The Boneyards: Karoo 800 Billion Vertebrate Fossils at One Site-Plus Other Bones

by Chris Parker

For forty days the flood kept coming on the earth, and as the waters increased they lifted the ark high above the earth. The waters rose and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the surface of the water. They rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered. The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than twenty feet.

Every living thing that moved on the earth perished--birds, livestock, wild animals, all the creatures that swarm over the earth, and all mankind. Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died.

Every living thing on the face of the earth was wiped out; men and animals and the creatures that move along the ground and the birds of the air were wiped from the earth. Only Noah was left, and those with him in the ark.

The waters flooded the earth for a hundred and fifty days." Genesis 7

"IT REQUIRED MASSIVE FLOOD CONDITIONS TO DO ALL THAT BURYING. AN IMMENSE WORLDWIDE CATASTROPHE OCCURRED IN THE PAST. IT PRODUCED THE SICILIAN HIPPOPOTAMUS BEDS, THE FOSSILS OF WHICH ARE SO EXTENSIVE THAT THEY ARE MINED AS A SOURCE OF CHARCOAL; THE GREAT MAMMAL BEDS OF THE ROCKIES; THE DINOSAUR BEDS OF THE BLACK HILLS AND THE ROCKIES, AS WELL AS IN THE GOBI DESERT; THE FISH BEDS OF THE SCOTTISH DEVONIAN STRATUM, THE BALTIC AMBER BEDS, AGATE SPRING QUARRY IN NEBRASKA, AND HUNDREDS MORE.
 

NONE OF THIS FOSSIL-MAKING IS BEING DONE TODAY. IT ONLY HAPPENED ONE TIME IN HISTORY;AT THE TIME OF THE FLOOD." .. EVOLUTION CRUNCHER
 

MASSIVE FOSSIL "BONEYARDS" ALL OVER THE WORLD
"....Massive fossil graveyards of dinosaurs still exist all over the world. The Morrison beds in North America, the dinosaur beds in Montana, in the Rocky Mountains, in Alberta, the Dakotas, China, Colorado, Utah, Africa, etc., etc., contain literally millions of dinosaur fossils piled together in tremendous heaps.

Ten thousand Hadrosaurs were found on Egg Mountain alone, jumbled together in what appears to have been a mass death. Would this happen under normal, uniformitarian conditions? Think about it.

Millions of buffalo were slaughtered on the North American plains during the last century, so this should be an ideal reason why multiplied thousands of fossil buffalo should be scattered all over the place.

Are there any great buffalo fossil graveyards to be found? Most assuredly, there are not. Their remains were disposed of by the normal ravages of the weather, scavengers, and decomposition.

So why are there great fossil graveyards of dinosaurs, where the bones of millions of these beasts lie entombed in vast heaps, together with the piles of fossilized mammals, fish, insects, plants etc., testifying that they all perished together in a great mass death?

HOW FOSSILS ARE FORMED..... Let us find out what Stein and Rowe have to say about the process of fossilization. They state: "Effective fossilization usually depends on having hard parts, such as bones or shells, and being buried immediately after death. The work of predators and scavengers and the weathering effects of rain, heat, cold, and wind often serve to destroy most or all of an organism before burial takes place."

They further state: "Once an organism dies, it is seldom buried immediately . . .The point of ultimate burial and fossilization may be hundreds of miles from the place of death."

They then give us four conditions necessary for the preservation of fossils.  First, an organism must have hard parts like teeth, bones and shells that are preserved, but that is not all that is necessary, (else we would find numerous buffalo fossils in North America).

They further state: "Second, the organism must not be destroyed immediately by other organisms or by the action of climatic or geologic forces.

Third, the organism must be protected immediately from decaying. This usually takes the form of rapid burial, which also protects the organism from being totally destroyed."

What natural occurrence then could account for the great dinosaur graveyards under these conditions, simultaneously killing and burying multitudes of dinosaurs, mammals, birds, fish, etc. in huge numbers, many of them apparently dying in the prime of life, some of them caught in the very act of eating smaller animals that became preserved as fossils too?

