Portions of a fossilized eleven-foot-long snake were discovered encased in sandstone amidst a clutch of sauropod eggs. Other snakes of the same extinct species were found nearby, indicating that the eggs were a likely food source for them. How and when were these remains preserved?

The eggs are believed to be from a type of titanosaur, massive creatures that include a variety of species whose fossils have been found worldwide. Jeff Wilson of the University of Michigan discovered this nesting site in western India. The snake was intertwined among three eggs and one hatchling, which was less than 20 inches long.¹ Wilson and three colleagues published the find in the online scientific journal PLoS Biology.

New Scientist stated that this was a “67-million-year-old hunting scene,”² an evolutionary date derived from “marine microfossils from sequences deposited in the seaway [in central India] and correlating these strata to nearby terrestrial sequences with dinosaur remains,” according to a recent study of the area.³ Thus, the fossils were dated according to the rocks they are in, which were dated by the fossils they contain. As is usual with fossil dating among evolutionists, the circuitous logic is based on a belief in deep time, not strict scientific observation. No sure date exists within the rock itself, and thus its age is subject to wide interpretation. But there are even stronger reasons to doubt this published age, along with evolutionary theories on India’s confusing geologic past.

The fossil snake and dinosaur eggs were found in a layer that is below an immense lava formation called the Deccan Traps. Taking up an estimated 240,000 cubic miles, the vast majority of it was deposited in a single colossal fast-flowing⁴ pulse³ that ushered from a gash in earth’s crust called a “feeder dike.” Moreover, this seems to have occurred during a moment in earth’s history when massive volcanism, along with continent-covering water, was occurring worldwide.

Volcanism at Yellowstone in Wyoming was so violent that related volcanic remains are found across the western U.S. “Even larger flow volumes may exist in the Siberian Traps,… Karoo Province (South Africa), and Newark Supergroup (NE United States).”⁵ Clearly, events like these had nothing to do with long ages of slow and gradual processes.

Nor are they consistent with similar processes that were punctuated by brief but violent “episodes,” since the high energy associated with such gargantuan events would have lessened over such vast time, draining their potential for geologic violence. In other words, how did earth still have energy left over to produce the Deccan Traps after billions of years of activity?⁶

The utterly cataclysmic scale of energy associated with the Genesis Flood, however, is consistent with the massive mantle material, including subterranean water, that broke through earth’s surface at the start of the Flood. The Lord may have been referring to this when He asked Job, “Who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?”⁷

The after-effects of the Flood would have continued for several centuries as continental plates adjusted to the pressure changes caused by water draining off of continents. It is also consistent with the interpretation in New Scientist of the snake and dinosaurs’ demise: “They all died instantly when they were covered by a big pulse of sediment from a nearby hill loosened by a storm.”² Perhaps it was a local pulse associated with the tail end of the storm of all time.

There is yet another reason to doubt the “millions of years” interpretation of these fossils. Supposedly, India detached from Africa 148 million years ago and moved across to Eurasia during a 100-million-year-long journey. But according to a report on the biogeography of the area, “there are virtually no remains of organisms indicating that India was isolated for any substantial time (millions of years). Instead, we find that almost all Indian taxa [fossil kinds] were possessed in common with other continents.”⁸ Although the snake fossil found appears to be unique to India, similar-looking Titanosaur fossils have been found across the world. Where is the real evidence for all that time?

The Catastrophic Plate Tectonics model, though imperfect, accounts both for the evidence that India traveled from Africa to Eurasia, and for the fossil and other evidence that it did so rapidly, as well as for the rapid pulses that formed the Deccan Traps from rents in the earth’s crust.⁹ The dino-cuisine scene appears to have been captured during the last stage of the global Flood, which according to a reliable written account was witnessed by eight survivors only thousands of years ago.

References

1. Wilson, J. A. et al. 2010. Predation upon Hatchling Dinosaurs by a New Snake from the Late Cretaceous of India. PLoS Biology. 8 (3): e1000322.
2. O’Donoghue, J. Dino-eating snake killed in action. New Scientist. Posted on newscientist.com March 2, 2010, accessed March 2, 2010.
3. Keller, G., A. Sahni, and S. Bajpai. 2009. Deccan volcanism, the KT mass extinction and dinosaurs. Journal of Biosciences. 34 (5): 709-728.
4. Snelling, A. A. 2007. The Rapid Ascent of Basalt Magmas. Acts & Facts. 36 (8): 10-11.
5. Austin, S. A. 1998. The Declining Power of Post-Flood Volcanoes. Acts & Facts. 27 (4).
6. Similar questions have been asked regarding solar bodies, like Jupiter’s moon Io. See Coppedge, D. F. 2007. Spewing Hot Rocks on Old Ideas. Acts & Facts. 36 (10): 15.
7. Job 38:8.
8. Briggs, J. C. 1989. The Historic Biogeography of India: Isolation or Contact? Systematic Zoology. 38 (4): 322-332.
9. Austin, S. A. et al. 1994. Catastrophic Plate Tectonics: A Global Flood Model of Earth History. In R. E. Walsh, ed. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism. Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, 609-621.

* Mr. Thomas is Science Writer at the Institute for Creation Research.

Article posted on March 16, 2010.