Briefly Exposed Diluvial Sediments (BEDS)

A basic question that must be answered is: Why were billions of dinosaur tracks preserved as fossils, yet today we do not see any process that could result in the preservation of even a few footprints? The present is obviously not the key to the past. Something big happened that resulted in billions of dinosaur footprints around the world being preserved as fossils.

is that dinosaurs walked on a lake shore where an annual flood buried and preserved their footprints. Do we see that happening anywhere today? No./p>

The Nile Delta region (Egypt) is a hot dry area famous for flooding annually, bringing new soil and resulting in conditions that are some of the best in the world for farming. This has been going on for thousands of years. Yet no footprints (or bones) are preserved as a result of these annual floods.

Maybe it takes a lake or inland sea to preserve footprints as fossils. Evolution-based thinking theorizes that the location where our tracks came from (the Connecticut River Valley) had an arid climate with an annual rainy season that produced temporary lakes. Dinosaurs left footprints on the shore of a lake and that resulted in the fossilized footprints we find today.

In the American west the same thing supposedly happened. Dinosaurs walked along the western shore of an inland sea leaving footprints that fossilized.

Today there are lakes in deserts. There are lakes in locations with rainy monsoon seasons and dry seasons. Hudson's Bay is an inland sea. But no fossils are produced on the shores of any of these. HOWEVER, someone might say, the right type of inland seas only form during periods of high sea levels, creating inland seas, that have only existed in the past. That doesn't help. The thinking on sea levels is that sea levels were low during the early Jurassic when many millions of dinosaur tracks where made. Something very different was happening. And it was very big (worldwide).

The bottom line is, all of these explanations fail to describe conditions needed for footprint formation and preservation, as we'll in the next few stops on our tour.

Briefly Exposed Deluvial Sediments

All of the suggestions for what might have happened ignore they only record we have of that time period. The Bible. In Genesis chapter 1 the Bible records a world-wide, year-long flood as a historical event. Would such a global flood result in the conditions needed to produce fossil dinosaur footprints? Let's find out.

Some people think of Noah's Flood as being similar to filling a bathtub with water. Basically a slow and steady rising water level. However, that's not realistic.

Michael Oard has developed a theory that seems realistic. It's called Briefly Exposed Deluvial Sediments, or simply BEDS. It describes a catastrophic event, driven by the fountains of the deep opening, volcanoes, and earthquakes. BEDS postulates that, because of variations in the earth's surface and the varying geological energy released in different locations, there were local places that were submerged, covered by sediment, and then they re-emerged for a short time. He writes, "All the dinosaur data can be explained by their final hours or days being spent on the freshly laid-and-then-exposed flat Flood sediments. Horizontal beds of wet, unlithified (still soft) sediment would have been ideal for the preservation of tracks, as they were uncovered by a local, temporary drop in relative sea level."*

Solid Ground To Stand Upon

Imagine a global flood. The water is saturated with sediment. Locally the water levels are going up and down with the tides, storm waves, water rising and falling with the movement of the earth's crust, and tsunamis. You are treading water, the water level is dropping, and your feet touch bottom. The water goes down further and you are standing on a fresh layer of sediment! (First illustration above, showing an ornithopod in green, a theropod in brown, and a gray sauropod.) Ahhh, a chance to rest... and this provides an opportunity to lay your eggs.

Maybe in a few hours, possibly in a day or so, the water rises again and more sediment is deposited. (Illustration directly above.) You are able to keep your head above water, but some of the smaller dinosaurs (juveniles) are too short. They float for awhile, but cannot stay afloat long enough. So they drown. Footprints and eggs are buried in new layers of sediment.

The Water Level Drops Again

Once again the water level decreases. It does not go down as far as before, but there is a new layer of sediment and in a short while your feet are on solid ground. You are standing on a widespread, flat plain of dense mud that goes as far as the eye can see. This is fresh sediment, there's no vegetation. Just mud that goes on and on.

Or maybe the water level does not go down all the way, but your feet are touching the ground. You are only in a foot or less of water. The wind blown water is moving creating ripples in the sediment. Both your footsteps and the ripples are quickly buried. Over a few hours, or maybe a day or so, the water rises and falls by several feet, continually depositing sediment. A few times the water level even drops far enough so that land appears, but soon water slowly flows across the surface once again, bringing more sediment.

This scenario not only produces the conditions that would result in the preservation and fossilization of dinosaur footprints, it describes the footprint patterns we see. Dinosaur footprints show they were walking, not running. And they are not going in any specific direction. They appear to be moving slowly in random directions. Exactly what you'd expect to see with dinosaurs on a flat mud plain with no reason to go in any particular direction.

This describes the conditions during a global flood, the type of flood described in the Bible. BEDS is the only theory that provides a reasonable explanation for the evidence we see.

Next - The Track Evidence   Go Deeper - Ten Questions

* Quote from: Michael J. Oard, Dinosaur Challenges and Mysteries, Creation Book Publishers, 2011, page 115

BEDS Illustrations used with permission from Michael Oard