Dinosaur Detection, Part I

Today we continue on our quest to solve this mysterious case, of which we are the judge.  So far, we have talked about ichnofossils (trace fossils) and the hints they give us about our case, Wold-Wide-Flood v. Evolution & Billions of Years.  As I mentioned last week, the study of ichnofossils is primarily a focus of invertebrate paleontology, but it can also be applied to vertebrate paleontology, by studying the footprints of vertebrate animals like dinosaurs.

In order to talk about dinosaur footprints, it is necessary to get a basic understanding of how dinosaurs are classified.  Yes,  we all know the dinosaur like T-rex and triceratops, but in dinosaur footprints, sometimes all we can tell is which of the three basic types of dinosaur the footprint belongs to.  Sauropods, the four-legged, long-necked dinosaurs like Apotosaurus, are one of the three types.  Some sauropods were the largest animal to ever walk on earth.  Brontosaurus was considered a sauropod, until some scientists realized that it had the wrong head on it, and was actually and Apotosaurus.  Ornithischians were one of the most diverse groups of dinosaurs.  Two of my top three favorite dinosaurs fall into this group, triceratops and stegosaurus.  The final group, Theropods, includes the infamous Tyrannosaurus rex.

Before we can explore dinosaur footprints, and what they indicate about the Biblical flood and billions of years/evolution, understanding theropods is vital.  Evolutionists believe that theropods, like T-rex and velociraptor evolved into the birds that we have today.  They use fossils like Archeopteryx  as their “evidence”  of a transitional form from dinosaur to birds.  However, all evidence is interpreted based off of our starting ideas, and the thinking process of coming to conclusions.  For example, in the case of Archeopteryx, the teeth do not necessarily indicate that it is a dinosaur because modern day hummingbirds have teeth too.  Archeopteryx was probably an extinct type of bird.  There is a lot more I could go into about Archeopteryx, but feather impressions are not ichnofossils (since they don’t directly indicate the animal’s behavioral habits), so that discussion is for a later date.  Next week, in Part II of this clue, we will go over why ichnofossils are against dinosaurs to birds evolution.