Paleozoic Scorpions and the Age of the Earth

[TBC: Here is another example of how the evidence does not support the "billions of years" demanded by evolution.] 

Paleozoic Scorpion Exoskeleton Gainsays Assigned Age [Excerpts]

Among land-dwelling arthropods, the sheer number of just ants and beetles that live and die each year is phenomenal. And ocean krill exist in even higher numbers. Each of these creatures leaves behind an exoskeleton. If it were not for remarkably efficient exoskeleton-eating microbes, the earth would quickly fill up with arthropod carcasses.

For the first time, scientists have proved that some Paleozoic fossil exoskeletons still contain original, organic, un-mineralized material. Only a miracle could have kept this substance intact for the 300 million years since the insects were supposedly entombed in rock.

The exoskeletons, or cuticles, are made of a sugar-based chemical called chitin that is attached to a protein scaffold and covered by a waxy layer. In their study published in the journal Geology, the researchers examined a scorpion from Pennsylvanian rock, as well as a scorpion-like eurypterid from even lower Silurian rock (Cody, G. D. et al. 2011. “Molecular signature of chitin-protein complex in Paleozoic arthropods,” Geology. 39 (3): 255-258). Both layers are Paleozoic and are said to be hundreds of millions of years old.

The authors wrote, "The conventional geochemical view holds that the chitin and structural protein are not preserved in ancient fossils because they are readily degradable through microbial chitinolysis and proteolysis [the enzymatic breakdown of chitin and protein, respectively]" (Ibid). This "geochemical" view has solid chemical precedent. Experiments have long shown that chitinous exoskeletons degrade in weeks. But these new results conflict with the conventional view, showing that, somehow, chitin and its linked protein in these arthropod fossils have not completely degraded but are still partly preserved. How can this be?

Even when dry and sterilized, proteins fall apart because of their tiny, intricate structures. Thus, even with no microbial action at all, they degrade from an originally high state of organization to an ever-increasing state of disorganization. Eventually, they crumble into powder. Based on observations of the rate of sterile cuticle decay, these arthropods should have become powder in only thousands of years.

So, although microbial action dramatically accelerates the breakdown of these proteins and chitin, microbes are certainly not required. All that is needed is time for either substance to decay. And that is the dilemma, since the study's scorpion was dated at 310 million years and the eurypterid at 417 million years. And yet both exhibited original organic materials.

http://www.icr.org/article/5964/