Instant Fossils!
Scientists at Britain’s University of Bristol have converted animal and plant tissue into fossils, in just twenty-four hours! With the help of a hydraulic press and high temperatures, they converted bird feathers, lizard limbs, and leaves into fossils which are very similar to those dug out of the ground.
According to a university press release, “[H]igh heat and pressure accelerate the chemical degradation reactions that normally occur over millions of years when a fossil is buried deep underground and exposed to geothermal heat and pressure from overlying sediment.”
Researchers published their findings in the journal Palaeontology, writing that the synthetic fossils “closely resemble exceptional fossils, not just visually, but also microscopically as revealed using a scanning electron microscope.”
These results support what creationists have said for some time: It doesn’t necessarily take millions of years to produce fossils; rather, they could have been formed under the right conditions, such as those caused by a global flood as recorded in the book of Genesis.
Source: “Made-to-Order Fossils,” Answers Magazine, Vol. 13, No. 6 (Nov-Dec, 2018), p. 32. See also “Creating ‘synthetic’ fossils in the lab sheds light on fossilisation processes,” press release from University of Bristol, retrieved February 20, 2019; https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2018/july/creating-synthetic-fossils.html.
