
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Recently, reports have increasingly appeared in the media that scientists can easily resurrect dinosaurs that went extinct 65 million years ago. However, in reality, everything is not as simple as it seems to those who are not familiar with all the intricacies of these studies. Because you can't actually resurrect dinosaurs. But you can create it again.
There are only two ways to “resurrect” an extinct animal. The first of them was practiced back in the twentieth century. Its essence is that if the wild ancestor of some domestic animals becomes extinct, then its appearance can be restored by selectively crossing representatives of the most primitive breeds descending from this ancestor. It was in this way that back in the 70s of the last century, German biologists managed to “resurrect” the extinct ancestor (more precisely, one of the ancestors) of modern horses - the tarpan ( Equus ferus ferus).
By crossing representatives of several breeds, in whose cells there were tarpan genes (which were exterminated at the beginning of the twentieth century, that is, not so long ago), scientists managed to create a creature whose appearance absolutely exactly corresponded to that of the ancestral form. Subsequently, these tarpans were released into the wild, and now several herds of these animals graze in Germany and Poland. It is interesting that over several generations their appearance has not undergone significant changes - which suggests that the “resurrection” was successful, and these animals apparently do contain most of the genes of the wild ancestor of the horse. However, it is impossible to verify this, since the genetic data bank of the tarpans themselves has not been preserved.
However, a similar approach is not applicable to dinosaurs - after all, there are no domestic breeds of these reptiles. True, there are descendants of this group, that is, birds, and a group of reptiles has been preserved, very close to the ancestral form of “terrible lizards” - crocodiles, but crossing representatives of these taxa, which are very distant from each other in evolutionary terms, will not yield anything (and it is purely technically impossible - the difference in genomes is too great).
Another method of “resurrection” is based on the creation of a hybrid embryo (read more about it in the article “What are the dangers of hybrid embryos?”). If the DNA of an extinct animal has been preserved in full, then it can be transplanted into the nucleus of the germ cell of a representative of the closest species, and thus the desired organism can be grown. With birds and reptiles this is simple - all their development takes place in the egg, but a mammalian embryo at a certain stage must be transplanted into the body of a surrogate mother, whose role is played by a female of the same, closest species (for example, in the case of the “resurrection” of a mammoth this is there will be an Asian elephant). In this way, biologists plan to “resurrect” the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, big-horned deer and some other prehistoric giants, as well as the marsupial wolf, which was exterminated in the 20th century (for more information about what it is, read the article “Wolves were afraid to go into the forest...” ), whose DNA is perfectly preserved and, as they say, is waiting in the wings.
However, this trick won’t work with dinosaurs either—scientists don’t have a single DNA sample of these giants. The fact is that the last representatives of this group died out about 65 million years ago, and during this time all the bones of these giants managed, as they say, to recrystallize, that is, all the organic matter in them was replaced by inorganic substances, so in fact now they They are blocks of stone, somewhat similar to parts of the body of dinosaurs. Under such conditions, DNA cannot be preserved. In addition, in the Mesozoic era there were no glaciations and permafrost, so it is not possible to find the corpse of a “terrible lizard” that would have lain frozen for millions of years (as often happened with mammoths).
So, as you can see, it is impossible to “resurrect” dinosaurs. However, scientists are convinced that they can be created anew. True, these will be completely different dinosaurs, outwardly having nothing in common with the real-life giants. But at the same time, they are quite complete.
This technique is based on the fact that early developmental genes (homeotic), which control the formation of the first stages of the embryo, are structures that are quite conservative, and are often almost completely preserved in descendants. That is why the human embryo in the early stages looks like a fish, then an amphibian, and only then acquires features specific to mammals. Therefore, birds, of course, still have homeotic genes from dinosaurs. During the formation of the embryo, they even work, but for a very short time - then special proteins “turn them off” so that the work of homeotic genes, specific only to birds, starts.
