Dinosaurs lived approximately 65 million years old… according to people who know what they’re talking about. But that fact flies in the face of Creationists, who believe the Earth only came into existence a few thousand years ago.

So what happens when Ken Ham‘s Answers in Genesis acquires legitimate dinosaur bones? His team will do anything it can to “prove” those bones are only a few thousand years old.

A couple of ranchers from South Dakota recently donated fossils from an Edmontosaurus (below) to the Creationists, and Ham and his colleague Dr. David Menton are excited to see what information is contained in the bones:

Menton — who has a Ph.D. in cell biology and no formal training in paleontology — believes he’s perfectly equipped to assess the proper age of these bones.

And Ham gives up the entire game with this comment:

If Dr. Menton finds what he is looking for, you can count on a big write-up for Answers in Genesis in the near future!

That’s the opposite of how science works. You don’t start with a conclusion and search for evidence supporting it. You look at the evidence and follow wherever it leads. But that’s what happens when you assume the Bible is literally true. Anything that contradicts that belief must be dismissed, by necessity.

Is there even any evidence suggesting the bone is far younger than we expect?

What’s really interesting about these bones is the fact that in a cross-section of the tibia, the bone has what looks like bone marrow present.

As any real scientist could tell you, that’s not unusual at all. Steph Bazzle at Inquisitr explains:

Soft tissue surviving in dinosaur bones isn’t an entirely new idea — according to Smithsonian Magazine, a Tyrannosaurus Rex bone with soft tissue still present was discovered a decade ago. Even then, young Earth creationists quickly hijacked the discovery as evidence that [dinosaur] fossils were not millions of years old after all — but the scientists who are familiar with the study of these bones say that it shows, instead, a misunderstanding about how decay works.

Of course, even if Menton “finds” anything, it won’t be peer-reviewed by experts in the field. It’ll be “reviewed” by other Creationists, presumably ones who are also not adequately equipped to assess the information.

This is how they do science at the Creation Museum: They start with the conclusions, they don’t care if you’re an expert in your field, and they ignore established science that might contradict their ideas.

(Image via Wikipedia. Thanks to Daniel for the link)



