Explore
Also Available in:

Feedback archiveFeedback 2022

Dicynodonts and ‘out-of-place’ fossils

Markus B from Germany raises an interesting question about the article The giant that shouldn’t be: This huge dicynodont means evolutionary history needs revising—again! by Phil Robinson. He also provides information that reinforces the point of out-of-place fossils (according to evolutionary reasoning). Dr Jonathan Sarfati replies.

dicynodont
Light gray bones represent missing elements. Credit: Sulej and Niedźwiedzki.

Could Lisowicia bojani have been a giant mammal, and not a reptile? (Dicynodonts are regarded as reptile mammal progenitors by the evolutionists.) And is it possible, that it lived in the Cretaceous and not in the Plio-Pleistocene? Is it possible that the evolutionists wrongly assign the Dicynodonts to the Plio-Pleistocene, as one Wikipedia article suggests):

… in 2019 Knutsen and Oerlemans considered this fossil to be of Plio-Pleistocene [Upper Cenozoic] age …1

The reason why I am asking is, because I believe that God created giant mammals prior to the flood and that we therefore should find such fossils in flood sediments like the Cretaceous.

Thank you already in advance for your reply and rich blessings for your ministry!

The article in question was pointing out that evolutionists have a massive problem with giant mammal-like reptiles appearing so ‘early’ by their own dating system, i.e. late Triassic. By this time, dinosaurs were already supposed to have evolved. Therefore, according to the reasoning, they would have outcompeted any mammal or mammal-like reptile except for the tiny ones.

Actually, CMI pointed out long ago that the mammal-like reptiles do not show an evolutionary progression. This includes the alleged evolution of mammalian ear bones from reptilian jawbones. But Lisowicia bojani is an even more blatant problem, so the article was most important and useful. We have also pointed out that fossils document the fact that mammals sometimes ate dinosaurs, so the ‘outcompetition’ thesis is dubious.

Triassic, Cretaceous, Pliocene, and Pleistocene are evolutionary dating terms when referring to time, but I have no problem using them as descriptions of rock strata. Dr Walker’s Geology Transformation Tool provides the biblically correct assignments of these rock layers related to stages of the Flood.

Geology-transformation-diagram
Geological transformation tool

The paper2 you cite discusses fossils discovered in Australia in 1914–15, In 2003, they were identified as a dicynodont, and dated to “Early Cretaceous, ca. 110 Myr after the supposed extinction of dicynodonts in the Late Triassic.”3 That is, it would be almost like finding a living dinosaur or the proverbial Precambrian rabbit. Thus Ref. 2 reassesses those fossils as a late Cenozoic large mammal, possibly a giant marsupial similar to Diprotodon.

We agree that God created large mammals before the Flood, on Day 6 for land and Day 5 for sea. The issue is that CMI thinks that the Flood/Post-Flood boundary is much higher than the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, the supposed dinosaur mass extinction. So even Pliocene fossils would be late recessive-stage Flood.

Published: 21 May 2022

References and notes

  1. Dicynodont, Wikipedia. Return to text.
  2. Knudsen, E.M. and Oerlemans, E., The last dicynodont? Re-assessing the taxonomic and temporal relationships of a contentious Australian fossil, Gondwana Research 77:184–203, Jan 2020 | 10.1016/j.gr.2019.07.011. Return to text.
  3. Thulborn, T. and Turner, S., The last dicynodont: an Australian Cretaceous relict, Proc. Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 270(1518):985–993, 7 May 2003 | doi:10.1098/rspb.2002.2296. Return to text.

Helpful Resources

Biblical Geology 101
by Michael J Oard, Robert Carter
US $20.00
Soft cover
How Noah's Flood Shaped Our Earth
by Michael J Oard, John K Reed
US $17.00
Soft cover
Flood Fossils
by Vance Nelson
US $33.00
Hard cover