But what if we could somehow prevent these dinosaur gene shutdowns? Scientists from McGill University (USA), led by Hans Larsson, discovered that at the early stage of development of a chicken embryo, the embryo has a tail similar to a reptilian one. But then, at a certain point, the work of the genes responsible for its formation ends, and the tail disappears. Dr. Larsson and his colleagues tried several times to block the activity of proteins that turn off tail genes. In the end, they managed to do this, but the “tailed” chicken soon died, never really formed.
Ontogeneticists John Fallon and Matt Harris from the University of Wisconsin (USA) took a different path. They, experimenting with mutant chicken embryos, noticed that some of them had strange outgrowths on the jaws of the embryo. These “bumps”, upon closer examination, turned out to be saber-shaped teeth, which were identical to the teeth of embryonic alligators and, most interestingly, some small Jurassic dinosaurs.
It was later discovered that these mutants had a recessive gene that normally kills the fetus before birth. However, as a side effect of its activity, this gene includes another, which is the homeotic gene of dinosaurs, responsible for the formation of teeth. Interested in this phenomenon, Fallon and Harris created a virus that behaved like a recessive gene, but was not lethal to the embryo. When it was injected into normal fetuses, they began to grow teeth without any harmful side effects. However, the “toothbrush” was not allowed to hatch - according to US law, hybrid embryos must be destroyed 14 days after the completion of the experiment.
However, the greatest success was achieved by Dr. Arhat Abzhanov from Harvard University. He figured out which of the dinosaur homeotic genes are responsible for the formation of a typical reptilian face instead of a bird's beak. He was also able to identify proteins that “turn off” these genes.
After this, Abzhanov added other proteins to the embryonic cells that blocked the activity of the “switches,” as a result of which the latter stopped working. As a result, there was no one to turn off the dinosaur genes, and the chicken grew a quite cute face, somewhat reminiscent of a crocodile. At the same time, the embryo itself did not die - it continued to actively develop. However, after 14 days, it was necessary, to Abzhanov’s great chagrin, to kill him too.
All these studies suggest that creating dinosaurs from birds is fundamentally possible. True, biologists still do not know all the homeotic genes left over from dinosaurs in birds, but establishing this is not so difficult - after all, there is a “control” group, that is, crocodiles. All the intricacies of their work have not been fully studied, however, this is just a matter of time. So it is possible that in the near future geneticists will still be able to turn a bird into a small feathered dinosaur from the genus Maniraptora, like those that existed in the mid-Jurassic period.
It should be noted right away that this creature, of course, will not be a representative of a species that already lived on our planet - after all, its genome will include avian DNA, which was absent in classical dinosaurs. This will be a representative of a new species, created by people, but with a structure and physiology characteristic of real dinosaurs.
For the past 15 years, Dr. Mary Schweitzer has been impressing evolutionists and geological actualists with her findings of soft tissue in dinosaur bones. She was able to detect blood cells, blood vessels and some proteins (for example, collagen) there. However, science for certain
it is known that such tissues could not have survived for 65 million years (from the time when dinosaurs supposedly went extinct until now), even if they were constantly stored at sub-zero temperatures (although dinosaurs, according to evolutionists, lived in much warmer climates).
Here's what Dr. Mary Schweitzer said in one of her television appearances:
The original molecular compounds cannot be preserved in bone remains that are more than one million years old. Therefore, the discovery of collagen in these well-preserved dinosaur remains forces us to rely on the principles of actualism in determining the rates and patterns of molecular decomposition, rather than on theoretical and experimental extrapolations obtained under conditions not found in nature.
When Dr. Schweitzer discovered elastic blood vessels and other soft tissues in dinosaur bones, she, like a conscientious scientist, carefully checked all her findings. A report on her findings notes:
“It was a complete shock,” Schweitzer says. “I didn’t believe it until we confirmed the same result seventeen times.”
