Fossil Graveyards

Whitcomb, John C. Jr., and Henry M. Morris.  The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and Its Scientific Implications.  Presbyterian and Reformed, Philadelphia.  1961.  The book that founded modern young-earth flood geology, by a theologian and a hydraulic engineer.  Its chapter on modern geology and the Deluge offers fossil graveyards as phenomena present-day processes cannot explain, and gives the Karoo figure second-hand from Newell.

1. 1a.

   Page 161:  “To attempt to account for these vast graveyards in terms of present-day processes and events, except via the most extreme and unscientific extrapolation, is absolutely impossible!” ↩ ↩

2. 1b.

   Page 161:  “the La Brea Pits in Los Angeles, which have yielded tens of thousands of specimens of all kinds of living and extinct animals (each of which, by the unbelievable uniformitarian explanation, fell into this sticky graveyard by accident—one at a time! )”. ↩

3. 1c.

   Page 160:  “Robert Broom, the South African paleontologist, estimated that there are eight hundred thousand million skeletons of vertebrate animals in the Karroo formation.”  A block quotation of Norman D. Newell, "Adequacy of the fossil record," Journal of Paleontology 33 (1959), p. 492.  Newell gave no reference to Broom. ↩

4. 1d.

   Page 161:  “This rock slab was taken from the well-known “bone bed” at Agate Springs, Nebraska, a stratum in which thousands of bones of fossil mammals have been found. The bone layer runs horizontally for a large distance in the limestone hill, and has evidently been water-laid.”  A figure caption. ↩

Brand, Leonard R. et al.  “Fossil whale preservation implies high diatom accumulation rate in the Miocene–Pliocene Pisco Formation of Peru.”  Geology 32(2):165–168.  Feb 2004.  A field survey by a Loma Linda University and Geoscience Research Institute team, young-earth creationists publishing original work in the Geological Society of America's flagship journal.  They mapped 346 fossil whales on one hill at Cerro Blanco and argued from their preservation that each was buried within weeks to months, so the diatomite must have accumulated far faster than in modern seas.

1. 2a.

   Page 165:  “The 346 whales within ∼1.5 km2 of surveyed surface were not buried as an event, but were distributed uninterrupted through an 80-m-thick sedimentary section.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 2b.

   Page 165:  “a diatomaceous, tuffaceous deposit 200–1000 m thick that was deposited in shallow bays over a span of 10–12 m.y.” ↩

3. 2c.

   Page 166:  “The whales occur in large numbers, 30–300 individuals per square kilometer of surface exposure”.  “In all cases the whale bones are well preserved; they show no evidence of corrosion, boring by invertebrates, or other postmortem damage.” ↩

4. 2d.

   Page 166:  “This process strips a whale skeleton within a maximum of a few years.” ↩

5. 2e.

   Page 166:  “Whales are not concentrated in specific stratigraphic levels, but are distributed throughout the diatomaceous sediment”. ↩

6. 2f.

   Page 167:  “The most viable explanation for whale preservation seems to be rapid burial, fast enough to cover whales 5–13 m long and ∼50 cm thick within a few weeks or months”.  “Such burial requires diatom accumulation rates at least three to four orders of magnitude faster than is usual in the ocean today—centimeters per week or month, rather than centimeters per thousand years.” ↩ ↩

7. 2g.

   Page 168:  “very high diatom accumulation rates of centimeters to meters per year.”  Page 165:  “In a shallow bay on the New England coast, marine snow accumulated, largely by lateral advection, at a mean rate of 10 cm/yr”. ↩ ↩

Eberth, David A. et al.  “A centrosaurine mega-bonebed from the Upper Cretaceous of southern Alberta: implications for behavior and death events.”  New Perspectives on Horned Dinosaurs: The Royal Tyrrell Museum Ceratopsian Symposium, 495–508.  Indiana University Press, Bloomington.  Edited by Michael J. Ryan, Brenda J. Chinnery-Allgeier and David A. Eberth.  2010.  A field study of fourteen Centrosaurus bonebeds near Hilda, Alberta, which the authors trace in one mudstone layer and treat as a single drowning event, with estimates of area and head count and a reading of the bones' exposure history.

1. 3a.

   Page 496:  ““Hilda,” 80 km to the southeast along the South Saskatchewan River”.  Page 495:  “at least 14 discrete monodominant Centrosaurus apertus bonebeds that occur in a single, organic-rich mudstone bed deposited in a coastal-plain interfluve.”  “covering an estimated area of 2.3 km2 and containing a cumulative minimum number of individuals (MNI) estimated to be in the very low thousands.” ↩

2. 3b.

