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January, l970
THE EVIDENCE OF CATASTROPHE
-In·
side the Dinosour Quorry Visitar Cenler in
Dinosour Notionol Monument, Utoh. The
quorry foce - looded with d inosour bones
- ocluolly forms !he norlh woll of lhe
building. Over 300 dinosour skeletons were
removed from 1909 lo 1924. This locotion
is merely one of many - oll showing
definile signs of quick buriel under
co lostrophic cond itions.
Ambossodor
Col/e¡¡e
Photo
curring today is a vital pillar in the
structure of modero geology.
But, have all geologic processes con·
tinued at the same rate? Is this concept
t rue?
WHY
have worldwide catastrophes
been rejected by scien6sts?
WHY
should
the "obvious and all too easy ex–
planation" of a universal catastrophc
have
N O PLACE
in modern science?
The plain and obvious answer is that
evolution needs time - v
AST
amounts
of time - to make its theory scem
tenable.
Scientists realize that a major catas–
trophe could do in a few days or weeks
what natural processes might require
many thousands or even millions of
years to accomplish. A catastrophe enor–
mously speeds up and goes far beyond
thc pace of the natural processes of ero–
sien and burial. That is why any ca–
tastrophic approach is shunned and
avoided by scientists who have assumed
that all life is due to a slow evolutionary
process.
"We may
asmme,n
Nicholas Hotton,
a paleontologist tells us, "that it [the
extinction
J
resulted from reasonably
well-understood processes of climatic
change and biological competition ...
we are fairly sure that it was gradual,
NOT CATASTROPHIC"
(Dinosam·s,
Nicholas Hotton III, p. 174).
Yet paleontologists acknowledge that
other means could not destroy these
creatures. They admit that dimatic
change, cpidemics, change of food sup·
p ly and othcr such ideas cannot possibly
account for the worldwide extinction of
land, air, and sea life at the close of the
Age of Reptiles.
lf
a catastrophe is to be involved to
explain the extinction of the dinosaurs
- it would have to be a
WORLDW!DE
occurreoce!
European paleontologist Bjorn Kur–
tén admits this precise point:
"The catastrophe would have had to
be almost
UNIVERSAL IN PROPORTIONS
as we know that dinosaurs wcre present
in most or all continents"
(The Age of
Dinosaurs,
Bjorn Kurtén, p.
236).
Worldwide catastrophc seems to be
the only logical path to pursue in look–
ing for an explaoation for this mys·
terious extinction.
Yet, the typical paleontologist simply
does not want to facc this possibility.
Catastrophes - Logical
Explanations
" lt seems logical," admits Colbert,
' 'to look for some
great change
that
took place ... thereby bringing to an
end the multitudes of dinosaurs and
other reptiles that then populated the
earth.
"This is not to imply that there was
of necessity a great
WORLDWIDE CATAS·
TROPHE,
which by the violence of its
expression suddenly wiped out the di–
nosaurs. Catastrophes are the mainstays
of people who havc vcry little knowl–
edge of the natural world, for them the
invocation of a catastrophe is an
easy
way
to explain great events"
(Dino–
sa;lt·s,
Edwin Colbert, p.
253).
Yet, if a worldwide catastrophe
ex–
plaim
what happened, why
NOT
pos–
tulate- and prove it? What is wrong
with an easy
oc
simple explanation?
After all, paleontologists have been
struggling for an answer
to
this "great
dying" for many decades.
Keep Admissions in Mind
"So far no logical way has be<:n
found to connect the known cause
of
the extinction of individual species with
these worldwide Great Deaths. Some
other cause,
opuating on a WORLD–
JIVIDE basis,
wouJd seem to be called
for' '
(The Day of the Dinosa11r,
L.
Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook
de Camp, pp. 200, 201).
How can we solve this puzzle of di–
nosaur extinction? First, we must look
for a
u•orldwide
cause. Second, that
cause must be so catastrophic that no
dinosaur any place on earth could sur–
vive. The evidence in this mystery is thc
fossil record.
Dinosaur H unting
in New Mexico
Let's takc a few examples of wherc
dinosaur bones have been found and sec
how catastrophic their burial really was.
In L947, an expedition from the
American Museum of Natural History
discovered an amazing concentration of
Coelophysis
dinosaur bones in north–
western New Mexico.
The explorers began to probe a cer–
tain section of land with scratchers and
awls, the usual method of preliminary
investigation of a possible bone site. It