Awesome Science

Explore Dinosaur National Monument

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

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Series Code: ASB

Program Code: ASB000110A


00:04 And comes from the DVD series, "Awesome Science"
00:09 [music playing]
00:11 NOAH JUSTICE: There is an incredible area
00:12 in Western Colorado and Eastern Utah,
00:15 where an amazing collection of dinosaur bones are located.
00:18 It is called Dinosaur National Monument,
00:21 and it is found in the Morrison Formation.
00:24 These fossils were first discovered in 1909,
00:28 and then they were set aside by President Woodrow Wilson
00:31 for national preservation.
00:33 Park signs present history from a naturalistic world view,
00:36 saying that dinosaurs lived over 100 million years ago,
00:40 dying out about 65 million years ago.
00:43 The cause of their mass extinction remains a mystery.
00:46 All we know for sure is that they
00:48 were buried quickly, worldwide, under flood-like conditions.
00:53 Yet, from the Bible, we infer that our Earth
00:56 is only about 6,000 years old.
00:58 Human history and recent scientific evidence,
01:01 such as soft dinosaur tissue, seem
01:03 to support the biblical worldview.
01:05 Which view is correct?
01:07 Where does the evidence fit best?
01:09 All this and more next on "Awesome Science."
01:17 Awesome science takes you on a field trip
01:20 to some of the most amazing geologic and historic sites
01:24 around the world, where we use the Bible as our history
01:27 guidebook to interpret what we see,
01:29 that the Bible can be trusted and empirical science
01:33 falls in line with the biblical account of creation,
01:36 the fall and the flood.
01:38 Science-- it's awesome.
01:53 On the western side of the Rockies
01:55 is a vast area of desert basins and parched mountain chains.
02:00 In 1909, a large deposit of dinosaur bones
02:04 was found near Dinosaur, Colorado
02:06 by Earl Douglass, a paleontologist working
02:09 and collecting for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
02:14 Just six years later, President Woodrow Wilson
02:17 set aside 80 acres surrounding the Dinosaur Quarry in Utah
02:21 as a national monument.
02:23 It's now grown to over 200,000 acres, located on the southeast
02:28 flank of the Uinta Mountains, on the border between Colorado
02:32 and Utah at the confluence of the Green and Yampa Rivers.
02:36 The most common dinosaurs found here are the Allosaurus
02:40 and the Camarasaurus.
02:42 They're found in sedimentary rock layers
02:44 of sandstone, mudstone, siltstone, limestone,
02:48 and a conglomerate bed.
02:50 The layers which locally make up the Morrison Formation.
02:55 The Morrison Formation is found in the Western United States,
02:59 covering some one and a half million square miles.
03:02 Only a teeny fraction is exposed and inaccessible
03:05 to geologists and paleontologists.
03:08 The Dinosaur Quarry is the most famous site of the monument.
03:12 It is enclosed, taking you right up to the steeply tilted rock
03:16 layers, which contain hundreds of fossilized dinosaur bones.
03:20 This large quarry building keeps the fossil safe
03:23 from erosion and vandalism.
03:26 The tilted rock has been chipped away by paleontologists
03:29 to reveal the fossil bones.
03:31 You can spend hours finding skulls, rib cages, and leg
03:35 bones.
03:36 It's a great opportunity for everyone
03:38 in the family to closely observe real dinosaur fossils.
03:42 Also present in abundance among some of the fossilized dinosaur
03:46 bones, though rarely mentioned by evolutionists,
03:49 are fossil unionid clam shells, clear evidence
03:52 of the watery graveyard the dinosaurs were buried in.
03:56 In addition, the visitor's center at the quarry
03:58 has full dinosaur skeletons on display.
04:02 Remember, many of the signs reflect
04:04 an evolutionary worldview, portraying
04:07 millions of years as fact.
04:09 As we will soon show, there is another worldview
04:11 to consider, matching the evidence much more accurately.
04:18 In the 1820s, Gideon Mantell, an English doctor,
04:22 found some unusual teeth and bones in a quarry.
04:25 He had believed he had found an entirely new group of reptiles.
04:30 A couple of decades later, nine types
04:32 of these different reptiles had been
04:34 uncovered, including two called the Megalosaurus and Iguanodon.
04:39 Then in 1841, famous British scientist Dr. Richard Owen
04:44 wanted to name these groups of creatures,
04:46 coining the name Dinosauria, meaning terrible lizard.
