Dinosaur Nests and Tracks – During a World-Wide Flood?

Introduction:

Many honest Seventh-day Adventists, and Christians of other denominations as well, often wonder how certain features of the fossil record can be explained by a worldwide Noachian-style Flood as described in the Bible. One particularly common question has to do with dinosaur eggs and trackways within the fossil record.  How, in the middle of a huge global Flood, could dinosaurs be walking around leaving footprints and casually making nests and laying eggs?  Surely this must mean that the Flood was not really worldwide, but more likely a local Flood.  It must also mean that the fossil record most likely does in fact span enormous periods of time over hundreds of millions of years – that it could not have been created during a year-long Flood and its aftermath as the authors of the Bible seem to suggest.

At first approximation, these features might indeed seem very puzzling and quite concerning for those coming from a Biblical perspective. However, as one considers these features more closely, a very different picture emerges as to what what going on when these fossils were preserved. As far as I’ve been able to tell, it seems like dinosaur eggs actually lend greater support to the worldwide Flood model.  I certainly don’t see how dinosaur eggs definitively undermine this model as many suggest.

Dinosaur Eggs:

Dinosaur Nests and Egg Shells:

Consider, for example, certain general features of dinosaur eggs:

    • Of the hundreds of thousands of eggs that have been preserved in the fossil record it seems likely that over 99% of them contain no embryo.

    • Essentially all of the eggs that have been found were buried by water-born sediments around the world.

      • “Floodwaters, however, periodically inundated the floodplain (at Auca Mahueva, Argentina), and suspension settling of fine-grain sediments filled the remaining portion of the hatched eggs, thereby resulting in their preservation in the rock record. Exhumation and exposure of the eggs may have resulted in subsequent erosion. The multiple egg-bearing horizons in the study area record the periodicity of these events… The sedimentary sequences… represent fluvial deposition in a floodplain environment.” (Link)
    • Many examples of egg beds were laid as sediments were being actively deposited – to include striking examples of eggs within the same “nest” being deposited on multiple levels of sediment (see picture above).

    • Most egg clutches… occur in uniform and homogeneous mudstone facies that provide no sedimentological evidence of nest structure (Chiappe et al., 1999; Chapter 4). (Link)
    • Most asymmetrical eggs (eggs with a pointy end) were unexpectedly preserved with the pointy end pointed downward and the larger end pointed upward with a symmetrical inward or outward leaning orientation – consistent with being laid in semi-liquid sediment (like very watery mud).

    • Those eggs that are found with “hatch windows” often contain the shell fragments from the window within the egg itself – a feature not expected from hatched eggs where the shell fragments should be on the outside of the egg following hatching.

    • The overall arrangement of eggs in a nest with “hatch windows” is not disturbed as would be expected from the hatchlings moving the light eggshells around after hatching from their eggs.

    • Trackways of young or baby dinosaurs are extremely rare relative to adult trackways and the trackways that are found (of the adults) are generally found in lower sedimentary layers compared to the body fossils (Leonard Brand).

    • Extremely well preserved embryos from Auca Mahuevo (Argentina), to include the preservation of very delicate embryonic bones and skin, suggests very rapid burial in a supersaturated watery environment.

    • There is “no evidence of in situ organic matter or vegetation other than transported material” (Link) associated with dinosaur eggs. This is evidence of water sorting of all of the sediments associated with these eggs.
    • Commonly identified double layered egg shells suggesting the existence of a stressful environment worldwide (see discussion below).

Bernhart, Walter R., Dinosaur Nests Reinterpreted, CRSQ Vol 41 No 2 September 2004 ( Link )

Johns, Warren H., Dinosaur eggs and the post-Flood boundary, TJ 19(3) 2005 ( Link )

Jackson, Fraces D., Titanosaur Reproductive Biology: Comparison of the Auca Mahuevo Titanosaur Nesting Locality (Argentina), to the Pinyes Magaloolithus Nesting Locality (Spain), Ph.D. Dissertation, Montana State University, April, 2007 ( Link )

Now, I do recognize that embryos, though very rare, are sometimes identified (both within and outside of their eggs).  I’m also aware that they show fairly advanced development, to include fully formed skeletons and occasional teeth.   However, this is not entirely unexpected given the Biblical Flood model (on a worldwide scale).  As originally proposed by Leonard Brand (Link), cases are known were reptiles, like the Komodo Dragon for example, will withhold the laying of fertilized eggs until a more favorable opportunity arises or until they are put into very stressful conditions of “fight or flight”.  Of course, if eggs are held for too long before being laid, they will develop a “second shell” which suffocates the embryo.  Dinosaur eggs have often been found with such a double shell, suggesting that they were able to avoid laying their eggs for some time in the hopes of more favorable conditions.

Multilayered dinosaur eggshells are reported from Upper Cretaceous rocks of Asia, Europe, and North and South America (Dughi and Sirugue, 1958; Thaler, 1965; Erben, 1970; Sochava, 1971, Mohabey, 1984; Zhao et al., 1991; Vianey-Liaud et al., 1994; Powell, 1987; Zelenitsky and Hills, 1997; Ribeiro, 1999; Zhao et al., 2002)… Jackson et al. (2002) reported a multilayered fossil turtle egg from the Judith River Formation of Montana, and Schleich and Kästle (1988) reported multilayered gecko eggs from the Oligocene of Germany. Although present in a variety of fossil eggshell types, the multilayered condition is most frequently reported in the megaloolithid eggshell structure (Hirsch, 2001).

Erben et al., (1979) report that pathological conditions occur in 10% of eggshells in Upper Cretaceous rocks from France and the authors suggest a progressive, stratigraphically upward increase in these abnormalities as a result of changing climatic conditions. Similarly, Zhao et al., (2002) report a 56% and 74% frequency of pathological eggshells in the oospecies Macroolithus yaotunensis near the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary in two locations in the Nanxiong Basin, South China.

These and other attempts to link abnormal, multilayered eggshell to climate change and dinosaur extinction fail to consider the magnitude of geologic time associated with the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. In extant animals, eggshell abnormalities may result from environmental stress related to overcrowding, drought, or substrate conditions (Ewert et al., 1984; Ferguson, 1982). Although acute stress may affect eggshell structure for a considerable time (Hughes et al., 1986; Solomon, 1997), this time interval (hours to weeks in birds and reptiles) is extremely short when compared to the much longer intervals of geologic time (≥ 102 -10years) associated with global climate change or the terminal Cretaceous extinction event (Dingus, 1984). (Link)

Healthy, well-adjusted chickens and marine turtles have only one layer of shell round their eggs. However, give chickens a hard time, says Sally Solomon of Glasgow university, and they react in a tell-tale way.

“They retain the eggs in the reproductive tract and, in retaining it, it either gets an extra coating of calcium or sometimes it actually shoots back up the reproductive tract and it gets an extra layer of shell,” she says.  “If you take a busload of tourists on to a beach when turtles are trying to come ashore to lay their clutches of eggs in the sand, they will abandon the process and move back into the sea. When they are in the sea, the eggs are held and an extra layer of calcium is laid down. So you end up with a very thick shell.”

What was true for birds and reptiles today must have been true for the ancestors of both birds and reptiles. When Frankie Johnson, a paleontologist working in Montana, sent her samples of eggs from fossil nests of Troodon, Professor Solomon recognized the symptoms immediately. The shells were double.

