Dinosaur tracks - Intelligent Evidence for Noah's Flood!
Dinosaur tracks are not uniform in the fossil record, but they ARE numerous. They are certainly good support for the Noahic Flood. We keep finding more of them all the time, and many of them are worn away quickly by exposure to the elements, only to expose more. Sedimentary layers, you see...
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First we need to establish the evidence - there are large number of dinosaur prints found AND that they are not uniform due to various conditions of their burial and also the consistency of the mud/sand/whatever form of mostly wet lands they were laid. Anyone who believes that all dino prints are nice and neat as if they stopped to allow plaster casts to be made of their feet is not thinking too clearly. Dinosaur prints we find are usually indicative of running or being overcome by water and generally fleeing in straight lines. Very logical in a Flood scenario. We also find tracks believed to belong to birds and mammals. Like the preserved fossils of organisms themselves, the preservation of so many tracks is remarkable...unless you understand the Noahic Flood. So many layers of sediments, all with tracks, is a record of many layers of sediments laid down by tidal forces and waves during the earlier part of the Flood as the land was being overcome by water.
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Some tracks are believed to be human. While plenty of Creation scientists are open to the idea, the more conservative of them will not use the evidence of human prints among their arguments since there is some controversy about them and so much evidence for the Flood and for dinosaurs and humans co-existing is extant that dealing with human tracks is, to them, not of importance. Entire Creation Science organizations have decided not to publicize human footprints just because they want to focus on the main points and all the evidence that goes with those main points.
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Others believe they have proved beyond reasonable doubt that human tracks among dinosaur tracks SHOULD be publicized widely. I am of the second opinion, but later on will give the other side a fair shot at presenting their reasoning. It doesn't mean a lot to me whether or not we accept human footprints in the Paluxy region as human. I, too, believe the preponderance of evidence for the Creation of the Universe by God and the Noahic Flood requires no human footprints to be accepted by the logical non-brainwashed mind in order for Creation and the Flood to be accepted by science. I also believe that science will accomplish much more once the Darwinist nonsense is cast aside and scientists work on curing cancers and other human health concerns.
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Here is a look at the famous Delk Track:
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Let's establish how numerous dino tracks are with three representative articles about dinosaur tracks and trackways. Don't be put off, Americans, by Aussie/Kiwi/British spelling when you encounter it. The English, after all, is the original and American is just a form of said language. Who's to say which spelling is right, right?
Enjoy!
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Don't forget that rain was not the only or even the primary cause of the Noahic Flood. God decided to flood the world and destroy the civilization of man, preserving only Noah's family and the land-dwelling vertebrates and birds that God Himself sent to Noah. There were waters coming from under the crust of the Earth, volcanic activity, earthquakes, tectonic plates subducting...forty days and nights of steady rainfall but it took time to completely drown the Earth in water, and tides would continue to operate. The last few days of the hardiest land-dwelling animals (dinosaurs and a very few people likely the most common of them) would have been a constant battle to run to high ground, find things to float on for awhile, seek anything to eat when possible, and finally be overwhelmed and overcome by the water that would eventually extend high above all land.
credit
First we need to establish the evidence - there are large number of dinosaur prints found AND that they are not uniform due to various conditions of their burial and also the consistency of the mud/sand/whatever form of mostly wet lands they were laid. Anyone who believes that all dino prints are nice and neat as if they stopped to allow plaster casts to be made of their feet is not thinking too clearly. Dinosaur prints we find are usually indicative of running or being overcome by water and generally fleeing in straight lines. Very logical in a Flood scenario. We also find tracks believed to belong to birds and mammals. Like the preserved fossils of organisms themselves, the preservation of so many tracks is remarkable...unless you understand the Noahic Flood. So many layers of sediments, all with tracks, is a record of many layers of sediments laid down by tidal forces and waves during the earlier part of the Flood as the land was being overcome by water.
