Wood

Wood-eating Dinosaurs Provide No Support for the “Briefly Exposed Diluvial Sediments” (BEDS) Flood Geology Scenario in Oard (2011)

Kevin R. Henke, Ph.D.

December 15, 2016

Introduction

As part of their efforts to defend their interpretations of the Bible, young-Earth creationists (YECs) rely on Flood geology, which claims that all or almost all of the sedimentary rock record formed about 4,500 years ago during a worldwide Flood as described in Genesis 6-9 of the Bible (e.g., Snelling 2009a, pp. 613, 862, 898). The presence of bones, eggs, nests, tracks, and other dinosaur remains in the middle of the sedimentary rock record creates insurmountable problems for YECs, which simply cannot be dismissed as “misinterpretations.” YECs must explain how dinosaurs could have been walking around, feeding, laying eggs and engaging in other life activities in the middle of a worldwide Flood and why we have not been able to find any evidence of dinosaur remains in the often very thick underlying Paleozoic sedimentary rocks. In response to some of these challenges, Oard (2011) developed the Briefly Exposed Diluvial Sediments (BEDS) scenario.

Woody Materials in Dinosaur Dung

Oard (2011, pp. 80-81, 136) cites Chin (2007) and Carpenter (1992, p. 91) and states that dinosaur coprolites (waste) contain more woody materials than expected. Chin (2007) investigated woody ornithischian dinosaur coprolites from the Late Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation in northwestern Montana. The coprolites were large, frequently burrowed by dung beetles, and may have come from Maiasaura hadrosaurids (Chin 2007, pp. 555-557). Maiasaura nests and the fossils of both juveniles and adults are common in the Formation (Chin 2007, pp. 555-556). An absence of twig fragments from the coprolites indicates that ingestion of the woody materials was intentional (Chin 2007, p. 554).

Because fresh wood would have low nutritional value, Oard (2011, pp. 81, 122, 136) suggests that the dinosaurs desperately ate wood as their “last meals” because they were starving during Noah’s Flood and there was a lack of other, more nutritious plants on floating mats or otherwise available to them. However, even if Oard (2011) were right about starving dinosaurs being forced to eat wood, there are other conditions completely unrelated to Noah’s Flood, such as droughts, that would more reasonably explain poor dinosaur diets.

Like the Morrison Formation, several pieces of evidence indicate that the depositional climate of the Two Medicine Formation was semiarid and incompatible with Noah’s Flood, which include: caliche nodules and horizons, the presence of rhizoconcretions, oxidized sediments and the absence of carbonaceous plant remains (Chin 2007, pp. 555-556). Furthermore, growth interruptions in silicified conifer wood in the lower portion of the Two Medicine Formation indicates irregular precipitation and periodic droughts (Chin 2007, p. 556; Falcon-Lang 2003).

When citing Chin (2007), Oard (2011, p. 81) omits important information from this article that undermines his BEDS Flood geology agenda. The condition of the woody materials in the coprolites indicates that the materials were rotten when eaten (Chin 2007, pp. 563-565). Oard (2011, pp. 80-81, 122, 136) fails to mention that rotten wood would contain fungi, degraded wood, beetles and other nutritious materials. Considering that dung beetle activity in the coprolites occurred before burial and during the rainy season when other vegetation was probably available, contrary to Oard (2011, pp. 81, 122, 136), consumption of rotten wood was not a food source of last resort for these dinosaurs (Chin 2007, p. 564). More recently, Vavrek et al. (2014, pp. 5-6) argues that, like deer, Arctic hadrosaurids may have eaten a lot of woody plants during the winter and woody plant materials may have been part of their normal diet. Considering the condition and nutritional value of the wood when it was eaten by the dinosaurs, there is simply no reason to invoke Noah’s Flood to explain woody dinosaur coprolites.

References

Carpenter, K. 1992. “Behavior of Hadrosaurs as Interpreted from Footprints in the ‘Mesaverde’ Group (Campanian) of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming,” Contributions to Geology, University of Wyoming, v. 29, n. 2, pp. 81-96.

Chin, K. 2007. “The Paleobiological Implications of Herbivorous Dinosaur Coprolites from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of Montana: Why Eat Wood?”, Palaios, v. 22, pp. 554-566.

Falcon-Lang, H.J. 2003. “Growth Interuptions in Silicified Conifer Woods from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation, Montana, USA: Implications for Palaeoclimate and Dinosaur Palaeoecology”, Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology, v. 199, pp. 299-314.

Oard, M.J. 2011. Dinosaur Challenges and Mysteries: How the Genesis Flood makes Sense of Dinosaur Evidence including Tracks, Nests, Eggs, and Scavenged Bones, Creation Book Publishers: Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 175pp.

Snelling, A.A. 2009a. Earth’s Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation & The Flood: Volumes 1 and 2, Institute for Creation Research: Dallas, TX, USA, 1102 pp.

Vavrek, M.J., L.V. Hills, and P.J. Currie. 2014. “A Hadrosaurid (Dinosauria: Ornithischia) from the Late Cretaceous (Campanian) Kanguk Formation of Axel Hieberg Island, Nunavut, Canada, and Its Ecological and Geographical Implications”, Arctic, v. 67, n. 1, pp. 1-9.