“It’s a huge step to say it’s stress in dinosaurs. But they must have had it, what with their world collapsing about them. Here we have a phenomenon common to dinosaurs, extant reptiles and birds. And we know for a fact that stress is instrumental in causing double shelled eggs in turtles, poultry and many wild birds.  Is it too big a step to suggest that dinosaurs, despite their size, also experienced stress? Those shells are abnormal: they were retained in the oviduct for longer than normal.  Why? What was there in that environment which was inclement? These are questions we are looking at.” (Link)

I’ve read counter arguments suggesting that dinosaurs were warm blooded and therefore could not retain their eggs for very long, but this is debatable and is essentially falsified by the fairly common finding of thickened or doubled dinosaur egg shells within the fossil record.

I’ve also read arguments where the suggestion is made that dinosaurs likely laid only one or two eggs per day.  Yet, this is clearly mistaken in many cases where there is evidence of many eggs being laid in a very symmetrical pattern within a very short period of time in one particular location.

Dinosaur Egg Soft Tissues:

As it turns out, dinosaur eggs also contain original soft tissues and proteins.  And, amazingly enough, there are several features within these soft tissues and proteins that favor a recent existence of dinosaurs.

Antigenic Proteins:

The full scientific paper is free to read online (Link), but for most it will be easier to read the New Scientist summary report which states: Protein recovered from dinosaur eggs (2005):

Traces of protein have survived for more than 70 million years in dinosaur eggs from Argentina. They bear strong similarities to proteins from chicken eggs. … The eggs were laid by massive long-necked plant-eaters called titanosaurs. Buried by floods, the eggs fossilised unusually fast, preserving the soft tissues and tiny bones within.

This paper goes on to explain that researchers injected rabbits with these apparent dinosaur egg proteins. The animals developed antibodies similar to those they produce in experiments with similar modern egg proteins (ostrich).

Dinosaur Eggs 2

Scanning electron micrographs of double-layered (pathological) sauropod eggshell in tangential section. (a) Tubercles (T) delineate the external surface. Preserved shell membrane (M) in between and separating the two layers of shell.

Of course the problem here is that kinetic chemistry experiments have long been cited as evidence that proteins and/or DNA sequences rapidly break down over time so that specific antigenicity cannot be retained.  For example, it has been proposed that no original protein and/or DNA fragments can be recovered beyond ca 100 kyr (Lindahl 1993; Bada et al. 1999; Briggs et al. 2000; Hoss 2000; Stankiewicz et al. 2000), although some remnant molecules or fragments that are less phylogenetically informative may persist up to this point under exceptional circumstances (Briggs et al. 2000). (Link). Others have argued that a “peptide bond has a half-life of 400 years” (Adv Exp Med Biol. 2009; 611: xci–xcviii). However, some proteins, such as collagen in particular, appear to have somewhat longer half-lives of ~2,000 years at ambient temperatures (Buckley, et al., 2008).

Clearly then, such proteins should not exist in dinosaur eggs that are supposed to be over 70 million years old. Later discoveries also showed original dinosaur proteins in fossil sauropod eggs and embryos from China,  said to be 190–197 million years old from the early Jurassic, showing that such preservation really has nothing to do with the location of the fossil within the geologic column.

These remains are currently “the oldest evidence of in situ preservation of complex organic remains in a terrestrial vertebrate… Our results clearly indicate the presence of both apatite and amide peaks within woven embryonic bone tissue, which should not be susceptible to microbial contamination or other post-mortem artefacts.” (Link).

This particular feature seems, therefore, to be much more consistent with the claims of the biblical authors and a recent arrival and sudden catastrophic death of dinosaurs within the fossil record.

Mary Schweitzer 2Of course, Mary Schweitzer has argued that iron from the blood protein heme could stabilize and cross-link proteins, allowing them to survive for many tens of millions of years (Link).  It seems, however, that Schweitzer is mistaken for many reasons.  First off, many specimens of recovered soft tissue are not associated with significant deposits of biological iron, such as original dinosaur proteins in skin and eggshells, and even in Archaeopteryx feathers. Further, of the typical decomposition factors (kinetic molecular vibrations, hydrolysis, chemotropism, microbes, cyclical temperatures, friction, oxidation, autolysis, and radioactive decay) iron works miracles for none of these and is irrelevant to a number of them..

 

RacemizationLeft-handed amino acids:

Like your right and left hands, some molecules are also right or left handed. And, almost all living things exclusively use left-handed amino acids to build proteins (and purely right-handed sugars to build DNA). However, amino acids synthesized in the lab appear in equal proportions of right- and left-handed molecules. What this means, of course, is that after the death of an organism, amino acids will “racemize” from a purely left-handed situation back to a 50-50 mixture of right- and left-handedness. 

England’s Royal Society published a time range for this physical process which, “produces totally racemized amino acids in 105 -106 years in most environments on the Earth.”  Even under more ideal conditions (i.e., very dry and cold conditions), “If no contaminants have been introduced to the system, based on the racemization half lives obtained from known age fossils, all amino acids should be totally racemized in < 5-10 million years in cold depositional environments. In temperate regions a racemic mixture of all amino acids would be in <1 million years.” (Link).

However, this same paper reports that, “In the dinosaur eggshells… all of the detected amino acids have low D:L ratios…” The authors go on to argue for “contamination” to explain this finding.

“The presence of relatively unracemized amino acids and abundant serine in our dinosaur eggshell samples indicates that the amino acids are exogenous contaminants which were added fairly recently based on the predominance of L-amino acids.” (Link)

It seems fairly strange to me, however, that such contamination should be so consistent and so universal. It is also strange that this “contamination” produces such similar antigenic responses as compared to modern egg proteins from eggs like ostrich eggs.  How does that rather specific type of contamination end up in these dinosaur eggs? The lack of contamination that enables the identification of original tissue is confirmed (by genetic sequencing, immunological tests, etc.) whereas the allegation of contamination of short-lived radiocarbon and non-racemized amino acids is usually not confirmed but only assumed by evolutionists who already know that these dinosaur remains are many tens of millions of years old.  Therefore, there is no need to do further testing to actually test the contamination hypothesis with any real scientific rigor. 

Radiocarbon:

Given the fairly recent discoveries of high levels of radiocarbon in the soft tissues of dinosaur bones (Link), the soft tissues within dinosaur eggs should also be tested for the presence of significant levels of radiocarbon as well.

Dinosaur Footprints:

Dinosaur footprints, as well as the fossilized footprints of other creatures, are also quite interesting when it comes to the question of a global Flood.  For example, it seems that many land animals, excluding birds and mammals, do not generally have their footprints located in the same layer in which their bodies are found, but in lower layers.  Did the footprints evolve before they did?  The footprints of dinosaurs, for example, are generally located in lower levels than the actual fossilized bones of the dinosaurs. Why would this be?  What is there to explain this apparent sorting of body from footprint fossils? Leonard Brand and James Florence comment on this most interesting phenomenon:

Dinosaur tracksIf the geologic column represents sediments that have accumulated over many millions of years, and the fossils from each geologic period are the remains of animals living in successive time periods, it would be reasonable to expect that the stratigraphic patterns of footprint diversity should roughly parallel the patterns of equivalent body fossil diversity. 

Leonard Brand and James Florence, Stratigraphic Distribution of Vertebrate Fossil Footprints Compared with Body Fossils – Origins 9(2):67-74, 1982 (Link)

Some have suggested various potential problems for this interpretation of Brand and Florence. However, these objections seem fairly well covered in the paper. I also discuss a few of these objections in detail in a Google Talk.Origins debate (Link).