   Page 495:  “We infer that formation of the Hilda mega-bonebed was initiated as more than one thousand gregarious ceratopsians, and other large terrestrial vertebrates, drowned during a major coastal-plain flooding event.” ↩

3. 3c.

   Page 495:  “Exposed skeletons experienced large degrees of disarticulation and component elements were subject to breakage, varying amounts of abrasion, and rare tooth scarring as a result of month-to-multiyear exposure times, high rates of soft tissue rotting, and reworking due to scavenging and trampling.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

4. 3d.

   Page 500:  “Throughout its lateral extent, the host bed contains abundant fragments of coal, carbonaceous plant, and wood debris, and vertically to horizontally oriented fine root traces.” ↩

5. 3e.

   Page 504:  “were deposited across a vast and wet alluvial-coastal lowland that was subjected to seasonal-storm-induced flooding events.” ↩ ↩

Snelling, Andrew A.  Earth's Catastrophic Past: Geology, Creation and the Flood.  Institute for Creation Research, Dallas.  2009.  The fullest technical statement of young-earth flood geology, in two volumes, by a geologist with a PhD from the University of Sydney.  Chapters 69 to 72 survey fossil graveyards;  chapter 115 treats diatomite and the Pisco whales.

1. 4a.

   Page 537:  “Great “graveyards” of organisms buried together undergoing fossilization and preservation are not found in the world today. However, this is exactly what must have happened in the past”. ↩

2. 4b.

   Pages 575–576:  “Thus, while fossil graveyards are usually only of local to regional extent, though still requiring catastrophic and rapid transport and burial of sediments and organisms, the recognition of “mass extinction” on a global scale in the geologic record extends the evidence for catastrophic transport and deposition of sediments and organisms to a global scale.” ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 4c.

   Page 930:  “Within the Peruvian Pisco Formation, 346 fossilized baleen whales 5 to 13 meters long have been found in a 1.5 square kilometer area of exposed outcrop.”  “Thus the evidence is totally consistent with the catastrophic formation of these diatomite beds, along with the chalk beds, toward the end of the global Flood cataclysm.” ↩

4. 4d.

   Pages 572–573:  “Numerous attempts have been made to explain the “uniform” process by which hundreds of thousands of modern and extinct fishes, birds, reptiles, mammals, insects, and plants could have been piled together, buried, and preserved in exquisite detail, as is often the case, but inevitably the only explanation consistent with the state of this fossil assemblage is catastrophic entombment.” ↩

Smith, Roger M. H.  Fluvial facies, vertebrate taphonomy and palaeosols of the Teekloof Formation (Permian) near Beaufort West, Cape Province, South Africa.  University of Cape Town.  1989.  A doctoral thesis by the Karoo's leading taphonomist, logging 940 vertebrate fossils and the floodplain sediments, soils and burrows around them in a 450-metre section.  It is the full study behind Smith's 1993 Palaios paper, and it reads each bone's weathering as a measure of how long it lay exposed.

1. 5a.

   Section Abstract:  “consists mainly of vertically accreted floodplain mudrocks with interbedded continuous sheets of fine-grained sandstone”. ↩

2. 5b.

   Section Abstract:  “Taphonomic assessment of 940 vertebrate fossils collected from the study block showed that rocks of the proximal floodplain facies were the most fossiliferous and contained relatively more fully articulated therapsid skeletons than channel bank or distal floodbasin facies.”  “The patterns of bone weathering and skeletal disarticulation in the different floodplain facies is interpreted as a function of the duration of post-mortem exposure on the floodplain surface.” ↩

3. 5c.

   Page 171:  “Mammal-like reptile carcasses were thus allowed ample time to decompose, desiccate and disarticulate before being scattered by sheet floods. The increased proportion of weathered to unweathered fossil bone in these proximal floodplain deposits suggests that skeletal elements spent between 2 and 20 years on the floodplain surface before becoming completely buried.”  Said of the 45-m Leeukloof interval, and based on Behrensmeyer's weathering stages calibrated in Kenya. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

4. 5d.

   Section Abstract:  “Palaeosurfaces on the upper surface of the sandstone interbeds are rarely preserved beneath claystone veneers and display an array of sedimentary and biogenic structures, including vertebrate tracks, which record shallow water sedimentation followed by stillstand exposure and desiccation.” ↩

5. 5e.

   Page 145:  “the increased bone density in these palaeosols basically reflects an extended period of time, possibly as much as 10 000 years (Gile et al., 1966), during which that area of the floodplain was not affected by major floods.” ↩

6. 5f.