04:50 So where do we find dinosaurs?
04:53 Their fossils have been discovered
04:55 all around the world.
04:57 Here in the United States, they're
04:58 mostly found in the Morrison and Hell Creek Formations, where
05:02 much study has been performed.
05:05 All dinosaurs are found in sedimentary layers
05:08 of sand, silt, and mud, which would seem to indicate they
05:12 were buried quickly in a flood.
05:15 We can assume this because any dead animal left
05:18 in the open air would quickly decompose
05:21 and scavengers would eat the remains.
05:23 Only quick burial would keep the animal intact
05:26 and provide the right conditions for the bones
05:29 to be quickly fossilized.
05:32 The Morrison and Hell Creek Formations
05:34 appear to be pushed up, as though the dinosaurs were
05:37 buried under deep sediments.
05:40 Then some geologic process eroded away
05:43 the overlying layers and brought them back to the surface.
05:47 We can see evidence of this by the tilted layers associated
05:51 with the fossils.
05:53 All dinosaur fossils are found below what's
05:56 called the KT Boundary layer.
05:58 The KT Boundary is a distinctive layer
06:01 of sediment in between other rock layers
06:04 and is thought by evolutionists to represent a mass extinction
06:08 event.
06:09 This is because many species are found below this layer and not
06:13 above it.
06:14 All dinosaur fossils are found below the KT Boundary
06:17 layer, as well as many particular plants
06:21 and marine reptiles, produced by a famed meteor
06:24 impact which they believe killed the dinosaurs.
06:28 They believe this because the layer contains iridium,
06:31 an element found in meteorites and some impact sites,
06:35 such as meteor crater in Arizona and not in most earth rocks.
06:40 There are two reasons why iridium
06:43 in a meteorite from an asteroid does not
06:45 make sense as the sole source for the iridium found
06:48 in this layer.
06:49 First, the dust from an asteroid does not spread very far.
06:54 And the amount found in this layer in various places
06:57 around the earth is just too much for a single impact
07:01 from an asteroid fragment to produce.
07:04 So what other mechanisms could have
07:06 helped create the massive amounts of iridium
07:09 we find around the earth?
07:11 We know that iridium is also found in ash from volcanoes.
07:15 With the evidence of many super volcanic eruptions
07:18 around the world in the past, they
07:21 could have easily produced the amount of iridium found
07:24 in this layer around the earth.
07:26 There was one series of such super eruptions, which
07:30 produced the basalts of the Deccan Traps
07:32 of India, that coincides with the timing of formation
07:36 of this KT Boundary layer.
07:39 There is thus a lot of evidence to show
07:41 that there was massive volcanic activity
07:43 during and after the flood.
07:46 Large lava flows and ash deposits
07:49 were laid down between the sediment layers
07:51 across the earth's surface during this worldwide
07:54 catastrophe and as the flood waned and the earth was
07:58 settling to today's relative equilibrium.
08:01 A year-long worldwide flood, as the Bible describes,
08:05 makes much more sense as the source
08:07 of the iridium we find in the KT Boundary layer.
08:10 The dinosaurs could not have survived past the 150th day
08:13 of the flood.
08:15 Because by then, even the highest peaks were under water.
08:18 The dinosaurs would have died by then
08:20 and their carcasses would have been quickly covered
08:23 by sediments and deposited in various layers
08:26 in that stage of the flood.
08:29 The volcanoes going off underwater
08:31 would have produced the KT Boundary layer about halfway
08:34 through the flood, creating large areas
08:37 of volcanic sediment around the world, when the dinosaurs
08:40 perished, and also after.
08:42 As the flood waters then receded off the earth,
08:45 more sediments would have been laid
08:47 on top of the KT Boundary layer, burying the dinosaurs even
08:51 further.
08:53 In addition, the surface of the earth below the waters
08:56 would have been rising over vast areas.
08:59 And the receding waters would have eroded large areas
09:02 and carved valleys and canyons.
09:05 Some of the layers that dinosaurs were buried in
09:08 would have been tilted and pushed back to the surface
09:11 over time and uncovered by erosion for us
09:14 to discover today.
09:16 Remember, the flood was catastrophic.
09:19 Nothing with the breath of life in its nostrils
09:22 could have survived, except for those on the ark.
09:25 The KT Boundary shows us that God's judgment was complete.
09:30 So what happened to the dinosaurs?
09:33 We know about dinosaurs because of their fossilized bones
09:37 in sedimentary layers.
