I was absolutely thunderstruck yesterday morning when I sat down to do the daily search for News Items to add to my website’s Geology News section. Blazed across almost every science news source RSS feed were headlines stating Scientists Find Soft Tissue in T-Rex Bone that could yield DNA. (I checked the calendar quickly to make sure it was not April 1st.)
If this find proves to be true the implications are staggering. How could “soft tissue” with intact cellular structure survive 70 million years of burial? Even more astounding (according to the story) is that since this initial discovery similar “soft tissue” structures have been found in 3 other dinosaur fossils upon re-examination. This will, no doubt, change the textbooks on how fossilization proceeds. But it will also start a new propaganda storm by the Young Earth Creationists who will declare the find as another ‘proof’ of the young age of the earth in their never ending debate against mainstream science.
Now, as for scientists being able to extract DNA from these fossils, I seriously doubt that possibility. But I am going to keep an open mind on the matter.