   Section Abstract:  “some taphonomically anomalous occurrences of curled-up and paired Diictodon skeletons resulted from their entrapment and burial within underground burrows.”  Page 129:  “Some of these highly articulated skeletons have been shown to be preserved in underground burrows that were catastrophically-filled with crevasse-splay sands.” ↩

7. 5g.

   Page 139:  “Figure 65.1 shows a plot of weathering stage distribution amongst all the fossils collected, showing an overall "freshness" to the fossilized bone material. This observation has been made by many palaeontologists over the years and is a "hallmark" of the Teekloof fossil fauna.”  “the more weathered fossils are relatively more common in the distal floodbasin areas and the "fresher" bones are generally associated with the channel-bank and proximal floodplain facies.” ↩

8. 5h.

   Page 171:  “Seasonal rainstorms in the basin and provenance areas caused the major meandering rivers to burst their banks and inundate the parched floodplains. These essentially catastrophic events accounted for the bulk of floodplain sedimentation.” ↩ ↩ ↩

9. 5i.

   Page 173:  “The 45 m Leeukloof section contains seventeen Stage 3 palaeosol profiles (Appendix Fig. 8) which each represent 10 - 14 000 years of negligible floodplain accretion”.  The durations are Smith's reading of soil maturity;  the count of profiles is an observation. ↩ ↩

Viglietti, Pia A.  Life after extinction: palaeoenvironments of the earliest Triassic lower Katberg Formation, including the origin of Lystrosaurus bonebeds from the Karoo Basin, South Africa.  University of Cape Town.  2012.  A master's thesis describing the sediments and bone accumulations of the earliest Triassic Karoo, including the Lystrosaurus bonebeds read as drought kills buried by later floods.

1. 6a.

   Section Abstract:  “Isolated skulls and postcranial material in the latest Permian are replaced by articulated, “curled up” skeletons and multi-individual accumulations (bonebeds) in the earliest Triassic. Lack of epiphyses and skull sizes suggest only sub-adult Lystrosaurus are present in bonebeds. Clustered articulated ribs among disarticulated material and minor weathering of bones are evidence of a period of desiccation where bones lay on or near the soil surface for up to five years before burial”.  “The lithology surrounding the bonebeds consists of floodplain mudrocks, carbonate nodules; and sand-filled mud cracks capped by coarse sediments, the latter indicative of rapid deposition during floods.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

Eberth, David A., and Michael A. Getty.  “Ceratopsian bonebeds: occurrence, origins, and significance.”  Dinosaur Provincial Park: A Spectacular Ancient Ecosystem Revealed, 501–536.  Indiana University Press, Bloomington.  Edited by Philip J. Currie and Eva B. Koppelhus.  2005.  The standard review of the Park's horned-dinosaur bonebeds by a Royal Tyrrell Museum sedimentologist and a field paleontologist, with mapped quarries, bone counts per square metre and a taphonomic history for each bed.

1. 7a.

   Page 501:  “Seventeen of the twenty reported ceratopsian bonebeds appear to be dominated by the remains of Centrosaurus apertus, and each occurs exclusively in the lowest 15 m of the Dinosaur Park Formation”.  Page 508:  “The DPF is 70 m thick at the Park.” ↩

2. 7b.

   Page 508:  “hundreds of bonebeds present throughout the Park”.  “although there are many tens of bonebeds present in any 10-m-thick stratigraphic interval in the lowest 40 m of the DPF, occurrences of this taphonomic mode drop off by a factor of more than ten in the upper 30 m of formation.”  The bonebed counts are from Eberth and Currie in the same volume.  Bonebeds within about 10 m of each other cannot be told apart in level, because ancient channels cut up to 5 m down. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

3. 7c.

   Page 517:  “BB030, BB091, and BB041a each appear to have originally covered an area of at least approximately 10,000 m2.”  Page 519:  “for the densest portions of these three overbank-hosted bonebeds, up to one individual ceratopsid contributed to each square meter of bonebed.” ↩

4. 7d.

   Page 513:  “The absence of flaking and cracking on the bone surfaces due to weathering indicates rapid interment and/or a prolonged association with a saturated environment.” ↩

5. 7e.

   Page 526:  “the presence of juveniles, subadults, and adults at each site strongly suggest that the fossil assemblage resulted from mass-kill events rather than from long-term attritional processes.”  Page 527:  “The data presented here neither support nor refute the behavioral scenario of river crossing.” ↩

6. 7f.