Some tracks are believed to be human. While plenty of Creation scientists are open to the idea, the more conservative of them will not use the evidence of human prints among their arguments since there is some controversy about them and so much evidence for the Flood and for dinosaurs and humans co-existing is extant that dealing with human tracks is, to them, not of importance. Entire Creation Science organizations have decided not to publicize human footprints just because they want to focus on the main points and all the evidence that goes with those main points.
Others believe they have proved beyond reasonable doubt that human tracks among dinosaur tracks SHOULD be publicized widely. I am of the second opinion, but later on will give the other side a fair shot at presenting their reasoning. It doesn't mean a lot to me whether or not we accept human footprints in the Paluxy region as human. I, too, believe the preponderance of evidence for the Creation of the Universe by God and the Noahic Flood requires no human footprints to be accepted by the logical non-brainwashed mind in order for Creation and the Flood to be accepted by science. I also believe that science will accomplish much more once the Darwinist nonsense is cast aside and scientists work on curing cancers and other human health concerns.
credit
Here is a look at the famous Delk Track:
Let's establish how numerous dino tracks are with three representative articles about dinosaur tracks and trackways. Don't be put off, Americans, by Aussie/Kiwi/British spelling when you encounter it. The English, after all, is the original and American is just a form of said language. Who's to say which spelling is right, right?
Enjoy!
Huge dinosaurs flee rising waters of Noah’s Flood in Australia
ABC’s Catalyst program reports Kimberley dinosaur footprints
Published: 30 October 2012 (GMT+10)
Catalyst, ABC
Measuring dinosaur tracks on sandstone platform.
In October 2012, Catalyst, the science television show of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, featured amazing dinosaur footprints from the Kimberleys in north-west Australia.1
Thulborn ref. 4
Dampier Peninsula
At James Price Point, 60 km north of Broome on the Dampier Peninsula, paleontologist Steve Salisbury was filmed checking multitudes of footprints preserved in the rocky platforms.
Catalyst reporter Mark Horstman says, “You’ve gotta be quick to study the fossils here. This tide is racing. And this was dry a few minutes ago. The tidal range is up to 10 metres, and the fossils are only visible at the lowest of low tides, so that’s for a few hours for a few days for a few months every year.”
Sand is washed in and out of the area, continually revealing new footprints. The program shows Steve Salisbury measuring a recently-exposed sauropod footprint about 1.7 metres long—a world record. He said the animal that made that print could be 7 or 8 metres high at the hip and more than 35 metres long.
These footprints were made during the global Flood of Noah’s day as recorded in the Bible.
These footprints were made during the global Flood of Noah’s day.
There are so many clues in the rocks at that point to the catastrophe of Noah’s Flood, yet Steve Salisbury and his team did not make the connection. They have been trained for years to think in one particular way, and Noah’s Flood is not on their radar. Worse still, if they ever did seriously float that possibility they would almost certainly lose their jobs (see Expelled).
Indeed, the footprints help us work out the timing of when the rocks were laid down during that year-long catastrophe.2 Clearly the land animals were alive when they made the prints, so the floodwaters had not yet peaked. After that, there would be no footprints because all land animals perished. Other evidence of the timing comes from the geology and from the landscape. This indicates it was not long before everything was inundated. The scale of this destruction is graphically described in the Bible:
“The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits [~7.5 metres] deep. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind. Everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died.” (Genesis 7:20–22)
One clue that we are looking at an unprecedented geological catastrophe is the enormous extent of the sedimentary deposits.
One clue that we are looking at an unprecedented geological catastrophe is the enormous extent of the sedimentary deposits. Host Mark Horstman explains that the footprints are preserved in the Broome Sandstone, which extends for 200 km along the coastline and is up to 280 metres thick. He says, “At the time this was a vast river plain of muddy swamps and sandbars.” Actually, there was not a lot of mud.3Mostly it was fine to very coarse sand with areas of gravel. The Broome Sandstone is known to cover the whole of the Dampier Peninsula.4 A river plain of such an enormous extent is monstrous compared with the rivers on the earth today. The Broome Sandstone points to an exceptionally large depositional system.