 

A Complex Flood:

paleocurrents 3

 

Some imagine that a Noachian-style Flood would simply rise and fall in a uniformitarian manner around the globe. Well, that’s a far too simplistic view of such a world-wide deluge. The Flood was complex, not a uniform increase of water all over the globe.  It seems to me at least possible that land animals, like dinosaurs in particular, could have survived the initial months, or even the majority of the year-long Flood. 

Dinosaur Trackways 4paleocurrents 2As far as the complex nature of the Flood, consider that the sudden release of energy that cause the break-up of the Earth’s crust, continental drift, and the building of massive mountain ranges and ocean trenches, would have produced tsunamis thousands of feet tall traveling at hundreds of miles per hour around and around the globe, depositing massive amounts of sediment with each pass (Link).  Traces of the direction of these massive waves and the general movements of the water that laid down the sediment should still be visible today – and they are. Most, if not all, sedimentary layers around the world have ripple marks along their surfaces, indicating the direction of water flow, or the “paleocurrent” that laid down each layer.  And, interestingly, the direction of water flow is generally consistent, all around the world, for various layers within the geologic column. These continental, or even worldwide paleocurrents, all pointing in the same general direction for a given series of layers (Link) are much easier for a rather sudden catastrophic Flood model to explain.  It is also consistent with the idea that, before the Flood, there were no long chains of very high mountains. Otherwise, such world-wide paleocurrents across multiple continents could not have been produced.

But how could delicate eggs and footprints be so well preserved during such a catastrophic Flood?Well, consider that there would have been large tidal actions caused by the daily pull of the moon as the Earth continued to spin relative to the moon.  Every day, then, during the Flood, there would have been huge tidal movements of water.  As the tide “went out” from a particular location, there would be periods where dry ground would be exposed for a short while before before returning yet again and again with more and more sediment.  This nicely explains both the existence and very fine preservation of the footprints and trackways of dinosaurs and other creatures within the fossil record.

Summary:  

It seems clear then, from the evidence presented so far, that dinosaurs around the entire globe were really “stressed out” – especially toward the end of the Cretaceous when the Flood waters were starting to recede and massive algal blooms were exploding in the waters warmed by all the energy released during the Flood and packed with nutrients (Note: I personally consider the Tertiary layers to be post-Flood sedimentary layers).

Bioturbation (or the mixing of sedimentary layers by burrowing organisms), which was very much reduced prior to the Cretaceous (Link), was increasing back toward normal levels during the latter Cretaceous.  This is most likely because the energy and activity of the Flood and the thickness of the layers during the later Cretaceous period were reduced enough to allow for burrowing without the rapid deep burial of previously deposited sediments. Very rapid deposition of thick sedimentary layers would, of course, prevent burrowing organisms from disturbing the deeply buried layers – which is why there is very little bioturbation within most of the geologic column below the Cretaceous. And, of course, this is why much more extensive sediment reworking, or bioturbation, typifies many Late Cretaceous terrestrial localities – correspond to an increase in terrestrial, non-marine crustaceans and their traces during this time period, compared to pre-Cretaceous deposits (Walker and James 1992) (Link). 

Still, even during this later stage of the Flood, many struggling dinosaurs survived and retained their eggs as long as they could before laying them in haste during periods when the water retreated, only to be inundated shortly thereafter.  This allowed for the excellent preservation of the dinosaur eggs and even rare embryos.  There seems to be little good evidence for the actual hatching of eggs or for hatchlings disturbing nests or leaving footprints in the surrounding mud – which is very difficult to explain from a uniformitarian position. Rather, it seems like the eggs were consistently buried by episodic Flood waters before any further development of the embryos could be realized. Eventually, the last few surviving dinosaurs also died and were carried in the waters of the Flood for a while before also being buried in higher levels of sediment relative to their footprints.  And, these features are consistent around the entire world – supporting the world-wide nature of this watery catastrophe.

Also, it would seem that uniform and worldwide stress placed on dinosaurs would indicate some relationship to a single worldwide catastrophe to act as a universal stressing event – which would not be consistent with millions of years of uniformitarian conditions proposed by mainstream evolutionists.  The relatively short duration of a universal catastrophe is supported by the finding of preserved soft tissues and antigenically intact left-handed proteins within dinosaur eggs (shells and embryos) as well as dinosaur bones (to include fragments of DNA as well).  The survival of such soft tissues, proteins, and DNA fragments strongly suggests a recent and short period of time for the universal catastrophe that formed much of the fossil record and destroyed the dinosaurs and buried them in water-born sediments.  The fairly recent finding of significant levels of radiocarbon within these original dinosaur soft tissues only adds to the strength of this conclusion.

29 thoughts on “Dinosaur Nests and Tracks – During a World-Wide Flood?

  1. When I was younger, I used to enjoy watching sea turtles lay their eggs on Florida beaches. I did a brief search for published facts regarding the effect of tourists on sea turtles, but came up empty. I’d be grateful if you could please find actual facts, rather than a suspected “so-so” story, to back up the claim. Thank you.

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    • I cited several published papers in mainstream journals regarding the cause of the “double-shell” phenomenon in birds and reptiles as being the results of “stress” on the animal. Do you believe that the references cited do not adequately support this conclusion?

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      • @Sean Pitman:
        I was referring to the impact of **tourists** on egg deposition. I was unable to find any published data regarding that, and am skeptical. One of your links went to a Guardian News story that is no longer available–and is hardly a credible source.

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        • The news story in the Guardian is still available. I’m not sure why you can’t seem to access it?

          https://www.theguardian.com/science/1999/feb/19/dinosaurs.evolution

          You might not think this story credible, for whatever reason, but many authors reference similar double-layered eggshells in modern birds and reptiles that are stressed. And, I find it very hard to understand why on Earth you or anyone would be truly skeptical about the ability of tourists to stress out sea turtles that are trying to lay their eggs on beaches? – with a bunch of people around? You don’t think that might be a problem?

          “A sea turtle is least likely to abandon nesting when she is laying her eggs, but some turtles will abort the process if they are harassed or feel they are in danger. For this reason, it is important that sea turtles are never disturbed during nesting.” (Link).

          I’m really not sure what else you’re looking for here?

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  2. “The Flood was complex, not a uniform increase of water all over the globe. It seems to me at least possible that land animals, like dinosaurs in particular, could have survived the initial months, or even the majority of the year-long Flood.”

    If it rained 40 days and covered the entire planet, how could the dinosaurs survive “initial months?” This hardly sounds like the cataclysm portrayed by Ellen White, in which Lucifer feared for his life. Nor does it resemble other comments in your subsequent paragraphs.

    “continental, or even worldwide paleocurrents, all pointing in the same general direction for a given series of layers (Link)”

    All pointing in the same direction? I don’t think so. This statement in no way resembles the many arrows pointing in many directions that I have seen in Dr. Chadwick’s presentations. I don’t believe he would claim they all point in the same direction.

    Consider these two statements: “huge tidal waves thousands of feet tall traveling at hundreds of miles per hour around and around the globe” and “As the tide “went out” from a particular location, there would be periods where dry ground would be exposed for a short while before before returning yet again and again with more and more sediment.”

    The two statements couldn’t be more contradictory. Think about it.

    Pardon my saying so, but your assessment of flood events comes across as incohesive. I suggest revisiting this section.

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    • If it rained 40 days and covered the entire planet, how could the dinosaurs survive “initial months?” This hardly sounds like the cataclysm portrayed by Ellen White, in which Lucifer feared for his life. Nor does it resemble other comments in your subsequent paragraphs.