   Page 522:  “Less than 10 percent of the specimens have tooth marks and other markings”.  “Dendritic discoloration patterns attributed to root leaching are common at BB041a but rare at BB030 and BB091.”  “these bone assemblages had similar origins and parallel, multi-event taphonomic histories. The thorough disarticulation of carcasses, evidence for removal of trabecular bone, and absence of evidence of weathering are all consistent with the sedimentological interpretation that rotting carcasses were deposited in water-saturated reducing environments”.  Page 524:  “There is no necessary link between scavenging and the abundant evidence for trampling at the site.” ↩

Brand, Leonard, and Arthur Chadwick.  Faith, Reason, & Earth History: A Paradigm of Earth and Biological Origins by Intelligent Design.  Andrews University Press, Berrien Springs.  3rd edition.  2016.  A textbook by two young-earth scientists who have published taphonomic field work in secular journals, setting out what they think the evidence does and does not show for a short earth history.  Brand led the Pisco whale study.

1. 8a.

   Chapter 5, section A Research Procedure, pages 77–78:  “1. We proved the biblical flood—NO. The word “proof” should not be used here, and the Pisco is only one rock formation out of many.”  The first of a numbered list of what the Pisco research did and did not show.  The second is "We showed the entire Pisco Formation formed very rapidly—NO." ↩

2. 8b.

   Chapter 18, section Rapid Geological Processes and the Radiometric Time Scale, pages 447–449:  “sedimentary structures that indicate storms and other fairly rapid sedimentary processes that may not require more than a few hundred years, at most, for the Pisco Formation.”  “The Bridger and the Pisco Formations both contain evidence that seems to require some time—a few decades or a few hundred years during the transition from catastrophe to more modern processes—but they do not seem compatible with millions of years.”  The book does not say whether this transition lies inside the Flood year or after it. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

Clarey, Timothy L., and Davis J. Werner.  “A Progressive Global Flood Model Confirmed by Rock Data Across Five Continents.”  Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Creationism 9:412–445.  2023.  The Institute for Creation Research's megasequence model of the Flood, built on a database of rock columns from five continents.  It assigns each of Sloss's six megasequences to a stage of the Flood year.

1. 9a.

   Page 433:  “This process continued flooding higher and higher elevations and new ecological zones, depositing the Absaroka and Zuni megasequences between Days 40-150 of the Flood, until the water covered the highest hills (Fig. 24). The fossils of the Absaroka and Zuni mostly reflect lowland and wetland ecological zones.” ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

2. 9b.

   Page 433:  “Finally, the plants and animals living on the pre-Flood highest hills (many large mammals) were swept off and distributed on top of the dinosaur-bearing rocks. These became the fossils found in the Tejas megasequence deposits”.  “By Day 314 or so (Gen 8:13), Noah looked out of the ark and saw that the whole Earth was dry.” ↩ ↩ ↩

Brand's range is "centimeters to meters per year."²  80 m ÷ 1 m a year = 80 years;  80 m ÷ 0.10 m a year, the New England bay he cites, = 800 years.  The receding phase in Clarey's model runs from Day 150 to about Day 314, 164 days at most.⁹  80 m ÷ 164 days = 0.49 m a day = 178 m a year, which is 1,780 times 0.10 m a year.  These are scale figures:  no young-earth source assigns the 80 m a duration. ↩ ↩ ↩

Scientific Creationism.  Creation-Life Publishers, San Diego.  Edited by Henry M. Morris.  1974.  The Institute for Creation Research's textbook for schools, written by its staff under Morris's editorship.  Its fossil chapter argues that every fossil needs rapid burial and that dinosaur graveyards have no modern counterpart, quoting Edwin Colbert on quarries in New Mexico, Wyoming, Alberta and Belgium.

1. 11a.

   Page 97:  “In fact the very existence of fossils necessarily speaks of rapidity of formation! Fossils are not produced by slow uniformitarian rates of sediment deposition.” ↩

2. 11b.

   Page 99:  “Similar dinosaur graveyards are found on every continent, all over the world. Again the uniformitarian is challenged to point to any such phenomena occurring anywhere in the world today.” ↩ ↩

3. 11c.

   Page 98:  “In Alberta “Innumerable bones and many fine skeletons of dinosaurs and other associated reptiles have been quarried from these badlands, particularly in the 15-mile stretch of river to the east of Steveville, a stretch that is a veritable dinosaurian graveyard.””  Morris quoting Edwin Colbert, The Age of Reptiles (1965), p. 169.  The stretch below Steveville is today's Dinosaur Provincial Park. ↩

4. 11d.

