You must all have heard about the Great Flood that swept across the earth in ancient times. Many people believe that thousands of animals that were swept away by the flood eventually became fossils. It is true that conditions during the flood were ideal for ‘fossilizing’ millions of animals, plants, and even dinosaurs. In fact, thousands of dinosaur bones can be found where they were washed together by violent flood waters and buried under mud, sand and rock. Many of the animals were torn apart, and their bones broken and jumbled-up. The mud and sands hardened like concrete to form the great layers of fossil rocks we find today.Quick flood burial would be the only way that so many dinosaurs and other things could have become fossilized in the way scientists have found them. Animals and plants will fossilize only if they are buried quickly and deeply – before predators, decay, and weather destroy them. Most scientists do not support this theory, but there are some scientists today who are seeking evidence to support it.
Fossil Hunter
Johann Jakob Scheuchzer was a Swiss naturalist and fossil hunter. He believed that the Great Flood created all sedimentary rocks and fossils. In 1725, he examined what he believed were the fossilized human remains of a victim of the Deluge. However, it was actually the fossil of a giant salamander. Scheuchzer was responsible for laying the groundwork for the science of fossils.
