The psittacosauros was a small dinosaur dating back to the early Cretaceous (around 120 million years ago). See http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdfExtended/S0960-9822(16)30706-0 … and for a response see www.icr.org/article/9595 (as forwarded by Robert). The full article is at the www.cell.com link and is an interesting read concerning colours and camouflage amongst other things. The specimen of psittacosauroscame from a Chinese fossil bed and appears to have been buried instantaneously as some of its soft parts have survived. Now, mainstream is a bit reticent when it comes to catastrophically sudden events and burials of fossils as they innately recognise that if such things exist as a result of sudden deposition this would neuter some of their favourite mainstream consensus articles of faith. Not least the geochronological time scale. There are always Creationist detractors on the sidelines ready to pounce on admissions of instantaneous burial but this article has been pounced on for a different reason – what it failed to mention. This involves proteins in the soft tissue, an issue that is studiously ignored. Why? The Creationist view is that it would be an open admission there is something wrong with the mainstream position as far as the age of the fossil is concerned – and it should by rights date much younger than 120 million years ago.
Now, the actual age of the fossil is not necessarily contradicted by the presence of soft tissue if it was buried immediately but that is the impression one is given by the detractors. Recognising catastrophic events punctuating the geochronological time scale is vastly different from reducing that time scale to Biblical proportions. Recognising a catalogue of earth shaking catastrophes would obviously affect the measurement of time, and make it difficult with current methodologies, but there is no reason to think a really drastic reduction in time is a logical outcome (although a reduction in time scale of some kind is a possibility, if not a strong possibility). At the moment dating methodologies go largely unchallenged but are often at loggerheads with each other. This discrepancy could be due to a cosmic factor within catastrophic events – but is not a given. What struck me is if the authors of the paper really did purposely ignore the soft tissue issue, why would they have done that. It seems a fear of a hissy fit by their colleagues may be a more rational explanation for the omission. This occurred recently when a scientist, who was a practising Christian, was on a fossil dig in Montana and came across (with his chums) 48 pieces of Tricerotops bone. When they got back to the laboratory he soaked the bone in a weak acid solution to remove unwanted minerals and uncovered soft brown tissue. He also scanned the fossil bone with an electron microscope (naughty boy) and found bone cells (or what looked very much like bone cells). This did not apparently please other scientists in the laboratory and university faculty (clearly attached to the orthodox faith system of uniformitarianism) and one of them burst in on hearing the news exclaiming loudly, 'we will not tolerate your religion in this department …' and various words to that effect (clearly unable to cope with evidence contrary to the consensus he was so entwined within). The odd man out was banished – sacked from his post. Obviously these people know what happened in the past and any evidence contradicting that knowledge must be brushed under the carpet and erased in case it infects any of the students. He has gone on to gain a sort of hollow victory as he sued the university for wrongful dismissal and won damages – which will come out of student tuition fees (a painless process on the part of the establishment). See https://blog.drwile.com?p=15259 … and one could imagine the authors of the Cell paper to be a trifle wary of mentioning soft tissue from dinosaurs or looking at the issue too closely.