Fossilization

Doesn’t it take millions of years for a dinosaur bone to become a fossil?

Just because something is “fossilized” does not mean that it is millions (or even thousands) of years old. When the conditions and materials are right, a bone can become filled with minerals fairly quickly. The main ingredients are:

1. Quick burial
2. Water, in the right amounts
3. Suitable minerals

Conditions during the Flood were ideal for “fossilizing” millions of animals and plants.

Researchers have found that chicken bones and wood can be replaced with minerals in just five to ten years. A big dinosaur bone might take hundreds of years to completely mineralize. It all depends on the burial conditions over the years.

Many dinosaur remains are still not completely turned in to rock. More than half of the fossil is still original bone, not stone! Some even have chemicals from the living animals (proteins and amino acids)! Some fish fossils still have a fishy smell when first uncovered.

Some of the plants buried during the Flood are not fossilized either. In New Jersey, large amounts of wood from trees that were growing at the same time as dinosaurs can be found in the dirt (Cretaceous clay). They are preserved, but not turned to stone at all. In England, fragile plant hairs and tiny details of the plant’s cells can be seen. The plants are not turned into rock. They are just flattened and blackened. Since the Flood happened only about four or five thousand years ago, these types of discoveries are not surprising.

NEXT — Why did God send the flood?

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