Other evolutionists, seeing this finding as a threat to their old dogma, began to argue that these blood vessels were actually bacterial biofilms, and the blood cells were iron-rich capsules called framboids. But at the same time they ignored the wide range of data obtained by Dr. Schweitzer, and she herself answered all objections in detail. And yet Dr. Schweitzer continues to believe in the established paradigm of evolutionism.
Dinosaur bone cells and proteins
Dr. Schweitzer's latest research further undermines faith in long centuries of biological evolution. She analyzed the bone remains of two dinosaurs: the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex(MOR 1125) and a large duck-billed dinosaur called CanadianbRachylophosaurus(MOR 2598). Bone tissue has amazing properties: it can repair itself after damage and uses the remarkable protein osteocalcin, found in human remains. Iguanodon– the most famous duck-billed dinosaur, which allegedly lived 120 million years ago. The most common bone cells are osteocytes, which have a characteristic branched structure that allows them to connect with other osteocytes, and together they “immediately respond to changes in load.” 10
James D. San Antonio, Mary H. Schweitzer, Shane T. Jensen, Raghu Kalluri, Michael Buckley, Joseph P. R. O. Orgel
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Dr. Schweitzer's team removed the hard bone mineral using a chelating agent called EDTA. They then discovered in the bones of both dinosaurs “transparent cell-like microstructures with dendritic [branched, just like osteocyte] projections, some of which had internal contents.”
In addition, using antibodies, they discovered spherical proteins actin And tubulin, which are part of the fibers and ducts in the body of vertebrates. The connecting structure of the proteins of both dinosaurs was similar to the structure of the same proteins in the organisms of the modern ostrich and alligator. On the other hand, scientists did not find bacteria there, which excludes assumption of bone contamination with foreign substances. In particular, the antibodies they used do not react with bacteria that form biofilms, “so the biofilm origin of these structures is not confirmed.” 10 Moreover, scientists were able to detect traces of collagen, a fibrous animal protein, and this protein was only in the bones, but not in the sedimentary deposits surrounding them.
Dr. Schweitzer's group didn't stop there. Since actin, tubulin and collagen are not unique to bone, they tested the bone remains for the presence of a very specific bone cell protein called PHEX (phosphate regulatory X-linked endopeptidase). Indeed, antibodies sensitive to this protein confirmed its presence in dinosaur bones. But The discovery of a special bone protein very convincingly confirms the identification of the found tissues as osteocytes.
As a result of these findings, the following problem arose for evolutionists:
Cells usually decompose soon after the organism dies. How could these “bone cells” and the molecules they consist of survive in the bones of the Mesozoic era [the age of dinosaurs according to evolutionists]? 10
Scientists tried to solve this problem by suggesting that the bone protected the cells from bacteria that caused decomposition. Bone could also protect cells from swelling, followed by self-decomposition (autolysis). In addition, scientists have suggested that the surfaces of mineral crystals attract and destroy enzymes, preventing them from accelerating the process of cell decomposition. Finally, scientists believe that iron plays a critical role in protecting cells from decomposition: it acts as an antioxidant, and at the same time helps to bind and stabilize proteins.
In fact, all of this, to a certain extent, seems quite reasonable from the point of view of biblical creationism. The rates of protein decomposition established by science are commensurate with the age of the Earth after the Flood (about 4500 years), but not with the millions of years of evolution that allegedly took place. But even in this case, it is surprising to find in the bones not only proteins, but also cellular microstructures that existed for 4,500 years, surrounded by bacteria that could easily attack them. However, their survival for thousands of years can still be somehow explained; What cannot be explained is the idea of their survival for many millions of years, because all the protective mechanisms listed above could not protect bone tissue from water and the hydrolysis process for so long.
