Another flood dinosaur found in Canada reported in Reuters (Canada) and Fort McMurray Today 25 Mar 2011. Mine workers at an oil sand mine near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada have found the fossil of an Ankylosaur, a rare land dwelling armour plated dinosaur. The fossil was discovered when a machine operator noticed an odd texture and diamond patterns in the rock he was digging. Palaeontologists from the Royal Tyrell Museum, a dinosaur museum in Alberta, have confirmed that it is a fossil dinosaur, and have dated it at 110 million years old. The fossil is still being removed from the mine site, but it seems to be very well preserved in three dimensions, without being flattened. The scientists estimate the dinosaur to be about 5.5 metres (16ft) long and about 2 metres (6ft) wide. The dinosaur experts were surprised to find the fossil of a land dwelling creature in this location as the area is believed to be an ancient sea bed and they expected to find a marine reptile. Donald Henderson, a curator at the Royal Tyrrell Museum commented: “We’ve never found a dinosaur in this location. Because the area was once a sea, most finds are invertebrates such as clams and ammonites.”
Editorial Comment: We can confirm this region is full of marine fossils, as one of our editors has been to this area to do field work and has both seen and collected fossils in this region. Furthermore, there are many other parts of the world where other land dwelling dinosaur fossils are found amongst sea creatures, and this has been known since the earliest finds e.g. the 1874 Stegosaur found in the UK (specimen number 46013) was found in marine sediments, as was Australia’s first and most famous land dwelling dinosaur Muttaburrasaurus which was found in a bed of sea shells. The editor knows that since he did a research project on marine Ammonite shells in the area.
That leads us to the question: what is a land dwelling dinosaur doing being buried with shellfish and other sea creatures? As the animal is well preserved in three dimensions it had to be rapidly and deeply buried. If it had just died and fallen into the sea it would have decayed and fallen apart and/or been scavenged. Perhaps a better explanation is that it was caught up in a tsunami-like flood that was deeper than the the dinosaur was tall, then swept over land and out to sea where it was deposited along with any other swept up land or sea creatures and sediment. It reminds us of how much caution we must exercise when museum guides tell the children that dinosaurs lived in an area, when all that is really known about them is that they are dead in that area! What we have said so often in the past is true again in this case – this fossil evidence is not the history of life on earth but it is the record of catastrophic flood based death on earth (Ref. reptiles, palaeontology, catastrophism)
Evidence News 30 March 2011