09:39 Many have been found in an opisthotonic pose,
09:42 where the head is thrown backwards,
09:44 the neck and body arched, and the tail thrown backwards.
09:48 No one knows exactly why this death pose is so frequent.
09:52 Here at Dinosaur National Monument
09:55 is an Allosaurus with its head missing.
09:57 But its tail is broken close to the body and lies parallel
10:01 under its feet, with the thicker part under its chest.
10:05 Many other dinosaurs in the quarry
10:07 are found in the same pose and are headless.
10:11 Dinosaur skeletons around the world
10:14 seem to reveal a violent death during water transport.
10:18 These clues give us an idea of why the dinosaurs died off so
10:22 suddenly.
10:23 Those who believe in evolution, however,
10:26 have a myriad of ideas about how the death of the dinosaurs
10:29 took place.
10:30 Because they believe in an evolutionary history,
10:33 their ideas just don't fit all the facts,
10:36 while those who believe in the Bible
10:38 can present a compelling case for what
10:40 we find in the fossil record.
10:43 Secular ideas for the demise of the dinosaurs are many.
10:47 Some are reasonable and others-- really crazy--
10:51 such as their food source diminished
10:53 so they starved to death, or they just overate and died,
10:57 they were poisoned, they became blind from cataracts
11:01 and could not reproduce, mammals ate their eggs,
11:04 or they just had too much flatulence.
11:07 Other ideas include them breathing
11:10 in too much volcanic dust or poisonous gases,
11:14 comets or meteorites striking the earth, mass suicide,
11:18 constipation, parasites, their brains started shrinking,
11:23 they slipped disks in their backs,
11:26 or sunspot activity made the earth too hot or too cold.
11:30 But one big clue to their demise is the way
11:33 that they are buried.
11:35 Their bones are spread out across vast areas
11:38 in sedimentary layers deposited by water.
11:41 Rarely are they found as complete skeletons.
11:45 Most of the bones have fossilized,
11:47 which is a rare process and only happens
11:49 when an animal is quickly buried and the right minerals can
11:52 replace the bony tissues, so the bones turn to stone.
11:57 Many of the complete skeletons show
12:00 signs of drowning and being pulled along in currents
12:03 before they were deposited.
12:06 In addition, fossilized dinosaur tracks
12:08 show the giant creatures were on the move,
12:11 as though they were trying to escape from the rising waters.
12:15 These findings-- watery death, quick burial
12:18 in sentiments, warm mineral water causing fossilization,
12:22 and escaping footprints, would seem
12:24 to make a strong case for a catastrophic end
12:27 to these amazing creatures.
12:30 Would any event in the past have created these conditions?
12:33 How about the biblical worldwide flood?
12:36 Starting with the creation account found in the Bible,
12:40 God created all the land animals on Day 6, which
12:43 would have included dinosaurs.
12:45 For about 1,600 years, dinosaurs grew in variety and number.
12:51 The Bible and the fossil record seem
12:53 to indicate the earth was much more lush and temperate,
12:57 a perfect place for dinosaurs to grow big and plentiful.
13:01 When God came to Noah about 1,600 years
13:05 after the creation of the world, He
13:06 told Noah He was going to flood the entire earth because
13:10 of man's rebellion.
13:13 He told Noah to construct an ark and take
13:16 two of every kind of land animal and seven of some
13:18 on the ark, which would have included pairs of dinosaurs.
13:22 Noah didn't have to take large, older adult dinosaurs
13:26 on to the ark, but smaller, young adults
13:28 would have had more life left to reproduce young
13:31 after the flood had receded.
13:33 When we think of dinosaurs, we often think of huge creatures,
13:38 but the average size of a dinosaur
13:40 was only about the size of a small horse.
13:43 There are about 670 dinosaurs named from the fossil record,
13:47 but there are only about 55 kinds of dinosaurs.
13:51 So this is about how many pairs God
13:53 sent to be taken on the ark.
13:55 With over 2.2 million cubic feet of space within the ark,
14:00 carrying the dinosaurs and all the other kinds of land animals
14:03 wouldn't have been a problem.
14:05 There would have been more than enough space
14:07 for the animals, food, and Noah's family.
14:10 Once the flood ended and the animals came off the ark,
14:13 the environment was very different
14:15 than before the flood.
14:17 As the dinosaurs spread out, it's
14:20 likely they didn't repopulate in the same numbers
14:23 as before the flood because their environment
14:25 had drastically changed.
