Nodosaur

In 2011, an Alberta oil sands worker unknowingly uncovered one of the world’s best-preserved dinosaurs near Fort McMurray.

It took about six years of painstaking preliminary work but when the Nodosaur was finally unveiled in 2017, there was such excellent preservation that the skin, skin pigments, and even stomach contents were preserved. One expert even commented that it was so well preserved “it might have been walking around a couple of weeks ago.”¹ In 2020, the stomach contents were analysed, and its last meal of leaf fragments and other plants were also exquisitely preserved.

The amazing part is how the Nodosaur was killed and preserved. The official story is that this Nodosaur died when it was swept away by a flood, and its corpse was somehow untouched as it floated to the middle of a sea, and then gently sank into fine mud/sediment where it rested, was buried, and remained undisturbed for 100 million years.

It is hard to believe that during that whole process, the Nodosaur remained untouched by scavengers or decomposition, but that is the “official” story.²

This preservation process rarely, if ever, occurs today, because it requires two unique (and rarely occurring) circumstances: First, the corpse must remain untouched, and second, the intact corpse needs to be buried completely and quickly to protect the specimen.

I know what you’re thinking. Having one is difficult enough but having both must be incredibly rare.

How, then, can we explain the multiple sites around the world containing thousands of exceptionally preserved fossils? They are so common that they have a name: Lagerstätten. There is even one in Field, BC called the Burgess Shale which contains over 60,000 unique fossils.

One account in the Bible can easily explain these mass rapid burials.  The flood of Noah fulfills our unique criteria, causing millions upon millions of animals like the Nodosaur to be swept out to sea and quickly buried by sediments.

1. Westmass, R. “This “muffified” dinosaur is almost perfectly preserved”, Discovery.com, Discovery, 1 Aug, 2019, https://www.discovery.com/exploration/mummified-dinosaur-perfectly-preserved. Accessed Feb 22, 2022.
2. “Dinosaur Cold Case.”, The Nature of Things, Directed by Simon Scheider, Season 59, Episode 10, Omnifilm Entertainment, Smithsonian Channel, Canada Media Fund, 10 Jan 2020.