Below is the online edition of In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood,
by Dr. Walt Brown. Copyright © Center for Scientific Creation. All rights reserved.
Click here to order the hardbound 8th edition (2008) and other materials.
DNA. When an animal or plant dies, its DNA begins decomposing.a Before 1990, almost no one believed that DNA could last 10,000 years.b This limit was based on measuring DNA disintegration rates in well-preserved specimens of known age, such as Egyptian mummies. DNA has now been reported in supposedly a 400,000-year-old hominin femur from Spain,c 17-million-year-old magnolia leaves,d and 11-to-425-million-year-old salt crystals.e Dozens of plants and animals have left DNA in sediments claimed to be 30,000–400,000 years old.f DNA fragments have been found in the scales of a “200-million-year-old” fossilized fishg and possibly in “80-million-year-old” dinosaur bones buried in a coal bed.h Frequently, DNA is found in insects and plants encased in amber samples, assumed to be 25–120-million years old.i
These discoveries have forced evolutionists to reexamine the 10,000-year limit.j They now claim that DNA can be preserved longer if conditions are dryer, colder, and freer of oxygen, bacteria, and background radiation. However, measured disintegration rates of DNA, under these more ideal conditions, do not support this claim.k
Bacteria. Even living bacterial spores have been recovered, cultured, and identified in intestines of bees preserved in supposedly 25–40-million-year-old amber.l The same bacteria, Bacillus, have been found alive in rocks allegedly 250 million and 650-million years old.m Italian scientists have recovered 78 different types of dormant, but living, bacteria in two meteorites that are presumed to be 4.5-billion years old.n Anyone who accepts such old ages for these rocks must also accept that some bacteria are practically immortal—an obviously absurd conclusion. (Because these “old” bacteria and the various DNA specimens closely match those of today, little evolution has occurred.)
Proteins and Soft Tissue. Evolutionists face similar contradictions with proteins,o soft tissue,p blood compoundsq and other complex organic matterr preserved in dinosaur bones.s Researchers were shocked to find soft tissue in eight pieces of a dinosaur’s toe, rib, hip, leg, and claw.t Even dinosaur skin (from a hadrosaur) has been recovered and tested.u As with DNA, it is ridiculous to believe these remains have lasted 65–150-million years.v