Dinosaur DNA
The problem for proponents of long biological evolution becomes even more acute when it comes to the discovery of DNA. Estimates of DNA stability do not exceed 125 thousand years at 0° Celsius, 17,500 years at 10° Celsius and 2500 years at 20° Celsius. 2 In one of the recent studies we read:
“DNA is generally thought to be incredibly stable,” says project leader Brendt Eichmann, assistant professor of biology at Vanderbilt University. “In fact, DNA is very sensitive to external influences.”
About a million DNA bases die in the human body every day. Their death is caused by a combination of normal chemical activity in cells, as well as environmental exposure in the form of radiation and toxins (for example, cigarette smoke, fried foods and industrial waste).
Recent DNA research has shown that it can survive 400 times longer in bone. But even in this case, DNA could not have existed for as long as (according to evolutionists) separates us from dinosaurs. According to this study, it takes 22,000 years at 25° Celsius, 131,000 years at 15° Celsius, and 882,000 years at 5° Celsius until DNA is completely degraded in bone. And even if we assume that DNA is somehow kept below the freezing point of water, at a temperature of -5° Celsius, it will only last 6.83 million years - that is, ten times less than required by the theory of evolution. Researchers claim:
However, according to our model, even in the best conditions of detention at -5° Celsius, after 6.8 million years, not a single link of one DNA base pair will remain in the DNA “chain”. This shows how incredible our finding of 174 DNA fragments of similar lengths in Cretaceous bones 80-85 million years old is. 18
Yet Dr. Schweitzer's team found DNA, in three independent ways. One of them, using chemical tests and specially selected antibodies, detected the presence of DNA in its specific "double helix" form. This shows that the DNA is perfectly preserved because DNA strands less than ten base pairs in length do not form stable sections of the double helix. A DAP (4′,6-diamide-2-phenylindole) spot was detected in the stable DNA helical groove, indicating the presence of an even longer chain.
Of course, evolutionists will once again refer to possible “pollution.” But the DNA was not found anywhere, but precisely and only in the inner region of the “cells”, the shape of which is very similar to the shape of ostrich cells, and does not at all resemble biofilm taken from other sources and subjected to the same study for the detection of DNA. This data is already enough to exclude the influence of bacteria, since in more complex cells (like in humans or dinosaurs) DNA is stored only in a special small area - the cellular core.
To top it all off, Dr. Schweitzer's team discovered a special protein called histoneH4 . The point is not only that this protein should also have been destroyed over millions of years of evolution, but also that this protein is specific to DNA (DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid, that is, has a negative charge, while histones are alkaline and have a positive charge, so histones attract DNA). In more complex organisms, histones are thin strands around which DNA wraps. But in bacteria there are simply no histones. Therefore, according to Dr. Schweitzer and her colleagues, “these data confirm the presence of non-microbial DNA in dinosaur cells.”
Conclusion
One of Mary Schweitzer's statements seems particularly telling:
It was as if I was looking at a section of the bone of a modern animal. But, of course, I couldn't believe it. I told the lab worker: “Listen, these bones are 65 million years old! How could these cells survive so long?”
But this only shows what power the theory of long centuries of biological evolution has over scientists. A more reasonable and, in fact, more scientific conclusion would be:
The whole thing looks exactly like the bone of a modern animal; I saw blood cells (and blood vessels) and detected the presence of hemoglobin (and then actin, tubulin, collagen, histones and DNA). Chemistry knows for certain that all this could not have existed for 65 million years. Therefore, I didn’t see these millions. We will have to abandon the doctrine of long centuries of evolution.
Bibliography and notes
- Schweitzer, M.H. et al., Heme compounds in dinosaur trabecular bone, PNAS 94 :6291–6296, June 1997. See also Wieland, C., Sensational dinosaur blood report! Creation 19 (4):42–43, 1997; creation.com/dino_blood.
- . Nielsen-Marsh, C., Biomolecules in fossil remains: Multidisciplinary approach to endurance, The Biochemist Creation 30 , pp. 12–14, June 2002. See also Doyle, S., The Real Jurassic Park, Creation 35 (1):14–16, 2013.