It had to be something sudden, to kill them in what appears in many cases to be an unnatural, violent death; it was something universal that destroyed them in every part of the earth at roughly the same period in history; it was something that swiftly covered them up to "mummify" their remains so that the normal exposure to water or air and other predations wouldn't obliterate their remains, and it did this on a massive scale to create such numerous and extensive fossil graveyards.

Only one possible event could simultaneously meet all of these conditions: The onrush of swift moving sediment from a tremendous, worldwide Flood."--End Quote.... Source:Excerpt from: The Darwin Papers; Dinosaurs and the Flood of Noah, by James M. Foard

The Following three articles are from Science Frontiers Online

Science Frontiers Online is not a "creationist' Journal, but rather is a compilation of anomalous articles and articles of interest from a variety of scientific journals, magazines and newspapers.

Additional comment is sometimes provided by the editor; William R. Corliss

THE KAROO: THE GREATEST VERTEBRATE GRAVEYARD

In SF#104, we mentioned a vast bone bed consisting mainly of fish remains. Now, an exchange of letters in a creationist journal gives us the opportunity to present a few facts about a giant bone bed of terrestrial vertebrate fossils: the Karoo Supergroup of southern Africa.

The point being discussed by the creationists is the source of the estimated 800 billion vertebrate fossils contained in the Karoo deposits. Whence this astronomical number of mainly swampdwelling reptiles?

And whence the immense volume of sandstones and shale that contains their bones? The Genesis Flood model favored by creationists requires that all 800 billion animals be drowned at the same time and swept into South Africa and fossilized.

But, they ask themselves, could the entire earth ever have supported so many swamp loving reptiles at the same time? Is the Flood model threatened?

(Froede, Carl R., Jr.; "The Karoo and Other Fossil Graveyards: A Further Reply to Mr. Yake," Creation Research Society Quarterly, 32:199, 1996. A response by Bill Yake followed this letter.)

Comment. The figure of 800 billion fossils appears in several authoritative works, although concern is expressed about its magnitude and assumptions employed in calculating it. One thing that is certain is that the Karoo deposits are immense and packed with bones.  Even after decades of fossil collecting, bones are still sticking out of the ground.

COMPOSED MAINLY OF SANDSTONES AND SHALES DEPOSITED IN SHALLOW WATER, THE KAROO CAN BE 20,000 FEET THICK. THE FOSSIL-RICH BEDS STRETCH OUT FOR HUNDREDS OF MILES.
 

NOWHERE ELSE ON THE PLANET IS THERE SUCH A MASSIVE, CONTINUOUS, FOSSILIFEROUS LAND DEPOSIT.
 

The creationists' questions are not out of order at all. See Chapter ESD in Neglected Geological Anomalies for more on this. This volume is described here.

From Science Frontiers #105, MAY-JUN 1996. 1997 William R. Corliss Footprints From the Past

"Fossilised footprints are found on many Karoo farms, and on Gansfontein, near Fraserburg, there is an intriguing palaeosurface. It shows an ancient flood-plain surface with contour, mud, ripple and wrinkle marks, as well as worm trails, fish fin imprints and arthropod trails.

There are also many large mammal-like reptile, Dinocephalian and Bradysaurus tracks."

BONE BED DISCOVERED IN FLORIDA
A new bone bed has been discovered south of Tampa. Paleontologists say it it is one of the richest fossil deposits ever found in the United States. It has yielded the bones of more than 70 species of animals, birds, and aquatic creatures.

About 80% of the bones belong to plains animals, such as camels, horses, mammoths, etc. Bears, wolves, large cats, and a bird with an estimated 30-foot wingspan are also represented.

Mixed in with all the land animals are sharks' teeth, turtle shells, and the bones of fresh and salt water fish. The bones are all smashed and jumbled together, as if by some catastrophe. The big question is how bones from such different ecological nitches---plains, forests, ocean---came together in the same place.... ((Armstrong, Carol; "Florida Fossils Puzzle the Experts," Creation Research Society Quarterly, 21:198, 1985.) From Science Frontiers #39, MAY-JUN 1985. 1997 William R. Corliss
 

UNFOSSILIZED DINOSAUR REMAINS
Excerpted from CSA NEWS: by Tom Willis

There are other lines of evidence not mentioned herein, but a fascinating new one is a rash of discoveries of dinosaur remains that are not fossilized! My first encounter was several years ago when I heard that the largest dinosaur discovered (Seismosaurous, in New Mexico) may have much real bone and even bone protein.

