Soft tissue from dinosaurs?

Recently, noise has erupted over the discovery of soft tissue in some fossilized bones of a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil. This article looks at what was actually found, how it's been covered, and the response in the anti-science crowd.

The main Science article appears as a fairly straightforward report that when the mineral component of a tyrannosaur femur was removed, there remained an organic mass with characters similar to those found in ostrich bone. Schweitzer et al believe they have recovered material that represented osteocytes, blood cells, and vessels. They state, "The vessels and contents are similar in all respects to blood vessels recovered from extant ostrich bone." (Photos of these can be seen from the original article, and some are also available in Tyrannosaur morsels on PZ Myers' personal blog). Schweitzer et al notably offered no alternate explanation for their finding- they are entirely standing on the assertion that these are the original dinosaur tissues. Not until the last paragraph do they even comment that, "Whether preservation is strictly morphological and the result of some kind of unknown geochemical replacement process or whether it extends to the subcellular and molecular levels is uncertain."

...continued in full post...

Are there alternative explanations? As it turns out, there are:

Hendrik Poinar of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, cautions that looks can deceive: Nucleated protozoan cells have been found in 225-million-year-old amber, but geochemical tests revealed that the nuclei had been replaced with resin compounds. Even the resilience of the vessels may be deceptive. Flexible fossils of colonial marine organisms called graptolites have been recovered from 440-million-year-old rocks, but the original material–likely collagen–had not survived.

In short, there are known instances where reworked material can have the appearance of the 'tissues' reported by Schweitzer et al. As is nearly always the case, the juicy bits are in the background. The great advantage that science journals have today is the ability to put all supplemental details on-line. In this case, the three page "main" article sports a supporting text over four times as long. For example, the main article has left many people with the false impression that the recovered tissues were in a soft pliable state when first exposed. This is not true. All of the fossil material was rehydrated during the same process that removed the mineral components of the bone. They were then buffered, and also some were fixed. The related press reports have created the impression that there are large features with the characteristics of fresh tissue. This is not true. The structures examined are a few millimeters across at most.

<snip>

Early student work by Schweitzer, and coauthored by Horner, was grossly distorted by creationists. Popular press announcements by Schweitzer were very bold and provocative with hints of dinosaur DNA and linkage to the Crichton/Spielberg "Jurassic Park" series of books and movies. Young Earth Creationists immediately leapt on Schweitzer's claims of "fresh-looking" tissue as proof that the Universe is merely thousands of years old. Schweitzer then spent most of a decade backing away from her earliest claims, and denying that there was any point in confronting creationists' distortion of her work. The motivation to read and write about dinosaurs comes merely from my interest and, as I see it, obligation to expose fallacious manipulation of science by creationists. I chose to train in anthropology because I am interested in people and our nearest kin. I found that to best understand my interests in human evolution and culture, I needed to learn a modicum of the physical and biological sciences. This modicum at least enables me to carefully read articles such as Schweitzer's. This was the only basis of my only writing about the paleontology of dinosaurs. In my opinion, this obligation to refute 'false teaching' is a general one shared by all scientists, and in the case of the earlier research by Schweitzer, I personally encouraged her to face this obligation. Nor was I the first to have done so. She declined in 2003 saying to me that it would be best for her career to simply ignore the massive distortion of her work stemming largely from the Answers in Genesis Ministry, Inc. Few scientific colleagues were aware that Schweitzer has become something of a favorite among young Earth creationists, and she was glad to keep it that way. Schweitzer's major professor, Jack Horner, was similarly disinclined in directly confronting creationists. In brief, Mary Schweitzer and Jack Horner, in spite of their protests, have provided creationists with a rich diet for over a decade without ever bothering to publicly refute the gross misrepresentations of their work.

I've spoken to scientists who tell me it's not worth going after creationism. All the science supports evolution, and that's that.

What scientists don't understand is that creationism and Intelligent Design-Intelligent Origin Theory are not scientific movements. They are political movements. Politics is not decided by the facts, but by opinions, and whoever has the best techniques for shaping opinion will win the battle.

Science will eventually win out, but in the face of political opposition, victory may come only after the culture that ignores science has been killed off by its ignorance of scientific reality.

The notion of a Darwin Award for a whole culture is not one I had considered before, but I'm thinking of it now.