On US websites in the past 24 hours, it seems that only one topic—racism (especially with the firing of a foul-mouthed “shock jock” radio host¹)—has seen more web pages than another story: the announcement that proteins found in a T. rex fossil supposedly present strong evidence that dinosaurs evolved into birds.

Two years ago, evolutionist paleontologist Mary Schweitzer made headlines with the announced discovery of soft, stretchy tissue in the thigh bone of a T. rex (said to be 68 million years old). It made something of a splash in the creation/evolution debate as well, for the preservation of this soft tissue strongly suggests that the dinosaurs did not die out as long ago as supposed. Creationists (like Dr. David Menton at AiG) argued that the existence of soft tissue makes a compelling argument that dinosaurs have lived in relatively recent times (even thousands of years ago). Such comments greatly upset evolutionists like Schweitzer, who brushed off the creationists (and AiG in particular) with vague statements that the tissue must have somehow been preserved in unique ways not yet known.

The thigh bone was in the news again yesterday, but this time in an attempt to boost the evolution belief system. The analysis of proteins extracted from the T. rex is being used to show an evolutionary link between dinosaurs and chickens—that dinosaurs eventually evolved into birds (as is now commonly taught as fact in textbooks and science museums).

On this website tomorrow (in our regular weekend feature called News to Note), we will have more to say about this evolutionary claim. In addition, after consulting the original research into the protein comparison, we hope to say even more next week.

For the moment, let’s not ignore the importance of what has been found (and as will be declared in the soon-to-open Creation Museum): finding T. rex soft tissue is compelling evidence that it was not 65 million years ago that dinosaurs died out, as given on the evolutionary timeline. Furthermore, if dinosaurs have been roaming the earth in relatively recent times, there would have been virtually no time, for example, for the supposed evolution of reptilian scales into intricate feathers.

Indeed, this T. rex fossil provides wonderful circumstantial evidence to support the biblical chronology of a young earth. Additionally, creationists already know that birds were created before dinosaurs: on days 5 and 6 respectively of creation week.

(Ed. Note: We just noticed that yesterday’s NY Times also used the tongue-in-cheek drumstick analogy [paragraph 5].)