In another thread, creation.com's webpage "Age of the Earth" was cited as providing scientific evidence for a "young earth". The page includes a long list of evidences it claims are supportive of young-earth creationism's belief in a earth that is less than 10,000 years old.
So let's examine these evidences one at a time and see how they measure up.
The first is:
"DNA in ‘ancient’ fossils. DNA extracted from bacteria that are supposed to be 425 million years old brings into question that age, because DNA could not last more than thousands of years."
It takes a bit of clicking and scrolling, but eventually we come across some scientific material and the associated young-earth creationist commentary. The first comes from THIS PAGE, which states "Some scientists have also reported reviving bacteria from the gut of a bee, supposedly 15–40 million years old." A bit of clicking and scrolling and we eventually get to the YEC commentary...
"Now the chairman of the microbiology department at California Polytechnic State University, and an assistant, have claimed in Science magazine that they have cultured live bacteria from the gut of a bee in Dominican amber. According to evolutionary assumptions, the fossil is 25-40 million years old. "
Oddly, the creationist commentary includes no link or direct citation to the referenced article in Science. Instead, we're given a couple of general citations to popular literature (New Scientist and Time Magazine) from 1995. 1995? Why, that's 19 years ago! Surely if DNA tens of millions of years old has been definitively identified since then, we'd know about it, right?
Well, it turns out there have been subsequent attempts to replicate the original claims.
Sequencing Study Finds Amber-Preserved Insects Contain No DNA
"NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Insects trapped in an amber precursor contained no endogenous DNA, University of Manchester researchers reported in PLOS One yesterday, a finding that counters previous claims that such DNA could be successfully extracted and could potentially be used in a Jurassic Park-style re-creation of extinct animals."
You can also CLICK HERE (PDF) to read a decent write-up on this question.
The overall conclusion from these studies is that so far it's a hotly debated issue in microbiology and there are questions that remain to be answered.
But what I wonder is, why hasn't creation.com updated their website to include this new information? Remember, they're trying to make a genuine scientific case here, so are they deliberately withholding information from their readers? Now, you might say "But that latest work was from late 2013, so maybe creation.com hasn't gotten around to updating their website".
Except that the subsequent studies showing no ancient DNA have been going on since 1997.
"Jeremy Austin and his colleagues tried to take DNA from 13 insects trapped in 35-million-year-old amber and two from 2-million-year-old copal, like the unfortunate flies pictured above. "The only DNA we found was from fungi, humans or other vertebrates," says Austin. This DNA is almost certainly due to recent contamination while the amber was being handled."
Ok then, not sure. Of course the same guy who published the original claim about finding ancient bacterial DNA has made some additional claims, even to the point of claiming to have revived an ancient strain of yeast and used it to brew beer! Others have also claimed to have found ancient bacteria inside salt crystals. But even these claims are questionable.
But if you read the articles, you notice a common thread. All the reported positive finds are of a very specific type, namely of spore-forming species that are found in extremely unique and special environments...encased in amber inside insects, or encased in salt crystals in brine. So even if they turn out to be true, we have spores, which are already known to be extremely hardy and able to survive extreme conditions, plus extremely rare and unique environments that inherently favor long-term preservation.
However, if all of this really were only a few thousand years old, shouldn't this sort of find be more common? I mean, we have 5,000 year old DNA from mummies, and even 400,000 year old DNA from human-like species. So if nothing is older than 6,000 years or so, why don't just about all remains of everything contain DNA?
So let's examine these evidences one at a time and see how they measure up.
The first is:
"DNA in ‘ancient’ fossils. DNA extracted from bacteria that are supposed to be 425 million years old brings into question that age, because DNA could not last more than thousands of years."
It takes a bit of clicking and scrolling, but eventually we come across some scientific material and the associated young-earth creationist commentary. The first comes from THIS PAGE, which states "Some scientists have also reported reviving bacteria from the gut of a bee, supposedly 15–40 million years old." A bit of clicking and scrolling and we eventually get to the YEC commentary...
"Now the chairman of the microbiology department at California Polytechnic State University, and an assistant, have claimed in Science magazine that they have cultured live bacteria from the gut of a bee in Dominican amber. According to evolutionary assumptions, the fossil is 25-40 million years old. "
Oddly, the creationist commentary includes no link or direct citation to the referenced article in Science. Instead, we're given a couple of general citations to popular literature (New Scientist and Time Magazine) from 1995. 1995? Why, that's 19 years ago! Surely if DNA tens of millions of years old has been definitively identified since then, we'd know about it, right?
Well, it turns out there have been subsequent attempts to replicate the original claims.
Sequencing Study Finds Amber-Preserved Insects Contain No DNA
"NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – Insects trapped in an amber precursor contained no endogenous DNA, University of Manchester researchers reported in PLOS One yesterday, a finding that counters previous claims that such DNA could be successfully extracted and could potentially be used in a Jurassic Park-style re-creation of extinct animals."
You can also CLICK HERE (PDF) to read a decent write-up on this question.
The overall conclusion from these studies is that so far it's a hotly debated issue in microbiology and there are questions that remain to be answered.
But what I wonder is, why hasn't creation.com updated their website to include this new information? Remember, they're trying to make a genuine scientific case here, so are they deliberately withholding information from their readers? Now, you might say "But that latest work was from late 2013, so maybe creation.com hasn't gotten around to updating their website".
Except that the subsequent studies showing no ancient DNA have been going on since 1997.
"Jeremy Austin and his colleagues tried to take DNA from 13 insects trapped in 35-million-year-old amber and two from 2-million-year-old copal, like the unfortunate flies pictured above. "The only DNA we found was from fungi, humans or other vertebrates," says Austin. This DNA is almost certainly due to recent contamination while the amber was being handled."
Ok then, not sure. Of course the same guy who published the original claim about finding ancient bacterial DNA has made some additional claims, even to the point of claiming to have revived an ancient strain of yeast and used it to brew beer! Others have also claimed to have found ancient bacteria inside salt crystals. But even these claims are questionable.
But if you read the articles, you notice a common thread. All the reported positive finds are of a very specific type, namely of spore-forming species that are found in extremely unique and special environments...encased in amber inside insects, or encased in salt crystals in brine. So even if they turn out to be true, we have spores, which are already known to be extremely hardy and able to survive extreme conditions, plus extremely rare and unique environments that inherently favor long-term preservation.
However, if all of this really were only a few thousand years old, shouldn't this sort of find be more common? I mean, we have 5,000 year old DNA from mummies, and even 400,000 year old DNA from human-like species. So if nothing is older than 6,000 years or so, why don't just about all remains of everything contain DNA?