   Page 98:  “It would appear that some local catastrophe had overtaken these dinosaurs, so that they all died together and were buried together.”  Morris quoting Edwin Colbert under the heading "1. In New Mexico," the Ghost Ranch Coelophysis quarry. ↩ ↩

5. 11e.

   Page 99:  “Thus it could be seen that the fossil boneyard was evidently one of gigantic proportions, especially notable because of its vertical extension through more than a hundred feet of rock.”  Morris quoting an unnamed source on the Bernissart Iguanodon mine in Belgium. ↩

6. 11f.

   Page 98:  “The author failed to note, however, that while a ‘red tide’ may produce vast numbers of dead fish, it does not produce fossil fish! The fish decay on the shore, or are eaten by scavengers, but they don’t become fossils.” ↩

Ham, Ken.  “Billions of Dead Things.”  Answers with Ken Ham, volume 130.  Answers in Genesis.  Aug 28, 2018.  A one-minute radio feature by the founder of Answers in Genesis, stating the ministry's standard argument from fossils to the Flood.

1. 12a.

   Paragraph 1:  “If there was a global Flood, as described in Genesis, what would we expect to see? Well, billions of dead things, buried in rock layers, laid down by water all over the earth.”  Paragraph 3:  “We find fossil graveyards with thousands and thousands of animals buried in a jumble.” ↩

Tomkins, Jeffrey P., and Timothy L. Clarey.  “Developing a comprehensive model of global Flood paleontology: Integrating the biostratigraphic record with global megasequence deposition.”  Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Creationism 9:561–587.  2023.  An Institute for Creation Research paper that maps Paleobiology Database fossil occurrences onto Clarey's megasequences and argues the Flood ended at the top of the Neogene, so that Cenozoic whale and mammal beds are late-Flood deposits.

1. 13a.

   Page 585:  “This can be documented by the discoveries of large, likely bloated, and buoyant carcasses of dead marine mammals like whales in Tejas bone beds globally. These would have been some of the last marine creatures to have been buried in the Flood.” ↩ ↩

Woodmorappe, John.  “The Karoo vertebrate non-problem: 800 billion fossils or not.”  CEN Technical Journal 14(2):47–49.  2000.  A short paper by a young-earth geologist who traced the 800-billion figure to its source, Broom's 1932 book, quoted Broom's derivation in full and judged it conjectural, while defending Whitcomb and Morris for citing the Karoo as rich. ↩

1. 14a.

   Section Derivation of the 800-billion figure:  “I estimate that there are lying today exposed to view the fossil remains of five animals on average in every square mile … In some areas there are 100; in some none. For every fossil that is exposed to view there must be a 1,000 hidden by dust and talus.”  “at every few inches we have another page of the book, and another series of fossils to be revealed. I thus estimate that in the whole Karroo [Karoo] formation there are preserved the fossil remains of at least 800,000,000,000 animals.”  Woodmorappe quoting Robert Broom, The Mammal-like Reptiles of South Africa and the Origin of Mammals (London: Witherby, 1932), p. 309.  The square brackets are Woodmorappe's.  Broom's outcrop is "about 200,000 square miles" and his average thickness 2,000 feet. ↩ ↩

2. 14b.

   Section Derivation of the 800-billion figure:  “It is not difficult to see from the above that Broom’s 800-billion figure is, at best, an educated guess.” ↩

3. 14c.

   Section Can 800 Billion Reptiles Be Alive Simultaneously?:  “so it stands to reason that they were washed into the area of present day South Africa during the Flood.”  “This amounts to an area of 10 million square kilometers, implying a population density of 800 reptile individuals per hectare.” ↩ ↩

Broom's own inputs:  1,000 animals a square mile on each buried surface times 200,000 square miles is 2 × 10⁸ animals per surface.  800,000,000,000 ÷ 2 × 10⁸ = 4,000 surfaces.  2,000 feet is 24,000 inches, and 24,000 ÷ 4,000 = 6 inches between surfaces.  Five skeletons a square mile is 5 ÷ 2.59 = 1.9 per square kilometre.  Over Broom's 40,000,000 years, 800,000,000,000 ÷ 40,000,000 = 20,000 burials a year across the whole basin, which is Simpson's figure.^{14 16} ↩

Simpson, George Gaylord.  Tempo and Mode in Evolution.  Columbia University Press, New York.  1947.  The founding book of evolutionary paleontology's modern synthesis, first published in 1944, by the American Museum of Natural History's leading fossil-mammal specialist.  Its chapter on population size uses Broom's Karoo figure, with a warning, to estimate breeding populations.

