Transcontinental dinosaur puzzle, reported on BBC News, 2 June 2004. A team of palaeontologists led by Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago have been excavating a patch of ground in the Sahara desert “no bigger than a football pitch” and have “dug up more dinosaurs from the late Cretaceous period than the total found in Africa before.” Among their findings was a dinosaur named “Rugops” –a type of dinosaur previously found in South America, Madagascar and India, but not on mainland Africa. The newly discovered Rugops is believed to have lived 95 million years ago, but Africa and South America are believed to have parted ways 120 million years ago, according to current continent drift theories. Prof Sereno suggests that narrow land bridges connected the two continents 95 million years ago. He added: “You cannot have very close counterparts on the other continents unless there was traffic.”
Editorial Comment: Finding the same kind of dinosaur on different continents is no problem for Biblical history. In Genesis 1:9 we read there was originally one ocean and one land mass and a much more uniform climate. Therefore animals would not have been restricted to one small part of the earth as they are today. During Noah’s flood many animals were buried in sediments which later became rock layers in the new continents that formed during and after the flood. (Ref. dinosaurs, continents, fossils)