The surface of the sediment was soft and wet, and the animals walked on it soon after—before it had gone very firm. Steve Salisbury describes the tracks of a stegosaurus:
“It’s got four stubby little fingers on the hand and then quite a fat three-toed foot, and that combination is really characteristic of stegosaurs. … he’s gone for a bit of a slip down there. It looks like there’s a double step—he’s kind of slid for a bit and then had to gain his grip, and got to the bottom there and probably quite relieved that he’s made it … and then continued up that way.”
The idea of a river plain comes from the pattern of cross-bedding in the sandstone. These beds indicate that the water was flowing as the sediment was deposited. Some of the cross-beds are very large, so large that they indicate water flows of biblical proportions. In order to avoid such an interpretation, the sand deposits with the large cross-beds have been interpreted as forming in a desert. That’s right—a desert. This switch implies a puzzling sequence of environments. How could there have been a fast flowing river system, followed by a dry desert, followed by another river system? By ignoring the possibility of Noah’s Flood these palaeontologists create problems for themselves as they try to interpret what was going on.
As Steve Salisbury is filmed walking over the rocks we are told we are “exploring an extinct ecosystem as we walk through a landscape frozen in time.” However, what is preserved is quite unusual compared with ecosystems we see today. Fossils in the sandstone include marine organisms such as plankton and bivalves as well as land plants such a pine trees and ferns.4 Describing it as an ecosystem gives a misleading impression. So many different kinds of plants, animals and organisms that would be found in a normal ecosystem are missing from the deposits. That is because the dinosaurs, during the Flood, were not part of a normal ecosystem. The landscape was in the process of being destroyed by a devastation that impacted both the land and the ocean. This particular situation represented by the Broome Sandstone lasted for only a few weeks and months.
Catalyst, ABC
Host Mark Horstman pointing to dinosaur tracks (highlighted).
It’s interesting that Steve Salisbury recognises the transience of the situation. He says, “Most of the track sites that we see probably only represent, you know, between a few days and a couple of weeks, 130 million years ago, so they really do provide a fantastic snapshot.”
Note, “A few days and a couple of weeks”, and “snapshot”.
The footprints are the clear evidence for this brief, short time frame. They were made in soft sediment, and that provides a tight time constraint. And the imprints have been well preserved, which also constrains the time before the subsequent sediment was deposited on top. If the footprints had been exposed for any longer than a few weeks they would have been eroded away.
Clearly, people who talk about those mind-numbing time periods of 130-million years have a time problem: where do they propose to insert all those millions of years into the sediments?
Most people would imagine that the 130 million years was measured by precise laboratory equipment using hi-tech radioactive dating. That is not the case. The quoted date was decided by comparing the mix of fossils found in the sandstone with fossils found in other parts of the world.5 Actually, it is impossible to measure the ages of sedimentary rocks, or any other rocks, by analysing samples in the present (see The way it really is).
The Catalyst program captured the dramatic attempts of dinosaurs trying to escape the rising waters of Noah’s Flood some 4,500 years ago. Although the program made no reference to this global event, and presented the information exclusively in terms of evolution over millions of years, the evidence is plain to those who know what to look for. As my friend who brought this program to my attention said, “I have to admit I just thought of dinos running from flood waters when I saw it.”
Related Articles
References
- Kimberley Dinosaurs, http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3603069.htm; 4 October 2012. Return to text.
- Walker, T., A biblical geological model; in: Walsh, R.E. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism, Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh, PA, pp. 581–592, 1994; http://www.biblicalgeology.net. Return to text.
- On the 1:250,000 geological map Pender the Broome Sandstone is described as fine to very coarse, mudstone in part, minor conglomerate, ripple marked, cross bedded, bioturbated in part, and plant fossils, SE 51–2, 1st edition, 1983. Return to text.
