Wednesday 3 August 2016

“70-Million-Year-Old” Hadrosaur Suffered from the Consequences of Adam’s Sin


Image courtesy of Nobu Tamura, Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0).




Joel Kontinen

According to the biblical worldview, the Earth was once a perfect place until the first humans rebelled against God’s explicit commandment.

The dire consequences of the rebellion that is known as the Fall can be seen almost everywhere, even amid the created beauty of our world.

A recent paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science revealed a serious result of their sin: severe arthritis in a hadrosaur assumed to be “70 million years old”.

While radiometric dating is more or less unreliable, there is no question that the poor dinosaur was not in the best of health.

New Scientist reports:

Scientists believe the hadrosaur, a plant-eating duck-billed dinosaur, must have endured considerable suffering before reaching the end of its life.”

This is based on solid science:

"X-ray analysis of its fossilised elbow joint revealed evidence of septic arthritis, an especially nasty form of the disease caused by infection and known to afflict modern birds, crocodiles and humans.

A micro-tomography scan — a high resolution version of the kind of CT scans used in hospitals — showed that the joint was fused and covered in bony growths
.”

Death plays a major role in the evolution model but in the biblical worldview it is an intruder.

The article goes on to say:
.
"It is the first time septic arthritis has been seen in a dinosaur, although another arthritic condition called osteomyelitis was quite common among the creatures.”

The Fall was a catastrophe that has impacted life on Earth since the dawn of mankind. Radiocarbon (C-14) and soft tissue suggest that man and dinos walked here at the same time. Both suffered from the consequences of an extremely bad decision.

But even now, we can occasionally see glimpses of a better world: In Ireland, a cat adopted ducklings instead of eating them, and in Russian Dagestan, a lioness herds a flock of sheep.

Source:

New Scientist staff and Press Association. 2016. First diagnosis of dinosaur arthritis shows it lived in pain. (3 August).