Blood vessels, cells and proteins(!) discovered in dinosaur bones

This is probably not the thread for an extended debate of dating methods, so I'll summarise the two major reasons:1. Multiple, independent lines of evidence produce consistent results.
2. The failure of dating methods would require that laboratory confirmed results from physics and chemistry not apply in the past.More in-depth discussion should perhaps be taken to the Dates and Dating forum?

As has been suggested a couple times now, if you want a more in-depth discussion of dating methods then you should find a thread in the [forum=-3] forum, but as Mr. Jack points out, if our dating methods are wrong then much of science is wrong. For example, if we don't understand nuclear decay then how is it that we're able to design working nuclear bombs and reactors?But ask yourself which of these is the least likely:

1. That the scientists claiming they've discovered dinosaur proteins are mistaken.
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2. That as incredibly unlikely as it seems it is possible for some proteins to survive for millions of years.
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3. That a hundred years of physics, evidence gathering and validation of dating methods are wrong, as well as all the associated lines of evidence from the fields of geology, astronomy, astrophysics, oceanography and so on, calling into question significant findings from these fields and potentially calling into question almost all of science.

These are the possibilities scientists must consider, and none are going to give serious consideration to the possibility that the results from one lab are going to subvert the huge amounts of evidence across all of science. Each little piece of evidence by itself means little, but in science the evidence is woven together into an extremely tight, strong and highly interconnected fabric. You can't rip the fabric with just one tiny tug.We already know that when an organism dies that preservation as a fossil is a very unlikely event. If you doubt this then think about all the life alive on earth today, and all the life that must have been alive over the history of the planet, and ask yourself where are their bones? For the most part they're gone, returned to the environment due to scavengers, erosion and decay. If this weren't true we would be awash in bones.When an organism does die under circumstances that are conducive to fossilization, the conditions are still highly variable. Some circumstances are conducive to fine detail preservation, some aren't. Often the preservation layer is buried more and more deeply, and it is not uncommon for it to reach a depth where heat and pressure destroys the fossil. For instance, marble is formed from limestone under great heat and pressure. Some buried layers disappear into subduction zones. Some buried layers never return to the surface, so their fossils remain hidden forever. Some buried layers are affected by earthquakes, volcanoes or erosion (think Grand Canyon, where huge quantities of embedded fossils must have been destroyed as the Colorado River cut its way downward). But some fossils survive this process and in various states of preservation are eventually discovered by someone, hopefully a paleontologist.While it isn't that common, some fossils are preserved in layers that remain almost completely undisturbed until the time of their discovery, and such fossils are the most likely candidates for retaining intact protein and DNA.Another point to consider is that there is no proof that protein is too fragile to be preserved for millions of years. It's just an assumption. But this assumption means that little to no effort has been exerted looking for ancient protein. And if you read the article (Dinosaur proteins, cells and blood vessels recovered from Bracyhlophosaurus you'll see the extreme care and complex methodology that had to be employed by the scientists, another reason why it may have taken until now. Of course, the discovery might not hold up, we'll have to wait and see.--Percy

Peg, The tissues & molecules aren't "attached" to it, this kind of preservation is associated with large bones like femurs which fossilise on the outside before the inside. This process is known as capping & basically means that the inside of the bone is entirely protected from the outside world, including any bacteria that would otherwise decay it, & also from further fossilisation.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Well, I'm no expert, but I imagine that the implicit assumption that proteins cannot stay intact for such long periods of time may simply be not true.It wouldn't be the first time that something like this happens. At one time it seemed absurd to suppose that the earth revolved around the sun.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.