- Thulborn T., Impact of Sauropod Dinosaurs on Lagoonal Substrates in the Broome Sandstone (Lower Cretaceous), Western Australia, PLoS ONE 7(5): e36208. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036208, 2012. ): e36208. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0036208; Thulborn interprets the environment as lagoonal which is contrary to the interpretation of a river plain Salisbury gives on the Catalyst program. One reason for the lagoonal interpretation is the huge geographical area of the sandstone. In other areas the sediments show cross bedding, which indicate flowing water. McCrea, R.T., Lockley, M.G., Haines, P.W. and Draper, N., Palaeontology Survey of the Broome Sandstone—Browse LNG Precinct, Department of State Development, Government of Western Australia, pp.12–13, 2011, report various interpretations by various authors at different outcrop locations. Return to text.
- Thulborn, ref. 4. McCrea, et al., ref. 4, report the age as Early Cretaceous (Valanginian to Barremian) based on limited biostratigraphic data (Nicoll et al. 2008). Return to text.
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Don't forget that rain was not the only or even the primary cause of the Noahic Flood. God decided to flood the world and destroy the civilization of man, preserving only Noah's family and the land-dwelling vertebrates and birds that God Himself sent to Noah. There were waters coming from under the crust of the Earth, volcanic activity, earthquakes, tectonic plates subducting...forty days and nights of steady rainfall but it took time to completely drown the Earth in water, and tides would continue to operate. The last few days of the hardiest land-dwelling animals (dinosaurs and a very few people likely the most common of them) would have been a constant battle to run to high ground, find things to float on for awhile, seek anything to eat when possible, and finally be overwhelmed and overcome by the water that would eventually extend high above all land.
New Dinosaur Tracks Study Suggests Cataclysm
by Brian Thomas, M.S. *
Casual observers are not the only ones who puzzle over dinosaur footprint origins. After all, other animal tracks in mud are not fossilized today because erosive processes rapidly erase them. If a rock layer requires thousands of years to solidify, then how were dinosaur tracks recorded in them?
A team of paleontologists specializing in "ichnology," the study of fossil tracks, just released a radically different explanation for the famous "dinosaur stampede" track ways in Queensland, Australia. Their analysis unwittingly confirmed a creation-flood explanation of dinosaur footprint formation that was first published in 1995.
Researchers had published a series of technical descriptions in the late 1970s and early 1980s of the tracks. The tracks are found in alternating layers of sandstone and thin clay, which appear to have been made by small theropod or ornithopod dinosaurs that took very large steps. In other words, the tracks showed long stride lengths for such small feet. The team interpreted this as having been caused by fast-running, stampeding dinosaurs.
The tracks have weathered and faded significantly since then, but much information remains. By 2004, Australian authorities covered the site, called "Dinosaur Stampede National Monument," to aid research and to host visitors.1
But a new analysis, published in The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, confronts the stampeding idea. In it, researchers describe more evidence—including variations in the tracks, sandstone grain wear, cross-bedding patterns, and such clues as fossilized tree branch scrape marks—that best fits a scenario whereby dinosaurs were alternatively floating, partly floating, or wading in a fast-moving, very broad, high energy flow event that featured rapidly fluctuating water depths.
Their results described how turkey-sized three-toed dinosaurs swam, sometimes with their claws barely scraping the sand. When wading in shallow water, their feet sunk deeply into the sand that quickly hardened. And the new reason for the long stride length is that fast-moving water current carried along the dinosaurs.
The study included estimates of water depth, ranging from 14 to 160 centimeters, or about 6 inches to five feet, based on footprint-derived scale-ups of the dinosaur's hip heights. The study authors wrote, "The sedimentologic and ichnological observations are consistent with interpretations of the area being a fluvial-dominated floodplain under variable subaqueous conditions."2 The word "fluvial" refers to river action. But the sandstone formation may be as large as the entire state of Queensland. Are they suggesting that there was a river as wide as Queensland? A great flood would make more sense.