      Lucifer didn’t fear for his life because of the physical chaos that was taking place on this planet – at least not directly. Consider that it was unusual for Satan to be forced to remain on this planet during this period of time. After all, according to both the Bible and Ellen White, Satan was generally allowed to leave this planet and traverse the universe to visit other planets (at their “Trees of Knowledge of Good and Evil”) and to visit meetings in Heaven itself as the “Prince of Earth” (as described in the Book of Job). Therefore, the reason Satan feared for his life was due to the fact that if God was destroying the Earth in such a decided manner, Satan feared that God might decide to destroy him as well and be done with the whole thing – especially since he was forced, during this time, to “remain in the midst of the warring elements” during the Flood. He wasn’t allowed to leave during this time and go somewhere else. I’m sure this made him just a bit nervous that God might just do away with him as well…

      As far as many of the dinosaurs surviving the initial months of the Flood, again, I do not view the Flood as a simple increase and decrease of water, but as a world-wide time of complex chaos. During this time, the entire planet was not necessarily covered by water at any particular given point in time.

      All pointing in the same direction? I don’t think so. This statement in no way resembles the many arrows pointing in many directions that I have seen in Dr. Chadwick’s presentations. I don’t believe he would claim they all point in the same direction.

      Have you actually been to one of his presentations on this topic? I have and it seemed clear to me that at various levels within the geologic record a general pattern regarding the direction of water flow across a continent or even multiple continents world-wide could be appreciated. I suggest you contact Dr. Chadwick if you have further questions in this regard. Or, you could also watch a summary presentation of Chadwick’s work presented by Dr. Paul Giem:

      Consider these two statements: “huge tidal waves thousands of feet tall traveling at hundreds of miles per hour around and around the globe” and “As the tide “went out” from a particular location, there would be periods where dry ground would be exposed for a short while before before returning yet again and again with more and more sediment.”

      The two statements couldn’t be more contradictory. Think about it.

      I fail to see how they are contradictory statements? Massive tsunamis traveling rapidly around the entire world would leave periods of exposed ground – as would massive tidal actions. Where is the contradiction? I will, however, clarify one world in my article that would probably more clearly read “tsunamis” rather than “tidal waves”. However, the common usage of the term is clear. As defined by the dictionary, the term “tidal wave” is generally understood to mean: “an exceptionally large ocean wave, especially one caused by an underwater earthquake or volcanic eruption (used as a nontechnical term for tsunami).”

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      • @Sean Pitman:

        Yes, I have seen Dr. Chadwick speak, and his maps had arrows pointing every which way. How could you have not seen that? It would also be nice to see Chadwick’s work subjected to peer review by those who have actual expertise on paleocurrents. Let’s be clear: your faith is in Chadwick, not the evidence.

        Okay, so we had lengthy periods of calm, with relatively normal animal behavior, and then sudden deluges from massive tsunamis that animals somehow survived such that they could return to their relatively normal behavior, until the next deluge struck. Very curious reasoning, but this is your show.

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        • I’m surprised that you are unable to appreciate the consistent patterns of water movements that Dr. Chadwick’s data shows for various layers within the geologic record – often continent-wide patterns and sometimes patterns involving multiple continents or even world-wide patterns (as anyone can see from watching Dr. Giem’s YouTube overview of Dr. Chadwick’s data). At the very least, this is a very curious discovery that doesn’t seem to fit the mainstream perspective as well as the biblical perspective…

          Normal Behavior?
          Also, the dinosaurs were not acting “normally”, but where clearly “stressed” around the entire globe – according to mainstream scientists. This isn’t just my conclusion or the conclusion of creationists. This is the conclusion of the mainstream scientists themselves.

          Also, it seems to me very hard for anyone to seriously argue that animals who left only uphill trackways in sediments like the Coconino Sandstone were exhibiting “normal behavior”.

          It also doesn’t seem like “normal behavior” for the trackways of dinosaurs and other creatures to be more prevalent in lower layers than the body fossils of the very same creatures in higher level sediments. How is this explained by “normal behavior”? – better than by a world-wide catastrophe of Noachian proportions?

          The same is true for double-layered dinosaur eggs found consistently with within the fossil record and in a world-wide distribution – clearly indicating a stressful situation that affected the entire world. Also, it doesn’t seem like “normal behavior” for dinosaurs to lay their eggs in rising muddy water, sometimes on multiple layers of mud within the same “nest” and sometimes in a linear pattern as the dinosaur moved along in haste as she laid her eggs. How is this “normal behavior”? It seems more like desperate behavior to me – where a creature is struggling between a strong drive to live and a strong drive to lay eggs.

          But, maybe that’s just me 😉

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  3. Victor Marks:
    @Sean Pitman:
    Okay, let me be more clear.

    1. I’m struggling with dinosaurs surviving “months,” as you’ve proposed, which describes a period that goes far beyond the 40 days of rain that supposedly covered every inch of the earth’s surface. You haven’t addressed this.

    2. Forget the “relatively normal behavior,” bad word choice on my part. And don’t put words in my mouth; I never brought up anything about trackways, though I’d say the conclusions go well beyond the evidence.

    3. The arrows in Chadwick’s talks and paper DO go many ways. I have a bigger issue with any interpretation that explains the supposed unidirectional current flow. The notion that “huge tidal waves thousands of feet tall traveling at hundreds of miles per hour around and around the globe” explains nothing. The earth is spherical. How could waves that go around and around the globe be unidirectional? That’s totally absurd, Sean. And it would be more so if there was any dry land to deflect the waves, as you’ve suggested with the tides that go in and out, creating dry land for dinosaurs to lay eggs that are then washed over with sediment. In my mind, the only way globally unidirectional flows could happen would be if the globe was rotating faster than the waves progressed–like a basketball spinning on the tip of the finger of a Harlem Globetrotter. But maybe you’ve got this trick figured out. Please tell!

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    • 1. I’m struggling with dinosaurs surviving “months,” as you’ve proposed, which describes a period that goes far beyond the 40 days of rain that supposedly covered every inch of the earth’s surface. You haven’t addressed this.

      I think I have addressed this. The Bible doesn’t say that the Flood covered every inch of the Earth’s surface at the same point in time – or exactly when, during the year-long Flood that all the land animals died. The claims of the Bible are consistent with the concept of a complex world-wide Flood that would most likely have included massive tsunamis repeatedly traversing all or much of the globe and massive tidal actions. This massive movement of water would have created periods of exposed ground in various parts of the world for relative short periods of time… as is seen within the fossil record.

      2. Forget the “relatively normal behavior,” bad word choice on my part. And don’t put words in my mouth; I never brought up anything about trackways, though I’d say the conclusions go well beyond the evidence.

      It’s all the included within the same set of empirical evidence. While no one piece of the puzzle may be conclusive, many pieces all fitting together quite nicely start to weigh significantly in favor of the biblical claims regarding origins and the Noachian Flood.

      3. The arrows in Chadwick’s talks and paper DO go many ways.

      Not true. There is a clear pattern regarding the direction of water flow for many of the layers within the fossil record. This evidence is clearly presented in Dr. Giem’s lecture where he presents Chadwick’s data…

      I have a bigger issue with any interpretation that explains the supposed unidirectional current flow. The notion that “huge tidal waves thousands of feet tall traveling at hundreds of miles per hour around and around the globe” explains nothing. The earth is spherical. How could waves that go around and around the globe be unidirectional? That’s totally absurd, Sean. And it would be more so if there was any dry land to deflect the waves, as you’ve suggested with the tides that go in and out, creating dry land for dinosaurs to lay eggs that are then washed over with sediment. In my mind, the only way globally unidirectional flows could happen would be if the globe was rotating faster than the waves progressed–like a basketball spinning on the tip of the finger of a Harlem Globetrotter. But maybe you’ve got this trick figured out. Please tell!