1. 16a.

   Page 71:  “As regards fossils, very few numerical estimates have been attempted, and these are so uncertain that the use of numbers is more likely to be misleading than helpful. If only as a curiosity, an example may be derived from Broom’s discussions (1932) of fossil reptiles in the Karroo.”  “he considers the time involved to be at least 40,000,000 years. As an average, about 20,000 animals per year are thus supposed to have been buried and preserved as fossils.” ↩ ↩

Schadewald, Robert J.  “Six "Flood" arguments creationists can't answer.”  Creation/Evolution 3(3):12–17.  1982.  A polemical essay by a science writer in the National Center for Science Education's early journal, posing six tests of flood geology.  Its first takes the Karoo figure at face value and divides it by the earth's land area.

1. 17a.

   Page 13:  “A minute's work with a calculator shows that, if the 800 billion animals in the Karroo Formation could be resurrected, there would be twenty-one of them for every acre of land on earth.” ↩

Catuneanu, Octavian et al.  “The Karoo basins of south-central Africa.”  Journal of African Earth Sciences 43:211–253.  2005.  A review of the stratigraphy, tectonic setting and fill of the Karoo basins by the field's main workers, including the paleontologists Rubidge and Smith.  It gives the extent and thickness of the Beaufort Group used here.

1. 18a.

   Page 235:  “These rocks cover a surface area of some 200 000 km2, making up about 20% of the total surface area of South Africa, and attains a maximum cumulative thickness of about 7000 m in the foredeep, thinning rapidly northwards”. ↩

Nicolas, Merrill, and Bruce S. Rubidge.  “Assessing content and bias in South African Permo-Triassic Karoo tetrapod fossil collections.”  Palaeontologia africana 44:13–20.  2009.  A database study that merged the catalogues of seven South African museums into one record of Beaufort Group fossils and tested it for collecting bias.  It gives the only census of how many Karoo vertebrate fossils have actually been collected.

1. 19a.

   Page 13:  “The original datasets provide 26 837 specimens that are theoretically usable for spatial mapping”.  “the actual number of potentially useful vertebrate fossils from the Beaufort Group amounted to 20 968”. ↩

Fernandez, Vincent et al.  “Synchrotron reveals Early Triassic odd couple: injured amphibian and aestivating therapsid share burrow.”  PLoS ONE 8(6):e64978.  2013.  A synchrotron X-ray scan of one lithified burrow cast from the Karoo, which found two complete skeletons inside, a small therapsid curled as if dormant and an injured temnospondyl amphibian.

1. 20a.

   Section Introduction:  “two complete skeletons lying adjacent to each other”. ↩

Behrensmeyer, Anna K.  “Taphonomic and ecologic information from bone weathering.”  Paleobiology 4(2):150–162.  1978.  The standard field scale for bone weathering, six stages from fresh to falling apart, calibrated on 35 carcasses of known age of death in the Amboseli basin, Kenya.  Taphonomists everywhere use it to estimate how long bones lay exposed.

1. 21a.

   Page 157, table 2:  Possible range in years since death:  stage 0, 0–1;  stage 1, 0–3;  stage 2, 2–6;  stage 3, 4–15+;  stages 4 and 5, 6–15+.  “Most bones falling into Stages 0, 1 and 2 have lain exposed for three years or less.” ↩ ↩

2. 21b.

   Page 158:  “weathering in general seems to be slower where bones are kept moist and protected by swamp vegetation.”  Page 160:  “Bones of a young topi (Damaliscus korrigum) placed on a roof several meters above the ground and fully exposed to sun and rain at Lake Turkana weathered to Stages 2 and 3 after 3 yr.” ↩

3. 21c.

   Page 150:  “Bones of animals under 100 kg and juveniles appear to weather more rapidly than bones of large animals or adults.” ↩

Creation Ministries International.  “Watery catastrophe deduced from huge Ceratopsian dinosaur graveyard.”  Journal of Creation 16(2):3–4.  Aug 2002.  An unsigned news perspective in a young-earth technical journal, reporting Ryan and colleagues' 2001 study of the Park's bonebed 43 as evidence of a watery catastrophe.

1. 22a.

   Paragraph 3:  “There is no evidence for prolonged weathering in the form of desiccation of the bones.”  “Death, transport and burial seems to be very rapid”. ↩

Thomas, Brian.  “Canadian 'Mega' Dinosaur Bonebed Formed by Watery Catastrophe.”  Creation Science Update.  Institute for Creation Research.  Jul 13, 2010.  A news commentary by an Institute for Creation Research science writer on the Hilda mega-bonebed, arguing that a Flood wave fits it better than the coastal storms its excavators proposed.