I made a few calls to Roy Holt (a CSA founder) and others in New Mexico. John Baumgardner sent me an article from the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology [11(4):pg 417-433, Dec 1991] by David Gillett, the primary excavator of Seismosaurous. Sure enough, he admitted, although in a discretely veiled manner, that bone and bone protein is present.

Other articles are named including one attempting to explain the preservation by a special event in the Jurassic in Colorado and New Mexico.

--Unfossilized Dinosaur Bone in Alaska.

I began to hear of others. I knew that many mammoth fossils were bone, not mineralized, especially Alaskan mammoths, of which there are thousands.

I kept hearing rumors that Alaskan dinosaurs were not fossilized either. Now there is no longer any doubt. Even a team of Creation Scientists has returned with an enormous amount of unfossilized dinosaur bone, including even the skull of a Tyrannosaurus Rex!

--Dinosaur Bone and Blood Discovered!

But the most fascinating recent discovery has come from secular scientists. The most famous 20th century dinosaur story teller, "Dinosaur Jack" Horner, University of Montana, has not only discovered dinosaur bone, but a medical pathologist, casually examined the bone under a microscope, and found dinosaur blood inside the bone!

Four different classes of evidence clearly support the notion that it is truly blood, including hemoglobin, right where it belongs, inside a dinosaur blood vessel! ( [M. Schweitzer and T, Staedtler, 'The Real Jurassic Park', Earth, June 1997 pg 55-57]

This should, of course, be an enormous nail in the coffin of the 65-million-year-extinction myth. But don't count on it. They have spent millions of tax dollars promoting this myth. They will do everything they can to hold on to it.

Expect a rash of articles to come along "explaining" how bone, protein, blood cells, and even the special blood protein, hemoglobin, were preserved in special events during the Old Oothic Jurassic Period.

However, these things are very difficult to preserve for even thousands of years. Among those with eyes to see and ears to hear, most will see through the stories.

HUSHING UP THE GUADELOUPE SKELETON
Just offshore of Guadeloupe, in the West Indies, lies a kilometer-long formation of extremely hard limestone dated as Miocene, or about 25 million years old.

Nothing surprising so far! However, history records that in the late 1700's many human skeletons---all indistinguishable from modern humans---were excavated from this limestone. One of the quarried specimens, ensconced in a 2-ton slab, was shipped to the British Museum.

It arrived in 1812 and was placed on public display. With the ascendance of Darwinism, the fossil skeleton was quietly spirited away to the basement. The discovery of these human remains has been well-documented in the scientific literature.

Here is another pertinent geological fact: the limestone formation in question is situated 2-3 meters below a "1-million-year-old" coral reef. If the limestone is truly 25 million years old, the human evolutionary timetable is grossly in error.

Even if this is not the case, and the bones are merely 1 million years old or so, as required by the coral reef; then, fully modern humans lived in the New World long before the Bering Land Bridge went into service.

The only way a serious geological or archeological anomaly can be avoided is to predicate that the limestone formation was really laid down in the last 10,000-20,000 years (in geo-materalist years)---something like that doesn't seem too likely.

((Cooper, Bill; "Human Fossils from Noah's Flood," Ex Nihilo, 1:6, no. 3, 1983.)

Comment. This sort of dating puzzle is manna to the scientific creationists. It is therefore not surprising to discover that Ex Nihilo is published by the Creation Science Foundation of Australia.

Nevertheless, the Guadeloupe skeletons truly exist---it's just that the creationists seem to be the only ones talking about them. You have seen their slant on them above. Other interpretations of the Guadeloupe skeletons will be presented in future issues.

Reference. Additional information on the Guadeloupe skeleton may be found at BHE12 in our Catalog: Biological Anomalies: Humans III.

From Science Frontiers #27, MAY-JUN 1983. 1997 William R. Corliss

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