      If you have huge impacts, like from large meteors smashing into the Earth, not only will the volume of water increase (given the massive amounts of water beneath the Earth’s crust), but there will also be massive tidal waves (or tsunamis) traversing the entire planet – around and around. The continents didn’t exist before the Flood, but were created during the Flood with the break up of the Earth’s crust. There were no great oceans before the Flood either. Instead, there were shallow seas and four great rivers that traversed the planet. The sudden release of massive amounts of water from below and from above would have quickly flooded the entire planet to significant depth. There would have been nothing to stop a massive tsunami from traversing the entire planet over and over again during the earlier stages of the Flood. There simply would be no need to have the Earth “spin faster” like you imagine. This is especially true given that before the Flood there were no great mountain ranges as there are today. These were built during and after the Flood – as highlighted in Dr. Giem’s lecture where deflection of the tsunamis increased at higher levels in the geologic column as the Earth’s crust was being broken up and uplifted into higher mountain chains in various locations around the world (like the Rockies for instance).

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      • @Sean Pitman:
        Mr. Pittman,

        I think Victor has a legitimate point about the currents. Chadwick’s maps are here for all to see: http://geology.swau.edu/paleocurrents_1.html. If the arrows are pointed all in one direction, perhaps you could kingly tell us whether you see them all pointing east, west, north, or south. Are there trends? Maybe. Is there a single direction? Kindly tell us what that direction is.

        Victor also has a point about the tsunamis. Waves don’t move in a straight line on a sphere. There will move in all directions in concentric rings (see, for example, http://tinyurl.com/hoxl5oo and http://tinyurl.com/hytyq9w) unless blocked or deflected by a land mass. If, as the waves spread, they are going to encircle the globe, they will then eventually collide with each other and create much more complex waveforms. They simply can’t go round and round unimpeded as you have imagined.

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        • I think Victor has a legitimate point about the currents. Chadwick’s maps are here for all to see: http://geology.swau.edu/paleocurrents_1.html. If the arrows are pointed all in one direction, perhaps you could kingly tell us whether you see them all pointing east, west, north, or south. Are there trends? Maybe. Is there a single direction? Kindly tell us what that direction is.

          Paleocurrents change pattern and general direction within different levels of the geologic column at different places around the globe. However, if you watch Dr. Giem’s video presentation and look at all of the maps presented on Chadwicks website it seems an unavoidable conclusion that continent wide patterns emerge that even involve multiple continents.

          As Chadwick points out, “During the Paleozoic, in sharp contrast to Mesozoic, Cenozoic and Precambrian tendencies, clear and persistent continent-wide trends are normative. Sediments moved generally from east and northeast to west and southwest across the North American Continent. This trend persists throughout the Paleozoic and includes all sediment types and depositional environments. A gradual shift is seen from lower and mid Paleozoic westerly trends to upper Paleozoic southerly trends… Paleozoic paleocurrents indicate the influence of directional forces on a grand scale over an extended period. Various authors have attributed the directionality to such things as “regional slopes,” but it is difficult to see how this could apply to deposits of such diverse origins over so wide an area. The lack of strong directionality in the underlying Precambrian sustains the need to seek understanding of what makes the Paleozoic style of sedimentation unique with respect to directional indicators.” (Link).

          This is consistent with the start of the Flood and the initial impacts that broke up the Earth’s crust “within a single day”, starting at the beginning of the Paleozoic – and then tapering off as the Flood proceeded and became more and more complex in nature (with additional meteor strikes, rapid continental separation and drift and mountain building).

          This concept is further confirmed by finding sediments that appear to have been transported clean across entire continents. Consider the following example:

          The Navajo Sandstone of southern Utah [Jurassic], best seen in the spectacular mesas and cliffs in and around Zion National Park, is well above the Kaibab Limestone, which forms the rim rock of the Grand Canyon. It was once thought to have been formed as desert dunes in an ancient desert like the Sahara Desert. Subsequently, however, it has been determined that these sand “dunes” were actually formed under water and that the sand itself was transported across the entire country from the Appalachians of Pennsylvania (based on grains of zircon crystals that contain uranium similar in character to those of the Appalachians). If this is true, the sand grains were transported at least 1,800 miles (3000 km) right across North America. And, the evidence is overwhelming that the water was flowing in one general direction to carry this much sediment across the entire continent. More than half a million measurements have been collected from 15,615 North American localities, recording water current direction indicators throughout the geologic record. The evidence indicates that water moved sediments across the entire continent, from the east and northeast to the west and southwest throughout the Paleozoic. This general pattern continued on up into the Mesozoic, when the Navajo Sandstone was deposited. How could water be flowing across the North American continent consistently for hundreds of millions of years in some complex river system for which no evidence exists? These findings seem to be much more consistent with massive sheets of water from a Noachian-style Flood.

          As far as the underwater origin of the Navajo dunes: “A 1975 study by scientists Freeman and Visher (Journal of Sedimentary Petrology, 45:3:651-668) provides some important insights as to the origin of the Navajo Sandstone [Link]. The investigators pointed out that underwater sand dunes are known to accumulate on portions of the sea floor swept by strong currents–for example, beneath the North Sea. Superficially they look a lot like desert (windblown) sand dunes, but careful analysis of their grain size distribution reveals major differences. It turns out that disaggregated sands from the Navajo Sandstone match very well with modern submarine dunes, and very poorly with desert dunes. If the Navajo Sandstone formed underwater, as the data seem to indicate, then one must imagine water depths on the order of 300 feet and current velocities of 4 feet per second across large portions of North America! [Leonard Brand also cited this evidence for the under-water formation of the Navajo Sandstone; Link].

          Freeman and Visher also observed a bedform called “current lineation,” which so far has been found only in marine dunes. Furthermore, folds in the Navajo Sandstone indicate that thicknesses in excess of several hundred feet were in a water-wet and unconsolidated state at the same time. This too suggests rapid underwater burial.” (Link)

          So, now you have independent lines of evidence (paleocurrents and sediment transport) pointing in the same direction…

          Victor also has a point about the tsunamis. Waves don’t move in a straight line on a sphere. There will move in all directions in concentric rings (see, for example, http://tinyurl.com/hoxl5oo and http://tinyurl.com/hytyq9w) unless blocked or deflected by a land mass. If, as the waves spread, they are going to encircle the globe, they will then eventually collide with each other and create much more complex waveforms. They simply can’t go round and round unimpeded as you have imagined.

          Of course waves spread in a circular manner within water. On a sphere (like the Earth completely covered with water to a fairly uniform depth – since there were no “continents, mountain chains, or great oceans before the Flood) an impact from a large meteor generating a tsunami on one side of the globe would give rise to a circular tsunami traveling at hundreds of miles an hour as an expanding circle – until it hit the halfway mark of the globe. Then, at this point, the circle of the tsunami would start to contract until it met up with itself at a point on the other side of the globe. At this point, it would repropagate itself again around the world (though not at strong of course as the first time). In additional to this, there were probably many impacts from many large meteors during this time – as evidenced in the geologic record. There were also massive earthquakes as the crust of the Earth was broken up and the resulting “plates” started to move relative to each other – all creating massive tsunamis traveling in various directions at various times. Add to this the massive tidal actions caused by the Earth’s rotation relative to the moon and you have a very complex worldwide Flood.

