We have a new contestant, Bryan Osborn from Answers in Genesis, for my video series: The Hemoglobin Challenge. In this blog I will summarize the main points from my video, but I encourage you to check out the full video for the complete story:
Let me start by refreshing your memory on what the Hemoglobin Challenge is all about. Essentially, I’m asking individuals, typically young earth creationists, to recognize their errors in describing dinosaur soft tissue findings. The challenge is to use more accurate terms, such as “hemoglobin-derived porphyrin,” when discussing these discoveries.
Now, let’s focus on Bryan Osborn’s claims from a recent Answers News segment. Osborn, along with his colleague Patricia Engler, was discussing the preservation of collagen fibers in ice age tissues. During this conversation, Osborn made some rather bold statements about dinosaur soft tissue. He claimed that intact soft tissue, including blood vessels and red blood cells, has been found in dinosaur bones. He emphasized that cells are mostly water and shouldn’t last millions of years, implying that this supports a young earth perspective. The fact he emphasizes the water content of cells after say that blood cells were found seem like clear evidence he really thinks that are real red blood cells in these bones including liquid cytoplasm.
So what should we think about these claims. Let’s start by comparing dinosaur preservation to that of mammoths in permafrost. Yes, we can find actual blood cells in well-preserved mammoths that are tens of thousands of years old. However, the situation with dinosaur bones is entirely different.
What’s actually been found in dinosaur bones are not intact original cells, but highly degraded remains. We’re talking about stable molecules that are the products of decay, not complete, original biomolecules. Osborn and his colleagues at Answers in Genesis, who aren’t scientists but rather communicators with education degrees, seem to misunderstand or misrepresent these findings.
To help you understand why this matters, let me explain a bit about cell preservation. Animal cells have an outer surface called a plasma membrane, essentially a fat bubble. These structures are not particularly stable over long periods. If we were finding actual red blood cells in dinosaur bones, we’d be able to extract and identify a whole suite of biochemicals – proteins, lipids, nucleic acids, and more. Remember all living cells have a plasma membrane which is essential a fat bubble. If that membrane were still present in dinosaur bones it would quite simple to extract and characterize its presence. But that’s not what the scientific literature reports.
What we do find are bits of collagen, which is a very stable molecule, especially after it’s been cross-linked and modified over time. We also find heme molecules, but they’ve changed their molecular characteristics to the point where they’re no longer like the original biomolecules.
This is where the young earth creationist narrative clashes with scientific evidence. If dinosaurs were only about 4,500 years old, as young earth creationists claim, we would expect to find almost fresh-looking collagen and preserved red blood cells. But the reality is that we’re finding highly degraded, altered biomolecules that tell a very different story – one of much greater age.
My challenge to Bryan Osborn, and others like him, is to modify their language and avoid misleading statements. It’s crucial to accurately represent scientific evidence, even if it doesn’t support your preferred narrative. The biomolecules we’re finding in dinosaur fossils have changed too much to be just a few thousand years old. They appear to have been changing over a much longer period.
In conclusion, Osborn’s use of the phrase “blood cells in dinosaurs” without qualifications is a complete misrepresentation of the scientific findings. It’s okay to maintain hope that evidence supporting your beliefs will be discovered someday. However, it’s not okay to claim that such evidence has been found when it hasn’t. Science is about honestly reporting what we observe, not what we wish to see.
Naturalis Historia 