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68. Old DNA, Bacteria, and Proteins?
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 17-million-year-old magnolia leavesc and 11-to-425-million-year-old salt crystals.d Dozens of plants and animals have left their DNA in sediments claimed to be 30,000–400,000 years old.e DNA fragments are also said to be in alleged 80-million-year-old dinosaur bones buried in a coal bedf and in the scales of a 200-million-year-old fossilized fish.g DNA is frequently reported in insects and plants encased in amber, both assumed to be 25–120 million years old.h
These discoveries have forced evolutionists to reexamine the 10,000-year limit.i 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.j
Bacteria. Even living bacterial spores have been recovered, cultured, and identified in intestines of bees preserved in supposedly 25–40-million-year-old amber.k The same bacteria, Bacillus, have been found alive in rocks allegedly 250 million and 650 million years old.l 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.m 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. Evolutionists face similar contradictions with proteins,n soft tissue,o and blood compoundsp preserved in dinosaur bones. As with DNA, these remains should not last 70–150 million years, as is claimed for those bones. All this should discredit these old ages.