          So, of course the Flood itself was complex and devastating. Even today, tsunamis can reach speeds up to 500 miles per hour as they race across the ocean. And, as they travel there is little energy lost along the way due to their long wavelengths in deeper water – especially when there were no large mountain chains or distinct continents to deal with. And, many of these extremely large-scale events seem to me to have left their mark across portions of entire continents and even multiple continents (as they appear today).

          Now, would all of this have allowed for various times and places where the ground would be exposed for short periods of time? It seems to me to be obvious that it would… which is what we see in the fossil record. We see footprints and eggs of very stressed out dinosaurs (and many other animals as well) all around the globe consistently within the fossil record where the bodies are more commonly found in higher layers than the footprints. Go figure…

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  4. “There would have been nothing to stop a massive tsunami from traversing the entire planet over and over again during the earlier stages of the Flood.”

    Is this tongue-in-cheek, or are you serious? Anyone who knows anything about physics will recognize this as total nonsense. Please.

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    • You’re the one telling me that a huge tidal wave (tsunami) cannot traverse the globe – according to some physical law that is unknown to me. What physical law would that be?

      As far as water currents going in “different directions” in different locations at various points in time, there wasn’t just one factor in play – just one tsunami. First off, consider that a tsunami travels outward in a circular pattern – north, south, east, and west. Depending on the origin of a massive tsunami, various points on the globe would be hit from different directions. Within the Paleozoic, of course, the water was in fact traveling in a consistent pattern across entire continents. The North American Continent shows evidence of currents generally traveling from northeast to southwest within the Paleozoic. As far as some differences in current direction during this time, and especially later during the Flood, consider that the crust of the entire Earth was broken up in a single day. There were massive earthquakes all over the place, sending off their own tidal waves from various directions all the time. There is also evidence of many large meteors hitting the Earth within the geologic record. There were also tidal actions caused by the Earth’s rotation relative to the moon on a daily basis.

      In short, it was a complex Flood with a whole lot going on all over the entire world…

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  5. The earth is not a perfect sphere. It is not a stationary sphere. The depth could not be uniform (after all, there was dry land and water before the flood, and you have argued that geological processes were actively changing the planet’s surface during the flood). Water temperatures are not going to be uniform and wind speeds are not going to be uniform. In sum, water movement will not be uniform. Thus, the waves will not converge perfectly, as you imagine, on the opposite side of the planet, and then progpagate again in the opposite direction. They will refract in complex patterns.

    Moreover, even with your unimpeded model, the waves that return from the side of the planet opposite of their generation will now move sediment in a 180-degree direction from their initial movement. Now you have trouble explaining a single direction for sediment deposition. Put it all together, and you’ve got every reason to dismiss the possibility that tsunamis would contribute to or cause the “directly [sic] of water flow [to be] consistent, all around the world, for various layers within the geologic column.” As you have shown now with another comment, the direction of water flow is NOT actually consistent, all around the world, for various layers within the geologic column. Your reasoning is as convulated as the paleocurrents depicted in the Chadwick maps.

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    • Again, what physical law prevents a tsunami from traversing an entire globe that has been flooded? You now seem to be saying that it is in fact possible for a tsunami to traverse the entire globe during a global flood – just not in a perfectly symmetrical manner? Is that right?

      So what? Beyond the fact that a tsunami doesn’t have to come back on itself perfectly in order to repropagate itself, I never meant to suggest that the Flood was perfectly orderly or symmetrical or that it only flowed in one direction – just the opposite in fact. What I’ve explained numerous times here is that I believe that the Flood was a complex Flood (the actual title of the section in question here), with currents changing direction over and over and over again with many huge tsunamis being generated from many different locations around the world – each laying down a layer of sediment from various directions over a given point on the globe.

      Given this position, it is clearly possible and perfectly reasonable for huge tsunamis to produce continent-wide current patterns within the sedimentary layers that were deposited by water as these tsunamis moved over entire continental regions – which you yourself seem to admit is in fact possible, just not perfectly symmetrical. However, just because tsunamis may later move over the same region in a different direction is irrelevant to the main point here. What is clear, and relevant, is that paleocurrent data does in fact show continent-wide patterns – especially in the Paleozoic layers. And, this data is supported by the massive transport of sand all the way from the Appellation Mountains to the Navajo Sandstone on the other side of the North American Continent – right in line with the paleocurrent data for these layers (Link). It is also supported by the universal stress exhibited by dinosaurs and other creatures all around the globe throughout much of the fossil record. The data here (and there is much more data beyond the little that has been presented in this post) is actually quite consistent with the concept of a huge Noachian-style Flood.

      I’m sorry, but I fail to see how my reasoning is all that “convulated” [sic] here. I’m sure you can do better 😉

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  6. Your understanding of tsunamis is still way off. They don’t consist of a single wave; thus, the multiple waves would cause even greater fragmentation and cancellation when they meet on the opposite side of the planet. I don’t know how far a tidal wave can carry, but friction will slow the wave propogation, and more so with less water depth and increasing amounts of sediment in the water. In deep water, the wavelengths are very long but shallow, and waves travel at fast speed; only as they approach shallow water do they build height, but they also slow down.

    So how deep was the ocean at the time of the flood? You have argued that the waters were fairly uniform in depth because you seem to know that “there were no large mountain chains or distinct continents.” Obviously, waves can’t persist at “thousands of feet tall,” as you have imagined, unless the water is much, much, much deeper than the 60 feet (40 cubits) above the highest land, as mentioned in scripture. If the seas are 100 feet in depth, then a wave can’t persist at greater than 200 feet in height because the bottom of the wave would be knocked out. Waves thousands of feet tall, going around and around the globe, according to your claim? Then you’re going to need seas that are thousands of feet deep, which would mean that there must be very tall mountains if they were covered to a depth of only 40 cubits.

    Obviously, if there were areas of dry land during the many months of the flood’s duration, which you have also claimed, those waves “thousands of feet tall” would grow to tens of thousands of feet tall as they approached the dry land(!); they would collapse partially or completely as they rolled across the dry land; and they would diffract sideways around the area of dry land, again creating very complex waveforms that would break up the massively tall waves.

    You’ve done a good job of revising your description of the flood events, but you’ve got more work to do. I still see no way that “paleocurrents” in a uniform direction supports a global flood. If anything, the very complex flood that you have now admitted had to be the case would be consistent with a hypothesis of largely random paleocurrents. Post hoc explanations based on uninformed imagination are simply “just so” stories.

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    • Your understanding of tsunamis is still way off. They don’t consist of a single wave; thus, the multiple waves would cause even greater fragmentation and cancellation when they meet on the opposite side of the planet. I don’t know how far a tidal wave can carry, but friction will slow the wave propogation, and more so with less water depth and increasing amounts of sediment in the water. In deep water, the wavelengths are very long but shallow, and waves travel at fast speed; only as they approach shallow water do they build height, but they also slow down.

