More dinosaur and Noah's Flood speculations from the Institute for Creation Research.
They are telling us that most dinosaur fossils have been found in association with fossils of marine creatures. Though I thought most of them were found high in the deserts and badlands of North America, along with China and Argentina:
http://www.livescience.com/32816-where- ... ssils.htmlhttp://www.icr.org/article/10014 (new article entitled 'Dinosaur Fossils Found in Marine Rocks - Again')
In the New Scientist article that is flagged at footnote 1 an actual scientist (Nick Longrich) is quoted as saying:
“This find was unusual because it’s a dinosaur from marine rocks – it’s a bit like hunting for fossil whales and finding a fossil lion,” says Longrich. “It’s an incredibly rare find – almost like winning the lottery..."
So it looks like any recent and catastrophic 'worldwide flood' had nothing to do with this dinosaur fossil (an abelisaurus found in a Moroccan phosphate deposit). As otherwise there would be many more fossils found in layers that were definitely of marine origin especially given the huge number of dinosaur species known from fossils.
But the ICR then claim this discovery should have been "no surprise"; they link to a past article by them which in turn links to a previous paper by actual scientists:
http://www.icr.org/article/dinosaurs-ma ... -worldwide 'Dinosaurs in Marine Sediments: a Worldwide Phenomenon'
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4296572/ (despite the ICR claiming that "nearly all Cretaceous dinosaurs across Europe were buried in marine rocks" there's no mention in this Abstract of dinosaur fossils in marine rocks; and this is a dinosaur from one of three Mesozoic eras and from one current continent/past archipelago)
The earlier ICR article looks to me, as a non palaeontologist or geologist, to be grossly misleading:
"For many years, paleontologists have known of marine fossils within various dinosaur-bearing rock units in the American West...
The Hell Creek Formation in eastern Montana has yielded many T. rex specimens, including well-documented dinosaur soft-tissue fossils. Surprisingly, in two volumes of papers published specifically on the Hell Creek discoveries, little is mentioned of the five species of shark and 14 species of fish fossils that are indicative of marine influence. Secular scientists either ignore these findings or dismiss them as all freshwater sharks and freshwater fish, in spite of the more likely conclusion that they represent marine organisms."
According to the Wikipedia page on Hell Creek:
"It is a series of fresh and brackish-water clays, mudstones, and sandstones deposited during the Maastrichtian and Danian (respectively the end of the Cretaceous period and the beginning of the Paleogene) by fluvial activity in fluctuating river channels and deltas and very occasional peaty swamp deposits along the low-lying eastern continental margin fronting the late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway."
Which would probably explain why real scientists do not prefer the 'marine influence' idea - let alone that the dinosaurs died from rising sea levels during Noah's 'worldwide' flood of Genesis. A seaway would have linked land areas to the coast - and one or two extant shark species can survive in fresh water.
In the earlier ICR article Clarey also claims:
"Nizar Ibrahim et al. reported that sharks, sawfish, ray-finned fishes, and coelocanths were found in the same rock layers as a Spinosaurus dinosaur in Morocco. How can this be?"
But he ignores the title of the paper in question: 'Semiaquatic adaptations in a giant predatory dinosaur'.
When again mentioning this paper he appears to quote mine from it in cynical fashion (his chosen quote is shown below the link):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4296572/“although isolated occurrences of continental [terrestrial] vertebrate fossils were occasionally reported from the Cenomanian to lower Santonian [lower four Upper Cretaceous stages] of Europe, these were mainly from marginal marine deposits".
So these were isolated occurrences. And the paragraph where this remark appears - near to the start of the General Overview, I have checked - says nothing about dinosaurs specifically though I imagine some of the vertebrates were dinosaurs. Clarey also highlights dinosaur bones from the late Cretaceous apparently being found in marine chalk beds. But he fails to mention that at the time 'Europe' is believed to have been an archipelago. Instead, echoing the unjustified use of the word 'worldwide' in his article title, Clarey's non peer reviewed piece then states: "Dinosaur fossils found in rock strata with marine fossils are commonplace, not the exception".
But that is just his opinion. In his 2017 article this becomes another example of a young earth creationist saying that scientists are wrong and misguided ('confounded' he says) - because I Timothy Clarey PhD demonstrated this in one of my earlier articles.
His new article concludes:
"With all these finds, it’s now clear that the discovery of dinosaurs in marine rocks and/or mixed with marine fossils is the norm, not the exception."
But were these sedimentary rocks all 'marine' rocks? And young earth creationists have not come up with a convincing alternative explanation of the disappearance of dinosaurs above the distinct K-T boundary, an explanation that fits with the opening chapters of Genesis (where the flood was a mass die-off but certainly no extinction event, and any dinosaurs on the ark would have multiplied post-flood and repopulated the Earth - before then all (but not simultaneously as there was no common cause) going mysteriously and 'recently' extinct. All they can do is suggest that most dinosaur fossils were animals killed in the 'worldwide' flood and all those that died more recently, whole species going extinct, mysteriously did not leave any fossils because the conditions were not as 'catastrophic' as during the Genesis flood.