Many scientists believe that dinosaurs went extinct because of an asteroid impact around 66 million years ago. Others, who support the creation model, argue that a global flood caused their extinction. What actually led to the death of the dinosaurs? An impact or a flood? Three scientific clues point to the answer.
Clue 1 – frogs
Frogs present the most striking clue. If the asteroid impact was powerful enough to wipe out large, thick-skinned dinosaurs across the planet, it would have destroyed fragile amphibians like frogs even more easily. The same should have been true for delicate molluscs, yet this was not the case.
Fossilized frogs and mollusks found alongside dinosaur bones look exactly like their modern counterparts.1 Given that frogs absorb toxins through their porous skin and molluscs have gills that are easily blocked by silt, how could they have survived an event strong enough to kill animals far more resilient than they are?
Clue 2 – the impact crater
An impact powerful enough to wipe out all dinosaurs should have left behind a massive circular crater. Most scientists investigating this question identify the area beneath the southern Gulf of Mexico and the northern Yucatán Peninsula as the site of the impact. Others, however, raise valid objections.
First, the subsurface depression in this region is not circular. Second, there is very little evidence of melted rock, despite the fact that an impact of this scale would be expected to produce significant amounts of it.2
If there is no crater that fits the scale of the event described, why should we accept that such an impact took place and caused the extinction of the dinosaurs?
Clue 3 – rock layers
The size and structure of the rock layers that contain dinosaur fossils suggest that an asteroid was not responsible for their extinction. These layers stretch across many thousands of square kilometres. The Lance Formation and the Hell Creek Formation, for example, were laid down at the same time and cover Montana, Wyoming, and parts of other states.
It is not possible for an asteroid impact in Mexico to have deposited such a thick rock layer over such a wide area. An impact would have produced a wedge-shaped deposit, with the sediment becoming thinner closer to the crater. Instead, the layers with fossilised dinosaur bones remain evenly thick across hundreds or even thousands of kilometres.
Asteroid or flood?
Did an asteroid cause the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago? The evidence suggests otherwise. What we find in rock layers across every continent points instead to the rapid and violent burial of dinosaurs in mud. The global flood described in the Bible offers a more plausible explanation for their disappearance from the Earth. According to Genesis 7:15, a small number of dinosaurs survived the flood on the ark, but they later became extinct due to habitat loss and human activity.3
The flood took place around 4,500 years ago, and scientific evidence, as previously discussed, supports the young age of both the rocks and the dinosaur remains. There is no indication that an asteroid played any role in their extinction.
By the way, we recommend reading the articles:
- Did Dinosaurs Live in Alaska?
- Anchiornis – A ‘Transitional’ Creature?
- Why Were Extinct Trees the Most Complex?
- Who Were the Neanderthals?
- Bear Dogs – Gone Forever?
Footnotes
- Hoesch, W.A. and Austin, S.A. (2004) ‘Dinosaur National Monument: Jurassic Park or Jurassic Jumble?’, Acts & Facts, 33(4).
- Clarey, T.L. (2017) ‘Do the Data Support a Large Meteorite Impact at Chicxulub?’, Answers Research Journal, 10, pp. 71–88.
- Thomas, B. (2017) ‘Dinosaurs and Dragon Legends’, Acts & Facts, 46(7), pp. 14–16.
Based on: B. Thomas, Did an asteroid impact kill the dinosaurs?, Acts & Facts, Institute for Creation Research, June 2018, p. 20.
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