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January,
1970
man scientists suggested that the animals
had been overwhelmed by a
natmal
cata.strophe" (The Day of the Dinosaltr,
L.
Sprague de Camp and Catherine
Crook de Camp, p. 250).
Why, of course !
That is the obvious explanation. Here
is another example of VIOLENT burial.
When you find fossils the world over -
in Africa, in North America, in Europe
- all looking as though they had been
"overwhelmed by a catastrophe," that is
the logical conclusion.
There was a WORLDWIDE CATAS–
TROPHE that buried these dragons of the
ancient past and preserved them as a
record of what occurred in those distant
times. Sudden death and immediate bur–
ial was the fate of that ancient world.
Dinosaurs in Belgium
Back in 1878 a remarkable concen–
tration of
lg11anodon
(I-gwan-o-don)
skeletons were discovered one thousand
feet below the ground in a Belgian coal
mine.
Coal miners in the coal town of Ber–
nissart were developing a new gallery at
the 1,046-foot depth. Suddenly the
miners hit upon large fossil bones.
A second tunnel was driven parallel
to the first at 1,157 feet. Again, bones
were struck.
"Thus it could be seen that the FOS–
SIL BONEYARD was evidently one of
gi–
gantic proportions,
especially notable
because of its vertical extension through
more than a hundred feet of rock"
(Men and Dinosmtrs,
Edwin Colbert,
p.
58) .
The bones were not contained within
the regular beds of the coa! seams -
but were deposited in UNstratified clays
that cut
thro11gh
the layered coal. lt ap–
peared that a deep pit or fissure had ex–
tended through the coal-bearing layers.
How is the profusion of bones
ex–
plained?
"Careful work ... would
SEEM
to
in–
dicate
that within the coal mine of Ber–
nissart there was preserved an ancient
ravine - a narrow, deep gully ... into
which, within a comparatively short
span of years, many iguanodons had
slipped and fallen and died, to be bur–
ied in deep deposits of mud brought in
by
flooding waters
after a
HEAVY
The
PLAIN TRUTII
RAIN" (Men and Dinosattrs,
Edwin
Colbert, p. 58) .
This, of course, is often the ex–
planation. But even then after "careful
work" it only
seemed
like a
possible
in–
dication that these iguanodons had
slipped and fallen.
But here we have heavy rains men–
tioned, flooding waters, deposits of
mud. Is it not more logical to have a
sudden inundation bury these hapless
dinosaurs? Do we not here have another
positive proof of sorne catastrophe
obliterating the dinosaurs?
Digging for Eggs
In 1922, a convoy of automobiles was
making its way across the desert plains
ANCIENT EGGS-
These eggs of the díno–
saur, Protoceratops, were díscovered ín
Ouler Mongolía. Paleantalogisls puzzle
oboul how lhey were preserved.
of Outer Mongolia. They stopped at the
sudden sight of spectacular diffs that
shot up from the desert floor.
The cars were filled with scientists
sent by the American Museum of Natu–
ral History. Part of the Central Asiatic
Expeditions, these men were engaged in
a large natural history survey of the
Gobi Desert.
This 1922 American Museum Ex-
27
pedition made an electrifying discovery
of more than seventy unhatched dino–
saur eggs! Also, thousands of fragments
of eggshells were discovered. This in
addition to skeletons that represent all
stages of growth from newly batched
baby dinosaurs to full grown adults.
Since then, Russian and Chinese work–
ers have found more of tbe eight-inch–
long eggs.
So remarkable was this series of dino–
saur eggs, that a few of them even show
traces of EMBRYONJC BONE! Most, how–
ever, were completely Jilled with sand.
The Puzzle of Fossil Eggs
Dinosaur eggs have also been dis–
covered in Mongolia, France, Montana,
Courtesy
American
Museum
ol Noturol
Hittory
and Brazil. In Portugal an egg was dis–
covered
in
rocks classified by geologists
as Jurassic along with bones of dino–
saurs. Others have been unearthed in
East Africa.
But how, you might ask, could
FULLY PRESERVED dinosaur eggs be dis–
covered the world over?
If
you are puz–
zled by this, so are the paleontologists.
"Sorne of the dinosaur eggs never
hatched. What prevented their devel–
opment as they lay buried in their sandy
crypts is a
PUZZLE,
all we know is that