In spite of all the assertions that Dinosaurs are millions of years old, it is becoming more and more apparent that this is probably not the case, for the following reasons: Unfossilized Dino Bones Carbon Date from 16,000 – 24,000 years old. Unfossilized dinosaur bones have been found in Alaska, Canada, and the Lower 48 States. Some have been Carbon dated to 9,800 years old; many others (along with wood from dino strata) date between 16,000 to 24,000 years old. Pictures of microscopic dinosaur tissue. Organic Proteins and Blood-derived compounds:
In an article from the Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences the authors state that: “Six independent lines of evidence point to the existence of heme-containing compounds and/or hemoglobin breakdown products in… tissues of the large theropod dinosaur Tyrannosaurus rex ..." And that: “The most parsimonious explanation ... is the presence of blood-derived hemoglobin compounds preserved in the dinosaurian tissues. ”
The word parsimonious here means extremely conservative. That’s because six different methods were used to crosscheck the conclusion. Several years earlier with regard to a similar T-rex bone that was being viewed under a microscope, the lead author of the article above stated that she ...“got goose bumps … It was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But ... I couldn't believe it. I said to the lab technician: 'The bones, after all, are 65 million yearsold. How could blood cells survive that long? ” It isn’t that Mary Schweitzer can’t believe it but that it would not be beneficial for her career to publicly state that dinosaurs might not be millions of years old: after all the hype.
Ars Technica reports: The armored beasts of the Cretaceous known as ankylosaurine dinosaurs don't get as much love as the charismatic T. rex. But now, one of the world's only complete ankylosaurid skeletons has been acquired and analyzed by the Royal Ontario Museum—and the artifact even has a significant amount of mummified tissues like skin. At this point, there's no denying that this creature, whose body was covered in spikes, horns, and scales like a medieval dragon, has earned the wholly scientific designation of "badass."
In a paper for the Royal Society Open Science, Royal Ontario Museum paleontologists Victoria Arbour and David Evans describe the 75 million-year-old creature, a new species they dubbed Zuul crurivastator. Yes, its name is a reference to the demon Zuul from the original Ghostbusters movie. "Crurivastator" means "crusher of shins," which is exactly what this creature could do with its spiked, hammer-tipped tail.
Weighing 2.5 tonnes and spanning 20 feet from its horned face to its spiny tail, Zuul was a living tank. In previous work, Arbour demonstrated using computer models that a beast like Zuul could use its tail club to break leg bones in its foes. This would have been especially effective against predator T. rex, which walked on two legs. Take out one leg, and the animal won't survive long in the dinosaur-infested jungles of the Cretaceous. One of the most exciting things about this find is how much of Zuul's soft tissues were preserved, giving scientists a unique opportunity to see the texture of its skin imprinted on the rock that encased it. Zuul's spikes and scales were embedded in its skin, so now we have a very clear picture of just how dragon-like this animal appeared. Spines protruded from its body, much like the sharp plates that run down Godzilla's spine.
Arbour and Evans will also be able to run chemical analyses on the mummified skin, searching for proteins that will hint at Zuul's molecular biology. Writing on the Royal Museum of Ontario website, the researchers map out their next moves:
The incredible preservation of Zuul’s skeleton gives us the opportunity to use cutting-edge molecular palaeontology techniques to search for original proteins and other organic biomolecules in the soft tissue. We’ll also be using radiometric dating analyses to study the age of Zuul and the surrounding rocks, and will describe the other plants and animals from the quarry that lived in the same ecosystem as Zuul.Zuul was found, appropriately, in the northern Montana Badlands just 25 km from the Alberta border. Researchers from the Southern Alberta Dinosaur Project had been digging for T. rex remains when they bumped into Zuul and discovered that its remains were miraculously intact. Its skull was slightly deformed in the millions of years it spent under heavy rocks, but researchers have reconstructed what the skull might have looked like at the moment of death (see video above). The dry environment had mummified parts of Zuul during the fossilization process, allowing scientists to see one of these deadly fighters in its full glory. All hail Zuul, crusher of shins and defender against the mighty T. rex!
Royal Society Open Science, 2017. DOI: 10.1098/rsos.161086