      And your point is? Again, we are talking about a completely flooded fairly flat (low relief) Earth with no continents, deep oceans, or large mountain chains (just beginning to form after the initial massive and sudden breakup of the Earth’s crust). The initial impact(s) that broke up the Earth’s crust would have released huge amounts of energy, creating massive tsunamis. And, the breakup of the Earth’s crust would have also produced massive earthquakes as well as huge tsunamis of their own. The illustration below shows what the impact of a meteor of just ~30km in diameter would look like (Link):

      Meteor ~30 km in diameter

      So, even though tsunamis are comprised of multiple waves, given the above scenario, they would easily traverse the entire globe, laying sediment down over one or more of what are now continental regions. Of course, this would have used up energy and the “repropagation” of such tsunamis on the opposite side of the globe would have been reduced – obviously. Again, however, there wasn’t just one tsunami. There were many many tsunamis being generated throughout the Flood – being more concentrated toward the beginning in number and size.

      After all, consider what computer simulations show for a relative small asteroid (2/3 of a mile) would do if it hit the ocean today. A computer simulation of an asteroid impact tsunami developed by scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, shows waves as high as 400 feet sweeping onto the Atlantic Coast of the United States (Link). And, this is a relatively small asteroid impact compared to one needed to break up the entire Earth’s crust in a “single day”. The same is true for the massive earthquakes that would have been produced around the entire world and the huge tsunamis that they would have generated on their own. The amount of energy produced, and the resulting size of the tsunami produced, increases more than linearly with the diameter of the asteroid (since the volume, therefore mass, of a sphere of a given material increases exponentially with a linear increase in the diameter as follows: V=4/3πr^3).

      For example, an asteroid with the size of 4 km (2.5 mi) in diameter falling onto the 5 km (3.1 mi) deep ocean would blast the water off the ocean floor for at least 60 km (37 mi), and make a wave over 200 m (660 ft) high on the southern end of Chile and the Antarctic Peninsula. After ten hours, waves around 35 m (115 ft) would reach Tasmania, Fiji and Central America, and the New Zealand east coast would be washed with 60 m (200 ft) high waves. If the impact object was 1 km (0.6 mi) in diameter, the wave heights would be five times less (Link).

      So how deep was the ocean at the time of the flood? You have argued that the waters were fairly uniform in depth because you seem to know that “there were no large mountain chains or distinct continents.” Obviously, waves can’t persist at “thousands of feet tall,” as you have imagined, unless the water is much, much, much deeper than the 60 feet (40 cubits) above the highest land, as mentioned in scripture. If the seas are 100 feet in depth, then a wave can’t persist at greater than 200 feet in height because the bottom of the wave would be knocked out. Waves thousands of feet tall, going around and around the globe, according to your claim? Then you’re going to need seas that are thousands of feet deep, which would mean that there must be very tall mountains if they were covered to a depth of only 40 cubits.

      How tall are the highest mountain chains today? – over 12,000 feet? If, before the Flood, you had rolling hills and the “highest” rolling mountains of a thousand or so feet tall, I wouldn’t call that “very tall” now, would you?

      Obviously, if there were areas of dry land during the many months of the flood’s duration, which you have also claimed, those waves “thousands of feet tall” would grow to tens of thousands of feet tall as they approached the dry land(!); they would collapse partially or completely as they rolled across the dry land; and they would diffract sideways around the area of dry land, again creating very complex waveforms that would break up the massively tall waves.

      I’m talking about waves hundreds or even “thousands of feet tall” at their max height. Again, if all the “mountains” before the Flood were covered with water there would be no dry land except for fairly short periods of time when a tsunami was coming (which would pull the water from a place before it arrived). Remember also, before the Flood there were no great oceans or continents as we have today. There were only rivers and shallow seas. The Earth was a fairly flat place compared to today’s world. Such a relatively flat world, when covered with a thousand or so feet of water on average would have easily allowed for massive tsunamis to traverse the entire globe. Yes, lot of energy would have been used up during this process. However, I mention again that there wasn’t just one massive tsunami nor was the Flood a simple symmetrical process (see image below of the known asteroid impact sites around the world; Link). It was indeed complex Flood…

      You’ve done a good job of revising your description of the flood events, but you’ve got more work to do. I still see no way that “paleocurrents” in a uniform direction supports a global flood. If anything, the very complex flood that you have now admitted had to be the case would be consistent with a hypothesis of largely random paleocurrents. Post hoc explanations based on uninformed imagination are simply “just so” stories.

      What have I revised? Paleocurrents are indeed largely random (from a continent-wide perspective at least) above the Paleozoic and some of the Mesozoic. However, within the Paleozoic in particular there are clear continent-wide paleocurrent patterns. Sure, they aren’t perfectly symmetrical or unidirectional by any means, but the patterns are quite clear in a continent-wide distribution. This is not at all difficult to explain from the perspective of a complex massive Noachian-style Flood. However, such features are very difficult to explain from the perspective of tens or hundreds of millions of years of slow uniformitarian geologic evolution. The same thing is true for dinosaurs being stressed out around the entire globe the entire time and for their body fossils to generally be found in layers above their footprints… not to mention numerous other features of geologic and fossil records that strongly favor a catastrophic model of origins.

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  7. I admire your certitude and surety, Sean. Most scientists I know are very tentative with their interpretations, but you offer no reservations about your understanding. You are able to take a few facts (and a lot of assumptions, in my book) and elucidate intimate details regarding ocean depths, movements of land masses, movements of asteroids, movements of water, how long the dinosaurs survived the flood, and how the dinosaurs managed to survive and lay eggs during most of the flood. You are to be congratulated for providing the most factual portrayal of flood events that I have ever read. You must be an amazing geologist/paleobiologist/marine scientist–whatever you are.

    I do have two more questions for you, and then I think I’m finished.

    (1) If the dinosaurs managed to survive the 40 days and nights of rain and avoid becoming egg bound during the many months (“majority of the year-long Flood,” which you propose) of extraordinarily severe conditions during which asteroids (as you seem to suggest) struck the planet, massive displacements and heating of water occurred from major continental crust movements, and multiple giant tsunamis repeatedly circled the globe, when and how did all those nasty (and surely some friendly) dinosaurs finally die off? Did Noah and his family members have to finish them off? Seriously.

    (2) Why did all the dinosaurs die off, but not other reptile groups like the crocodilians, or contemporary avian and mammalian groups? Surely many of the smaller dinosaur species were more harmless and less threatening to humans than crocodiles and bears. Did God just say, “let this entire clade be destroyed outside the ark” while going out of his way to preserve others within the ark?

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  8. Sorry, but I have a few more questions. Where do you get the following facts?

    (1) “Before the Flood there were no great oceans or continents as we have today. There were only rivers and shallow seas.”

    (2) “The Earth was a fairly flat place compared to today’s world.” It consisted of “rolling hills and the ‘highest’ rolling mountains of a thousand or so feet tall.” Where do you get 1,000 feet as the maximum elevation?

    (3) During the flood the waters were “a thousand or so feet” in height.

    (4) There were “massive earthquakes that would have been produced around the entire world.”

    (5) Asteroids (even one) struck the earth during the flood.

    (6) There was any kind of “breakup of the Earth’s crust” during the flood.

    (7) There were any tsunamis at all during the flood.

    (8) Dinosaurs survived more than the 40 days and nights of rain.

    (9) Dinosaurs layed eggs during the flood.

    (10) Dinosaur footprints were not created before or after the flood.

    (11) Only atheistic scientists come up with “just so” stories that go beyond available data.

    (12) Could any portion of your account be a “just so” story?

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    • I admire your certitude and surety, Sean.

      Likewise 😉

      As I recall, it was you who confidently told me that I obviously didn’t know what I was talking about… with minimal “reservation”.