This analysis strikingly confirms the Flood-friendly Briefly Exposed Diluvial Sediments (BEDS) hypothesis." Creation researcher Mike Oard suggested that the global water level temporarily lulled during the year-long global Flood of Noah's day. After the waters ceased rising globally, they sloshed across broad, flat landscapes. Then, slowly at first, they began to flow off of the new continents into deeper ocean basins.3 John Morris extended this concept in his recent book The Global Flood.4
During that lull, the last hardy, barely surviving creatures were dinosaurs, struggling against currents, predation, starvation, and exhaustion as they tromped in soggy sediments. All the clues at Lark Quarry in Queensland point to a powerful watery cataclysm, consistent with the Flood in general and particularly consistent with the BEDS hypothesis.5
References
- Dinosaur Stampede National Monument at Lark Quarry, Queensland. Australian Government fact sheet. Posted on www.environment.gove.au, accessed January 12, 2013.
- Romilio, A., R. T. Tucker, and S. W. Salisbury. 2013. The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 33 (1): 102-120.
- Oard, M. The extinction of the dinosaurs. Journal of Creation. 11 (2): 137–154.
- Morris, J. 2012. The Global Flood. Dallas, TX: Institute for Creation Research, 151-154.
- Oard, M. J. 2011. Dinosaur Challenges and Mysteries. Atlanta, GA: Creation Book Publishers.
* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.
Article posted on January 25, 2013.
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Millions of dinosaur tracks have been discovered in sedimentary rocks all over the world. Evolutionists have naturally interpreted these tracks within their belief system, assuming they represent normal animal behaviour some one hundred million years ago. On the other hand, the Bible makes it clear that all dinosaurs living at the time, except those on the Ark, perished in Noah’s Flood. At first glance, it seems difficult to explain the formation of dinosaur tracks during the Flood. A closer inspection of the details, however, demonstrates that the Flood is a more reasonable explanation.
Straight trackways
First, individual trackways (defined as more than one track from the same dinosaur) are, all over the world, almost always straight.1 Normal animal behaviour should often involve meandering tracks, as readily observed by animals making tracks in the snow. Straight trackways indicate that the animals were fearful, as if fleeing from a catastrophe.
Researchers recently found forty straight, parallel trackways of two types of large plant-eating dinosaurs in southern England.2 The trackway of a large meat-eating dinosaur was also discovered nearby, going in the same direction.3 These trackways provoked a predator-prey interpretation by the evolutionists. But the tracks could just as easily, if not better, be interpreted as different types of dinosaurs, all fleeing the same event in the same direction.
Few young dinos
There are few, if any, baby or young juvenile tracks associated with older juvenile and adult dinosaur tracks. A normal assemblage of tracks should include abundant baby or young juvenile tracks. For instance, 50% of the elephant tracks in Amboseli National Park, Africa, were made by babies or young juveniles.4 Since immature dinosaur tracks are rare, the trackways were probably formed during unusual conditions, rather than by normal animal activity. In the Flood, babies and young juveniles would likely have been left behind, as those more able to flee the approaching Flood waters hastened away.
Trackways on Flood rocks
Tracks are found only on flat bedding planes.5 The discovery of the recent track in England just mentioned provides a good example. This favours rapid sedimentation forming flat strata. Erosion over even hundreds of years in the evolutionary scheme would have produced at least a hilly topography, exposing several bedding planes. We should observe trackways on different bedding planes, traversing up hills and down into valleys.
These unusual characteristics of dinosaur tracks do not fit well with normal animal behaviour. The evidence agrees better with a time of worldwide stress on dinosaurs.
How can the tracks be explained within the Flood? Since the tracks were made by live dinosaurs, they had to have been made during the first 150 days of the Flood, because all air-breathing animals that lived on land perished by that time.6 In the Rocky Mountains and high plains of North America, dinosaur tracks are often found on top of hundreds to thousands of metres of sedimentary rock that had already been laid down in the Flood. It is known from erosional remnants that the tracks were buried by many hundreds of metres of sedimentary rocks laid down on top of them.7 These later sediments were subsequently eroded down to the level where we find the tracks. This great erosion fits with the later stages of the Flood, as the water retreated off the rising continents into sinking ocean basins.8
Flood went up and down
Three out of a series of five dinosaur tracks (two badly eroded) forming a straight trackway on a bedding place in north-east Wyoming, USA.
