Dinosaur Graveyards and the Flood

One of the greatest mysteries concerning the dinosaurs is the number of huge dinosaur graveyards found in different parts of the world. Dinosaur fossils have been discovered as far north as the Arctic, as far south as Antarctica, and almost everywhere in between. In fact, dinosaur fossils have been found on all seven continents. Nearly 100 years ago, a dinosaur graveyard was found in Tanzania, Africa. Literally tons of fossils and rocks were mined and sent to Berlin, Germany for display. At Dinosaur National Monument on the Colorado/Utah border, more than 300 dinosaurs of many different kinds have been excavated. Another site in Utah has produced 10,000 dinosaur bones that were extracted from the rock. The burial of such large numbers of dinosaurs in various locations all over the world demands an adequate explanation.

Because most scholars believe the fossilization of bones often requires large quantities of water, many scientists believe that local flash floods caused large herds of dinosaurs to drown. Others believe that some of the grave­ yards resulted from animals attempting to cross flooded rivers. No doubt, such localized disasters have occurred throughout the world, just as they still occur today from time to time. But the problem with these theories is that while they may explain the death of some dinosaurs in some places, they don't adequately explain the existence of dinosaur graveyards throughout the whole world.

The law of cause and effect states that every material effect must have an adequate cause that comes before the effect. Your dad's car was not crushed because a locust landed on it, and your sister did not suffer a broken ankle because she stepped on an ant. These are not adequate causes. (The car may have been crushed because a semi ran into it, but not because a bug hit it!) Likewise, the huge dinosaur graveyards are an effect of some type of adequate cause. What was that "cause"?

The fossilized bones of dinosaurs found in graveyards throughout the world are best explained by the worldwide flood of Noah's day (see Genesis 6-8), not by localized floods interspersed throughout history. During that year­ long global flood, thousands of dinosaurs drowned and their bones were buried very quickly in muddy deposits. This would account for the chaotic jumble of dinosaur bones found in fossil beds in various parts of the world­ from Alberta, Canada to Tanzania, Africa.

 Although the flood did not destroy all of the dinosaurs (some would have been on Noah's ark), it is the best explanation as to why many of these giant reptiles rapidly were over­ whelmed, buried, and fossilized.