Why do we only find fossils?

Besides your misreprsentation of the finding of "blood" and "soft tissues" in fossils, you should actually learn to look for the peer reviewed literature on ancient tissue preservation before putting your little ignorant fingers to the keyboard...Plants
Koller B, Schmitt JM, Tischendorf G. Related Articles, Links
Cellular fine structures and histochemical reactions in the tissue of a cypress twig preserved in Baltic amber.
Proc Biol Sci. 2005 Jan 22;272(1559):121-6.insects:
Poinar HN, Hoss M, Bada JL, Paabo S. Related Articles, Links
Amino acid racemization and the preservation of ancient DNA.
Science. 1996 May 10;272(5263):864-6.much more recent: mammoths...note, in samples only thousands of years old almost all proteins are degraded, highly modified, and lacking almost all of the elements contained in living tissueLowenstein JM. Related Articles, Links
Immunological reactions from fossil material.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1981 May 8;292(1057):143-9.Prager EM, Wilson AC, Lowenstein JM, Sarich VM. Related Articles, Links
Mammoth albumin.
Science. 1980 Jul 11;209(4453):287-9.Here is another dinosaur and note (if you read it..but you won't) that tissue preservation means fine structure..it is completely fossilizedChin K, Eberth DA, Schweitzer MH, Rando TA, Sloboda WJ, Horner JR. Related Articles, Links
Remarkable preservation of undigested muscle tissue within a Late Cretaceous tyrannosaurid coprolite from Alberta, Canada.
Palaios. 2003 Jun;18(3):286-94.Another method for evaluating preservation of tissuesProc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1999 Jul 20;96(15):8426-31. Related Articles, LinksProtein preservation and DNA retrieval from ancient tissues.Poinar HN, Stankiewicz BA.Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Inselstrasse 22, Leipzig D-04103, Germany. poinar@eva.mpg.deThe retrieval of DNA from fossils remains controversial. To substantiate claims of DNA recovery, one needs additional information on the preservation of other molecules within the same sample. Flash pyrolysis with GC and MS was used to assess the quality of protein preservation in 11 archaeological and paleontological remains, some of which have yielded ancient DNA sequences authenticated via a number of criteria and some of which have consistently failed to yield any meaningful DNA. Several samples, including the Neanderthal-type specimen from which DNA sequences were recently reported, yielded abundant pyrolysis products assigned to 2,5-diketopiperazines of proline-containing dipeptides. The relative amounts of these products provide a good index of the amount of peptide hydrolysis and DNA preservation. Of these samples, four stem from arctic or subarctic regions, emphasizing the importance of cooler temperatures for the preservation of macromolecules. Flash pyrolysis with GC and MS offers a rapid and effective method for assessing fossils for the possibility of DNA preservation.This is all the tip of the ice berg and you could have found it easily yourself i

Hi Ned,
A couple of the references I posted deal with this (i.e. the racemization papers, and the mammoth albumin study). If you look at bones that are recently buried to about 50 Kya, the determining factor in preservation is stable cold climate i.e. permafrost, or cold dry caves. The bones you find that have been exposed on the surface are faced with both enzymatic degradation (from bacteria and fungi) and hydrolytic damage to all of the biomolecules. All of these processes are slowed down when the samples are frozen (mammoths, permafrost finds) or in cold dry caves (sloths from chile, sloth coprolites from the US southwest).Bones found in tombs sometimes show preservation though with human remains it tends to be controversial (at the DNA level).But warm, wet climates or those with large variation in seasonal conditions, i.e. freeze thaw do not yield bones, etc. in a good preservation state.Ultimately, a 40 K old mammoth could be better preserved than someone buried in the tropics last year.One point in all of this is that none of what I am discussing here are fossils. The bones and soft tissues have not been replaced...when the ice thaws in Yakutia and a mammoth is exposed to the elements, it immediately starts to rot..given time it will waste away and disappear...not become a nice fossil skeleton that you will dig up millions of years from now.

I think that the problem is one cannot extrapolate from bones and soft tissues found today in sediments to what will become a fossil. Mammoth bones are found all over Russia and many countries of the former soviet union..but not mammoth fossils. They might be called fossils but this is in principle a misnomer...King Tut's skeleton is not a fossil either. I don't know that permafrost is necessarily conducive to fossil formation.Animals, plants and insects in amber are a different issue. It is still unclear what they are. The DNA data is a wash i.e. not reproducible and likely all contamination. But some of the amino acid racemization work suggests 1) there are still proteins present in some inclusions 2) the proteins are not completely racemized i.e. fairly well preserved. In that case, they are not fossils either.A completely mineralized bone that is now a rock in the shape of a dinosaur leg is a fossil. A rock with the imprint of soft tissue is a fossil.

You are probably right and I am off topic. I jumped in to counter randman's false assertion that there is not peer reviewed work on fossil and subfossil chemistry when in fact, they are active fields of research.But yes, even for mammoths, you only find bones dating back up to about 100 K but for more primitive mammoth groups, like Mammuthus meridionalis, which lived millions of years ago, you only find fossils...not compatible with global floods, YECism, creationism, IDism or any other such nonsense.

I think the problem with "poofing" is different.
From direct observation, we know that genetic information, and hence the traits we inherit are passed from parent to offspring. Even in asexual species, there is a direct line of descent from parent to offspring. This is true whether the genetic material is RNA or DNA. The only exception is horizontal transfer. Even epigenetics requires inheritance and thus, you are related to your parents, grandparents, to humans who are lost in time, and have a common , if distant, ancestry with species that are observed now only as fossils. Randman and other creo/IDists would have you believe that at times suitable to their preferred mythology, the principles of genetics were halted and things just magically poofed into existence. Given that all life known shows the same type of transmission of traits between individuals and populations, what compelling reason is there to accept that this did not hold true in the past i.e. what observed mechanism of heredity today suggests that whimsical special creation occurred in the past? One could reverse the question to, why don't creationists argue that genetics is a sham? Why not be consistent and state that nobody is related to their parents and that we are just poofed magically into being by a creator/designer? It is also a unsupportable and contradicts the evidence....but at least it would be a more consistent anti-fact belief system.

He again avoids that fact that he and the rest of the anti-science creo's and IDists should be mounting a campaign that challenges the huge gaps in Mendelian genetics and the conspiracy of science to suppress the inconsitent data that would lead good Xians to believe they are genetically related to their parents.Let's look at the gaps in Mendelian genetics,
Horizontal transmission of genetic information from non-related individualsRetrotransposition of several different types of pol and non pol containing genetic elementsmaternally inherited genomes i.e. mitochondriaepigenetic modification via methlyation of CpG's etc.siRNA, and other non-coding functional RNA'sMaternal RNA'sIn fact, given that most traits are quantitative in nature, patterns which Mendel observed are actually rare, i.e. single gene determining single traitsThis is suppressed by the scientific establishment and used to guide Xians away from the truth that nobody has parents, that DNA based forensics is a sham, and that Lysenko was closer to the truth. You are created ex-nihilo. Poofed banged into existence via QM..ahem, God... Genetics is a liberal conspiracy to make conservatives pay child support to fund secular liberal programs like Medicaid. Mendel recanted on his deathbed saying "I just wanted some peas with my steak".Anti-Mendel (Hereditary Poofism) would be the only honest position that creos/IDists can take if one has to posit ID or special creation to explain ancestry. It ignores about the same amount of empirical evidence as anything else from the anti-evolution crowd but at least it would be consistent with the objections to evolution.