The Flood was a complex event; the waters did not smoothly cover all the pre-Flood land and then gently retreat. There were forces at work that would have caused rapid sea-level oscillations during the general rise of the early floodwater. Besides tides, the sea level would have rapidly risen and fallen, due to vertical shifting of the Earth’s crust and strong currents sweeping across the shallow landmasses. Geophysicists John Baumgardner and Daniel Barnette modelled currents on a totally flooded Earth.9 They began with all the water at rest. Within a very short time, the Earth’s rotation would cause strong currents of 40 to 80 m/sec (90 to 180 mph) over the shallowly submerged continents. But most interestingly, they found that in some areas sea level fell by hundreds of metres and intersected the bottom. This pattern moved so slowly that the exposed land would have persisted for many days, but with rapidly fluctuating sea level at the edges.
When were dino tracks formed?
The large region in western North America where the tracks are found would have started as a deep basin early in the Flood. The basin would have rapidly filled with sediments, “shallowing” the area. The sediments would have become exposed for a while as the sea level fell due to one of the mechanisms mentioned above.10 Desperate dinosaurs would likely have found only a series of shoals and banks. Either swimming, floating on debris mats, or trapped on higher land nearby, the adult dinosaurs would have climbed onto the freshly deposited sediments, made tracks, and quickly laid eggs. When the water rose once again, they would have desperately tried to escape, forming straight trackways on single bedding planes. The rising floodwaters would also have rapidly buried the tracks—a necessary condition for preservation. In fact, the very existence of dino tracks is evidence for rapid burial.11
We see, once again, how what seems like an “insoluble problem” for the Biblical history of the world is resolved by a “closer look.” Rather, we quickly discover that the tracks are a significant problem for the evolutionary interpretation. Not only that, but, once we put on “Bible glasses,” the facts about dinosaur tracks are seen to be consistent with this real history, and thus are strong evidence in its support.
What about tracks on multiple bedding planes in a local area?
Geologists have discovered that dinosaur tracks are occasionally found on bedding planes at more than one vertical level in a local or regional area. The same situation occurs with dinosaur eggs. The most “difficult” (for Flood geology) occurrence of multiple planes of tracks is in the Jindong Formation, South Korea.1 In this formation, over 100 dinosaur trackways have been discovered on numerous different thin bedding planes in a strata sequence 100 to 200 m thick. Dinosaur track expert Martin Lockley explains the occurrence of dinosaur tracks as representing ‘ . . . groups or herds of subadults and adults passing through the region on purposeful local or long-distance migrations (that is, not milling around or browsing locally).” 2 Can the Flood explain such a vertical sequence of tracks?
Actually, it is not too difficult. As the main text explains, the Flood involved oscillating sea levels. In some places, this would have forced dinosaurs to move back and forth on the exposed land. A thin layer of sediment would have been laid during each rise, and the dinosaurs would have walked back over the same area during each fall of sea level. In the case of the Jindong Formation, one could expect that the exposed land would have been quite small, so that the dinosaurs would have walked over the same area, i.e. containing previously-made tracks. A similar sequence is suggested for multiple egg horizons, which occur on far fewer horizons than tracks in a local area.
There is substantial evidence favouring the Flood interpretation over Lockley’s. Within the evolutionary worldview, a sequence of dinosaur tracks made in strata 100 to 200 m thick would be expected to have been laid down over a long period of time, perhaps several million years. This being the case, one would expect many types of dinosaur tracks. Actually, the tracks on all these many bedding planes are similar on each horizon, and Lockley deduces they are from one species of dinosaur. This would be a nigh-impossible occurrence within the evolutionary scenario, but expected within the Flood model.
Footnotes
- Lockley, M.G., Dinosaur ontogeny and population structure: interpretations and speculations based on fossil footprints; in: Carpenter, K., Hirsch, K.F. and Horner, J.R. (Eds.), Dinosaur Eggs and Babies, Cambridge University Press, London, pp. 347–365, 1994. Back
- Lockley, M.G., Dinosaur ontogeny and population structure, p. 352. Back
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