14:28 Food sources and the different climate
14:30 would have drastically limited their repopulation.
14:34 We always find dinosaur bones in sedimentary layers,
14:38 which usually indicates quick burial by water.
14:41 If a dinosaur died and laid on the ground
14:44 for any period of time after the flood,
14:46 the flesh would have decayed quickly
14:49 and would have been scattered.
14:51 We see this today with any animal that dies in the open.
14:55 Within a matter of days, the flesh is eaten,
14:58 the bones are scattered, and the carcass quickly decays.
15:02 God has provided our world with bacteria, bugs, fungi,
15:06 and scavenging animals to take care of the dead things.
15:10 If not, our world would be a pretty putrid place.
15:14 With the past graveyards of dinosaur bones
15:16 we find around the world, the demise of the dinosaurs
15:20 would have been catastrophic, a nearly
15:22 simultaneous global destruction.
15:25 In addition, many of the intact skeletons
15:28 we find show signs of drowning, then, quick burial
15:31 in the mineral-rich waters with a lot of silt.
15:35 This is what we would expect to find if the flood were true.
15:39 As the fountains of the great deep came up out of the earth,
15:43 these fountains would have included
15:45 warm, mineral-rich water mixed with volcanic ash
15:48 and sediments.
15:51 All of these elements would have created the right conditions
15:54 to quickly fossilize the bones.
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16:47 Back in the 1990s, paleontologist Mary Schweitzer
16:51 discovered soft tissue in a T. rex bone.
16:54 Then in 2000, a T. rex was unearthed in Montana
16:58 in the Hell Creek Formation.
17:01 After excavating the bones, Mary grabbed a couple of shards
17:05 from the femur bone, taking them back
17:07 to her lab for further study.
17:10 She soaked the samples in a weak acid
17:12 to wear away the stone and bone.
17:15 To her surprise, what was left was
17:17 dinosaur soft tissue, including collagen, blood vessels,
17:21 and red blood cells.
17:23 This is astounding because most secular scientists
17:26 believe that dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.
17:30 The fragile tissue should not have survived this long
17:33 inside the bone.
17:34 No one would expect to find it because everyone knows
17:38 soft tissue doesn't last more than a few thousand years,
17:41 if you're really lucky.
17:43 But this is not a shocking surprise
17:46 to those who believe in a biblical worldview,
17:48 because they believe that the earth is much younger
17:51 and only 4,300 years have passed since the global flood when
17:56 most dinosaur fossils were buried.
17:58 Mary Schweitzer continued to look for
18:00 and found other specimens with soft tissue.
18:03 Being a scientist who believes in evolution,
18:06 she began to research how dinosaur tissue
18:08 could have been preserved for such a long period of time.
18:13 But the results are inconclusive.
18:16 Mark Armitage, a young earth creation scientist,
18:19 felt soft dinosaur tissue was much more abundant
18:23 than previously thought.
18:24 So he went out to find his own samples.
18:28 He went to the Hell Creek Formation in Eastern Montana,
18:31 quickly discovering a Triceratops horn.
18:35 When he took it back to his lab, he
18:37 followed the same procedures Mary Schweitzer
18:39 did and found soft tissue.
18:42 In another trip, he found other Triceratops bones,
18:45 recovering additional soft tissue.
18:48 Mark put the samples under his electron microscopes,
18:52 revealing amazing detail in the bone tissue.
18:55 Tiny osteocytes, the small cells which help regenerate bone,
18:59 were observed in amazing detail.
19:02 These cells should have degraded into mush very quickly.
19:06 But somehow, they have been beautifully preserved
19:08 since the flood.
19:10 There has been a very large find in China of soft tissue
19:14 in dinosaurs.
19:15 So Mark's claim about it being more abundant
19:17 may be close to the truth.
19:20 The evolutionary paleontologists are scratching their heads,
19:24 wondering what mechanism could have preserved these cells
19:27 for 65 to 135 million years.
19:32 The only idea making sense to them
19:34 is that the blood of the dinosaurs
19:36 was rich in iron, which can be a preserving agent,
19:39 but not for millions of years.
19:42 It's possible iron could have been
19:44 involved in preserving the tissue for a few thousand years
19:48 since the flood, because soft tissue should
19:51 have degraded in the short time since the flood.
19:55 Mary Schweitzer has done tests with dinosaur tissue
19:58 in the lab.
19:59 She was able to preserve the tissue with iron over a couple
20:02 of years, but you cannot extrapolate out millions
20:06 of years with an experiment only lasting a few.
