Young Earth Creationism is usually paired with some form of flood geology–the notion that Noah’s flood was a global disaster which can account for most, if not all, of the fossil record and stratification of rocks. There are many problems with such a scenario, but for now I want to focus on one: dinosaur eggs.
The Problem Stated
Abstractly, dinosaur eggs aren’t really a problem: they could have been washed away in a global flood or rapidly covered by sediment, thus burying them and having them ready to begin fossilization. Problem solved, right?
As usual, though, the fossil record doesn’t align with such a simple explanation. I was reading Giants of the Lost World, a book by Donald R. Prothero about the history of several huge species that once inhabited South America, and came upon an intriguing passage about a specific find of dinosaur eggs. This find is called, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, “Auca Mahuevo” (to make a reference to contracting the spanish words for “more eggs”). Situated in a region called Auca Mahuida in Argentina near an extinct volcano, the site has revealed an abundance of fossilized dinosaur eggs, including several spectacular finds in which the embryo can be seen inside the egg.
The fossil site is one in which clutches of eggs–between 15-34 eggs in each–were laid in clumps that suggest sauropod nesting sites. There were few crushed eggs, which “suggest[ed] that the site had been protected by the mothers guarding the perimeter but not walking among the eggs once they had been laid…” (33). But here’s where it gets especially interesting for the topic at hand:
The remarkable preservation of the eggs was due to the fact that large flash floods had buried the eggs–and had done so many times, because there were multiple egg layers in the rocks, covering a total thickness of 25 meters (75 ft). (33)
To say that this offers an enormous problem for a global flood scenario as the explanation for all of these eggs is an understatement. This site is evidence that there were multiple periods in which a group of sauropods came to an area, nested, laid eggs, some flash flood occurred that buried them in mud or other sediment, and then the sauropods laid more eggs at a later time in the same area, only to have it happen again. The young earth creationist scenario insists that rapid flooding is required for fossilization, and that is what occurred here, but it occurred at several distinct times, in layers upon layers of eggs.
Possible Young Earth Explanations and More Problems
One possible counter to this is for the young earth creationist (YEC) to assert that these eggs were simply all jumbled together from a single or several sites in the chaos of the flood waters, tossed with mud and left to fossilize. But the lack of crushed eggs, uniformity of species, and organization of the nests all work against such a scenario. If the flood was as turbulent as many flood geology scenarios suggest, how would the eggs have ended up in nests at all? Indeed, if the explanation is that they got jumbled together in the wet silt of the floodwaters, how could the structures of the nests have been preserved on multiple layers? And again, if these eggs just happened to get tossed together, why aren’t they cracked or smashed–how do they still have embryos inside?
Some young earth scenarios include dinosaurs fleeing the rising flood waters only to finally stop to lay eggs in a rush, only to flee on. But this site does not allow for such an explanation, as it shows multiple distinct nesting periods that were covered up over time. The YEC may counter by saying that multiple different dinosaurs fled past the area and just happened to lay their eggs on this site after mud and rain had covered the previous nests, but this doesn’t account for the lack of trampled eggs and the care in which they were organized, as above, suggesting a perimeter being guarded by parents.
Fossil beds like this present an enormous problem for a young earth creationist scenario that relies on the flood to explain the fossil evidence. Time and again, those scenarios fail to account for the actual findings in the field and amount to nothing more than implausible scenarios requiring miracles unrecorded in the Bible to have occurred.
What options are there in the origins debate? – A Taxonomy of Christian Origins Positions– I clarify the breadth of options available for Christians who want to interact on various levels with models of origins. I think this post is extremely important because it gives readers a chance to see the various positions explained briefly.
What is the relationship between Christianity and science?- An Overview of 4 Views– How should the Christian faith interact with science? Do they interact at all? I survey 4 major views on these and other questions.
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