1. 23a.

   “It makes more sense to interpret this fossil graveyard as a result of one of the many tsunami-like waves that gradually pulsed over the continents during the course of the year-long Flood event”. ↩

Oard, Michael J.  “The extinction of the dinosaurs.”  Journal of Creation 11(2):137–154.  1997.  A long review by a retired meteorologist who has become the young-earth movement's most prolific writer on dinosaurs, setting out how dinosaur graveyards, nests and the end-Cretaceous extinction would fit inside the Flood year.

1. 24a.

   Section A watery cataclysm and dinosaur graveyards:  “some bone-beds, especially those in Montana and southern Alberta, show signs of exposure on land for a while following death.”  “it seems reasonable that the Flood sediments became temporarily exposed during the Flood.” ↩

2. 24b.

   Section A watery cataclysm and dinosaur graveyards:  “Probably the largest bone-bed in the world is located in north-central Montana, USA. Based on outcrops, an extrapolated estimate was made for 10,000 duckbill dinosaurs entombed in a thin layer measuring 2 km east-west and 0.5 km north-south.” ↩ ↩

Esperante, Raúl et al.  “Taphonomy and paleoenvironmental conditions of deposition of fossil whales in the diatomaceous sediments of the Miocene/Pliocene Pisco Formation, southern Peru—A new fossil-lagerstätte.”  Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 417:337–370.  2015.  The young-earth team's full taphonomic study of the Pisco whales:  571 specimens surveyed and 32 excavated, scored for articulation, orientation, borings and bite marks.

1. 25a.

   Page 338:  “A total of 571 marine mammal specimens were studied”.  Page 345:  “the majority of individuals (94%) in this study are articulated or mostly articulated”. ↩

2. 25b.

   Page 342:  “the whales are not in discrete mass mortality layers”.  Page 356:  “the result of recurrent mass mortalities followed by rapid burial before scavenging and abrasion could damage the bones.” ↩

Bosio, Giulia et al.  “Taphonomy of marine vertebrates of the Pisco Formation (Miocene, Peru): Insights into the origin of an outstanding Fossil-Lagerstätte.”  PLOS ONE 16:e0254395.  2021.  The largest taphonomic survey of the Pisco, by an Italian, Belgian, French and Peruvian team:  890 vertebrate fossils from 16 localities scored for articulation, bite marks, borings and associated invertebrates.  It agrees that burial was rapid but rejects a single high-sedimentation explanation.

1. 26a.

   Section Abstract:  “cannot be ascribed to a single cause like high sedimentation rates (as proposed in the past)”.  Section Proposed mechanism of rapid self-burial:  “were buried within days or weeks after their death”.  The second quotation concerns two specimens from Las Antenas. ↩

2. 26b.

   Section Shark bite marks:  “on just 13 (1.6%) of the 821 marine mammals we examined”.  Section Associated macro-invertebrates:  “The presence of barnacles suggests the presence of bare bone, and thus decomposition of the overlying soft tissues, prior to burial.” ↩ ↩

Gariboldi, Karen et al.  “Paleoceanographic implications of diatom seasonal laminations in the Upper Miocene Pisco Formation (Ica Desert, Peru) and their clues on the development of the Pisco Fossil-Lagerstätte.”  Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology 38:e2022PA004566.  2023.  A microscope study of diatom laminae in the Pisco's main whale-bearing member, reading each pair of laminae as one year to measure the sedimentation rate, and testing it against the burial the whales require.

1. 27a.

   Page 15:  “any of the sedimentation rates calculated in this paper and in Gariboldi et al., 2017 are not high enough to cover large carcasses”.  “we agree with Brand et al. (2004), who state that rapid burial is needed”.  Page 18:  “This evidence rules out the hypothesis that depositions of diatomites in the East Pisco Basin were orders magnitude faster than in today's oceans.” ↩

Oard, Michael J.  Dead whales: telling tales?  Answers in Genesis.  Sep 1, 2004.  A popular article by the young-earth writer on Brand's Pisco results, accepting the rapid burial and asking whether the whales belong to the Flood or to a later local catastrophe.

1. 28a.