20:10 Yet if we use the biblical time scale of only a few thousand
20:14 years since the flood, soft dinosaur tissue
20:16 could have been preserved, showing
20:18 the death and burial of the dinosaurs during the flood.
20:27 The Bible tells us that two of every kind of land animal
20:30 and seven pairs of some came onto the ark
20:33 and survived the flood.
20:35 After about a year, the flood was finished
20:38 and the waters had receded.
20:40 The animals came off the ark and began to repopulate the earth.
20:45 If dinosaurs did come off the ark,
20:47 then evidence of their existence in human history
20:50 should be plentiful.
20:51 But there are many more examples.
20:54 These examples are found in ancient writings, as well as
20:57 works of human art.
20:59 In the temple ruins at Angkor in Cambodia,
21:02 there is a passageway with ancient artwork in the stones.
21:06 The artwork depicts many animals found in the area,
21:09 such as elephants, fish, snakes, and monkeys.
21:14 There are no mythological figures among the architecture.
21:17 So it appears they made carvings of animals
21:20 they saw at the time.
21:22 But an unusual animal stands out among all the rest.
21:27 It's a Stegosaurus-like bas-relief in the stone.
21:31 This temple was erected for a king about 1,000 years ago.
21:36 As far as we know, this ancient culture
21:38 didn't study paleontology.
21:41 Being the other carvings depict what this culture observed
21:44 at that time, the assumption can be
21:46 made that they also saw a live Stegosaurus among them.
21:51 Secular scientists describe them as mythical creatures,
21:54 but they clearly resemble various dinosaur kinds.
21:58 Why not believe that the Bible is true,
22:01 that man and dinosaurs were created on the same day,
22:04 and many of them died during the flood?
22:06 We have learned a lot about dinosaurs
22:08 in the past half-hour.
22:09 We believe the weight of evidence
22:11 demonstrates that they lived on this earth
22:13 recently and not millions of years ago.
22:16 They are buried in sedimentary layers,
22:19 having died in a violent, watery death.
22:22 This evidence alone strongly supports the biblical account
22:26 of the flood.
22:28 The discovery of soft dinosaur tissue
22:30 provides strong evidence for their recent demise.
22:34 There is a battle between two worldviews on dinosaurs.
22:37 The biblical worldview makes much more sense
22:40 from the evidence that we find all over the world.
22:44 This evidence confirms we can trust
22:46 the Bible as an accurate account of history, and so much more.
22:51 Man was created by God in perfection
22:54 but chose to disobey, bringing sin and death into the world.
22:59 Then because of man's continued rebellion,
23:02 a worldwide judgment came by water,
23:04 depositing most of the dinosaur fossils
23:06 we have been looking at.
23:08 The Bible also shares what's going to happen in the future.
23:12 Because of our sin and rebellion against our Creator,
23:15 we are destined to be judged by our Creator.
23:19 No matter how many good things you've done,
23:21 the Bible says that your sin will condemn you to death
23:25 and eternal punishment.
23:27 God is holy and perfect and cannot live in heaven with
23:30 sinful creatures like us.
23:32 In fact, the Bible says we live as enemies
23:35 of God because of our sin.
23:37 But while we were powerless to do anything
23:40 about our situation, God sent his son, Jesus,
23:43 who died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins,
23:47 to take the punishment we deserved,
23:49 and died for our sake.
23:51 But we have to realize that we are sinners
23:54 and in need of salvation.
23:57 If we turn to God, repent of our sin,
24:00 and believe Jesus Christ died on our behalf, then
24:03 we will be made friends with God,
24:05 not by anything we've done, but only by what
24:08 Jesus did on the cross for us.
24:11 Three days after Jesus was on the cross,
24:14 He rose from the dead and later went back
24:16 to His Father in Heaven.
24:18 If we have repented and believed in the work of God
24:22 through Jesus, then we too will rise in the future
24:25 and be with God in heaven.
24:27 Have you realized the depth of your sin,
24:29 repented, and made Him your Lord and Savior?
24:32 We invite you to do this today.
24:35 Awesome Science is a video series produced by
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25:05 We're making a difference by challenging the deceptive
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25:13 Our mission is to provide youth with a firm foundation
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25:32 Please keep up with us as we continue to build new content
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25:39 Thanks for watching this episode of "Awesome Science."
25:41 And remember, science-- it's awesome.
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Revised 2018-03-22