Around 150 years ago, Charles Darwin asserted that “no organism wholly soft can be preserved.” He concluded this based on the assumption that fossilization required long periods of time.

The reality is, however, that fossilization must occur rapidly, at a faster rate than the specimen would decay. Darwin's belief in vast geological ages, borrowed from Charles Lyell and perhaps from his grandfather Erasmus, led to his misinterpretation that fossils form slowly and gradually. Since Darwin's time, however, many organisms that were “wholly soft” have been found preserved and fossilized, and by far the best explanation for their formation is not through slow and gradual means, but rapid and catastrophic ones.

Although extremely uncommon, worms, jellyfish, bacteria, a host of different kinds of leaves, and now three exquisitely preserved octopods have been found in fossilized form. Discovered in Lebanon, these wholly soft-bodied animals must have been rapidly engulfed by watery sediments. The mud that encased them turned to stone, preserving the octopod impressions before the creatures could rot.

These specimens provide strong testimony for a rapid fossilization process. Soft tissue fossils have long been a problem for those who believe that sedimentary deposits represent vast ages. For example, paleontology research at the University of Leicester refers to the softbody phenomenon as an “ancient mystery.” The university stated in 2008 that “the Burgess Shales preserved soft tissue in exquisite detail, and the question of how this came to happen has troubled scientists since the discovery of the fossils in 1909.” Interestingly, university researchers solved this “mystery” by suggesting “rapid sedimentation of up to decimetre-thick units at this location from pulsatory, quasi-continuous density currents.”

In addition to “wholly soft” creatures found in fossilized form, preserved soft body partssuch as the fossilized brains of a T. Rex and an extinct fishhave been discovered, and Nature recently reported on “exceptional soft-tissue preservation in a theropod from Italy.”, The rock layers that contain these fossils could not have taken long ages to form, because these creatures would have decayed too quickly to have been preserved the way they exist today. The “rapid sedimentation” cited by the University of Leicester researchers would, however, be consistent with a widespread deluge, such as Noah's Flood.

Since there is no record of vast eons in these rocks, and the only answer to the Gmystery of fossilized soft tissue matches the account of catastrophe already given in God's Word, perhaps it is time to discard the unfounded and outdated concept of long geological ages.

Fossil Fibers Befuddle Dinosaur Evolution By Brian Thomas, M.S.* Evolutionary museums and textbooks have often portrayed modern birds as the descendants of dinosaurs, a story that has been presented without empirical support. Now, a new “feathered” dinosaur discovery has thrown a wrench into the already dysfunctional machinery of the dino-to-bird tale. This dinosaur fossil with fang-like teeth, Tianyulong confuciusi, has been found with fibers that resemble structures believed by some evolutionists to be the precursors of feathersthe only problem is, it's the wrong category of dinosaur to have them!

Certain theropod dinosaurs, such as sinusauropteryx, have fossilized fibers. This “dinofuzz” has been interpreted as protofeathers, but this interpretation has been disputed by other evolutionary paleontologists. One study pointed out:

The major, and most worrying, problem of the feathered dinosaur hypothesis is that the integumental structures have been homologized with avian feathers on the basis of anatomically and paleontologically unsound and misleading information.

For the dino-to-bird story to be true, the lizardhip structures of theropods must have evolved into bird-hip structures. Some evolutionary scientists have further observed the extent of internal restructuring that theropods would have had to undergo in order to shift the bulk of their body mass from the rear to the front, noting that theropods have “exactly the wrong anatomy for flight.” Although these dinosaurs walked on two legs placed underneath their bodies like birds do, that is where the similarities end. Nor has a single transitional form between the two been confirmed.

Now, fibers have been found on Tianyulong, which is not even a theropod. This fact has been difficult to explain by those who are convinced that theropods evolved into birds. Why did these nontheropods have “protofeathers” if they were not destined to morph into birds? It appears that these fibrous processes were present with the very earliest dinosaurs, whether they were theropods or not. In the journal Nature, Lawrence Witmer of Ohio University stated, "Perhaps the only clear conclusion that can be drawn ... is that little Tianyulong has made an already confusing picture of feather origins even fuzzier.”

This news constitutes another refutation of the theropod-to-bird story. The information one can gather from the raw fossil data, however, fits with biblical creation. First, “no fossils from the first dinosaurs are known.” In other words, no fossils from their imagined evolutionary precursors have yet been found. But there are numerous fossils of dinosaurs that perished in a widespread watery cataclysm, such as Noah's Flood. Their lack of evolutionary ancestors, their sudden appearance in the fossil record, and the global evidence for a massive extinction like that recorded in the Bible add up to dinosaurs having been distinctly created according to their own kinds, just as Genesis recorded.

Second, no dinosaur has been found with any undisputed transitional feature. Even the newly-discovered “dino-fuzz” is not feather-like (lacking rachis, barbs, barbules, or evidence of keratin rather than cartilage) and is perhaps more accurately interpreted as simply decorative fibers. Thus, it presents evidence for special creation by a God who is aesthetically-minded.

There is no such thing in the real world as a feathered dinosaur. The news that this non-theropod dinosaur had fibers just adds more scientific evidence to corroborate the historical evidence that dinosaurs were created, not evolved.