      (1) If the dinosaurs managed to survive the 40 days and nights of rain and avoid becoming egg bound during the many months (“majority of the year-long Flood,” which you propose) of extraordinarily severe conditions during which asteroids (as you seem to suggest) struck the planet, massive displacements and heating of water occurred from major continental crust movements, and multiple giant tsunamis repeatedly circled the globe, when and how did all those nasty (and surely some friendly) dinosaurs finally die off? Did Noah and his family members have to finish them off? Seriously.

      Most dinosaurs seem to have died out by the end of the Cretaceous – with most of the trackways ending within the mid-Jurassic and most of the body fossils being buried in the Cretaceous above the footprints (which is most easily explained with a Flood model it seems to me).

      (2) Why did all the dinosaurs die off, but not other reptile groups like the crocodilians, or contemporary avian and mammalian groups? Surely many of the smaller dinosaur species were more harmless and less threatening to humans than crocodiles and bears. Did God just say, “let this entire clade be destroyed outside the ark” while going out of his way to preserve others within the ark?

      Some of the smaller ones didn’t die off – like the alligators and crocodiles you mention. Ellen White does say that some types of animals, probably including certain types of dinosaurs, were deliberately excluded from the post-Flood world: “There were a class of very large animals which perished at the flood. God knew that the strength of man would decrease, and these mammoth animals could not be controlled by feeble man.” (Spiritual Gifts, vol. 4a, p. 121). Perhaps other varieties survived the Flood as well that are no longer with us? Certainly a great many different types of animals did exist after the Flood that are now extinct for various reasons…

      _________________

      Sorry, but I have a few more questions. Where do you get the following facts?

      (1) “Before the Flood there were no great oceans or continents as we have today. There were only rivers and shallow seas.”

      The Bible suggests that it didn’t rain before the Flood, but that the ground was watered each day by dew. The Bible also mentions four great rivers that watered the Earth, and Ellen White mentions a sea, but no large oceans like we have today. Ellen White also comments that, “Rain had never yet fallen, but a mist or dew had fallen upon the earth, causing vegetation to flourish.” (EGW, SRGES 42.3). The lack of large oceans would have made the no-rain environment possible and would have made the weather much more mild and predictable.

      (2) “The Earth was a fairly flat place compared to today’s world.” It consisted of “rolling hills and the ‘highest’ rolling mountains of a thousand or so feet tall.” Where do you get 1,000 feet as the maximum elevation?

      As far as a lack of very high mountains, even mainstream geologists describe a very low-relief or fairly flat Earth during the early Paleozoic.

      As an aside, it has been calculated that if the earth’s surface were completely flat, with no high mountains and no deep ocean basins, that water currently on the surface of the planet (not counting the oceans of water beneath the mantel of the Earth) would cover the earth to a depth of over 8,000 feet. So, I suppose it is possible for at least a few of the pre-Flood “mountains” to be up to around 8,000 feet tall. The point is that there was no tectonic activity and no active mountain building going on before the Flood. Generally speaking, it seems to have been a fairly “flat” word with no extensive mountain ranges of massive mountains like we have today. It just seems to have been a very different world.

      Mrs. White also describes the “mountains” before the Flood as being symmetrical or “regular in shape”. She says, “The beautiful, regular-shaped mountains had disappeared. Stones, ledges, and ragged rocks appeared upon some parts of the earth which were before out of sight.” (EGW, SRGES 47.4) This is consistent with the time of the rise of large rocky and very jagged and irregular mountain ranges toward the end of the Paleozoic and then throughout the Flood and continuing to this day. Again, before this time, there seem to have been no such large mountain ranges as we have today.

      (3) During the flood the waters were “a thousand or so feet” in height.

      In other words, the Flood was easily deep enough to produce massive tsunamis that could traverse the entire planet… even by the most conservative estimates.

      (4) There were “massive earthquakes that would have been produced around the entire world.”

      If the crust of the planet is all broken up within a single day, creating moving continental plates that start to crash into each other, subduct underneigth each other, and start building massive mountain chains and ocean trenches, it seems like a forgone conclusion that this is going to result in massive earthquakes all around the world…

      (5) Asteroids (even one) struck the earth during the flood.

      There is quite a bit of evidence for numerous impacts from large asteroids hitting the Earth within the geologic record. One example is the Chicxulub crater located near the town of Chicxulub at the tip of the Yucatán peninsula which it the Earth during the formation of the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary), producing a crater some 186 miles across. Then, there is the Acraman Crater located in southern Australia with diameter of 56 miles, which it the Earth during the Cambrian period. The Woodleigh Crater is another Australian crater some 75 miles across that hit the Earth during the later Paleozoic. The largest Australian asteroid was estimated to have been 10 km in diameter and created a 248 mile crater close to Queensland during the Paleozoic (Link). And the list goes on and on…

      (6) There was any kind of “breakup of the Earth’s crust” during the flood.

      The Genesis account says, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month–on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened.” (Genesis 7:11). That sounds to me like the moment of catastrophe – like the moment of impact of some massive asteroid that was powerful enough to break up the crust of the Earth and create the continental plates as well as rapid continental drift.

      (7) There were any tsunamis at all during the flood.

      How would tsunamis be avoided given many large asteroid impacts and massive earthquakes all around the world?

      (8) Dinosaurs survived more than the 40 days and nights of rain.

      Why not?

      (9) Dinosaurs layed eggs during the flood.

      There are lots and lots of dinosaur eggs within the fossil record all around the world… with many showing signs of stress as well as being laid in mud flows, some of which were increasing and still flowing while the eggs were being laid.

      (10) Dinosaur footprints were not created before or after the flood.

      Do you know of any T. rex prints within the Cenozoic layers?

      (11) Only atheistic scientists come up with “just so” stories that go beyond available data.

      Where did I say that?

      (12) Could any portion of your account be a “just so” story?

      Of course, I personally think my “stories” (many of which are also told by the authors of the Bible) are consistent with the currently available empirical evidence. However, all useful hypotheses or stories about the world in which we live are open to at least the potential for falsification – of being wrong.

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  9. Pingback: Massive Deserts Dunes – During a Worldwide Flood? | Educate Truth

  10. How can you trace a dinosaur laying eggs and making footprints during a worldwide flood? To begin with the flood according to the bible only lasted 40days and 40nights. So you’re saying that equipment is so sophisticated as to be able to trace these eggs and footprints to that exact month? Furthermore the dinosaurs were extinct before the flood in the bible. So basically everything you’ve stated is unfounded and untrue. I’m open minded however when I read things like this that truly isn’t backing up any real evidence then I dismiss it as garbage and keep seeking the truth. I have a suggestion. Do your homework before you print stupid a** sh** attempting to dismiss proven facts and history.

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    • Actually, the Biblical Flood lasted about a year with Noah and his family still on the ark during this entire time – well beyond the 40 days of rainfall.

      As far as the physical evidence is concerned, the actual science, consider the fact that dinosaurs worldwide were stressed (throughout the fossil record), were buried by water-born sediments with bodies in layers above their footprints, that their remains still contained preserved soft tissues, proteins, and even DNA, and even high levels of radiocarbon within their tissues. Also, there is the problem of the high detrimental DNA mutation rate for all slowly reproducing creatures (like mammals, birds, and larger reptiles – likely to include dinosaurs as well) leading to an inevitable decay of genetic information over time beyond the power of natural selection to correct (i.e., devolution, not evolution). How are all of these features explained by the NeoDarwinian story of origins? It seems to me that these facts fit much more neatly within the biblical account of origins…

      In short, I suggest you do a bit more reading and studying for yourself regarding what are and are not “proven facts and history”.

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