   “Did the Genesis Flood bury these whales or was it a local catastrophe after the Flood?”  “To distinguish between the Flood and post-Flood possibilities, we would need more information on the deposit.” ↩

Pyenson, Nicholas D. et al.  “Repeated mass strandings of Miocene marine mammals from Atacama Region of Chile point to sudden death at sea.”  Proceedings of the Royal Society B 281:20133316.  2014.  A Smithsonian-led excavation of a road-cut quarry in northern Chile, mapping more than 40 marine mammal skeletons in three dimensions by laser scan and reading their orientation, articulation and sediment as four separate strandings.  Mirror:  Europe PMC

1. 29a.

   Section Abstract:  “Marine mammal skeletons are distributed in four discrete horizons at the site, representing a recurring accumulation mechanism.” ↩ ↩

2. 29b.

   Section Results and discussion:  “rapid transit time (hours to days) between death at sea and coming to rest on a protected, supratidal flat”.  Section Abstract:  “In modern settings, HABs are the only known natural cause for such repeated, multispecies accumulations”.  Section Results and discussion:  “The dominance of ventral up carcasses, combined with their high articulation and long axis orientation, is a strong sign that they washed in dying or dead”. ↩ ↩

Grande, Lance.  The Lost World of Fossil Lake: Snapshots from Deep Time.  University of Chicago Press, Chicago.  2013.  A book-length account of the Fossil Butte Member by the Field Museum curator who has excavated and described its fishes since the 1970s, revising his 1984 monograph.  It sets out the separate mass-mortality layers, their likely causes and the articulation counts.

1. 30a.

   Page 356:  “Mass mortality of +Knightia eocaena from the base of the 18-inch layer on Fossil Butte. At this particular site, this layer has a density of several hundred fishes per square meter, with each fish averaging about 100 millimeters (3.9 inches) in length.”  A figure caption.  The "+" marks an extinct taxon. ↩

2. 30b.

   Page 359:  “He excavated a large sample of the FBM 18-inch layer from FBM Locality E, from which he extracted 385 fishes. He found that 68 percent of them were perfectly or near-perfectly articulated.”  "He" is Malcolm McGrew, whose 1975 study Grande summarises. ↩

3. 30c.

   Page 355:  “It is important to remember that the FBM is not a single mass mortality. The FBM spanned at least many thousands of years, and within it there are some layers with millions or billions of fossils, and others with very few fossils. Many different regional mass mortalities occurred throughout the duration of Eocene Fossil Lake.” ↩

4. 30d.

   Page 355:  “There is one Knightia eocaena mass-mortality zone that occurs on parts of Fossil Ridge at the base of the 18-inch layer”.  “and several others in between”.  Page 357:  “Reasons for mass mortalities at other levels, consisting primarily of the clupeid herring Knightia eocaena, were probably related either to changing temperature or changing water chemistry. Today living clupeids are extremely susceptible to changing water conditions.” ↩

5. 30e.

   Page 355:  “The FBM mortalities were not global in nature. Instead, the many mortality layers of the FBM represent regional mass mortalities. Regional mass mortalities are relatively common ecological events. These events are localized rather than global in scale and take place quickly, usually in a matter of hours, days, or weeks.” ↩

Hoesch, William A.  “Lagerstatten!”  Acts & Facts 36(8):14.  Aug 2007.  A one-page Institute for Creation Research magazine article by a staff geologist, arguing that exceptionally preserved fossil beds record burial within days.

1. 31a.

   Paragraph 2:  “Modern varieties of the small, herring-like fossilized fish from Wyoming's Green River Formation, for example, rot in a period of days or weeks.”  “Yet somehow they got pickled by the billions in this world-famous lagerstätten.”  “Not months, nor years, nor millennia, but days!” ↩

Whitmore, John H., and Kurt P. Wise.  “Rapid and early post-Flood mammalian diversification evidenced in the Green River Formation.”  Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Creationism, 449–457.  Edited by A. A. Snelling.  2008.  A young-earth paper by two geologists who accept that the Green River Formation is a lake deposit after the Flood, and who work out what that costs:  rapid post-Flood diversification of mammals and a lake that began within decades of the Flood.

1. 32a.

   Page 455:  “then the Green River sedimentation began within decades after the Flood and may have been complete as early as several decades following the Flood.” ↩

Whitmore, John H., and Paul Garner.  “Using suites of criteria to recognize pre-Flood, Flood, and post-Flood strata in the rock record with application to Wyoming (USA).”  Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Creationism, 425–448.  Creation Science Fellowship, Pittsburgh.  2008.  A young-earth method paper that scores rock units against criteria for Flood and post-Flood deposition, independent of radiometric dates, and applies it to the Wyoming column.  It places the end of the Flood near the top of the Cretaceous there.

1. 33a.

   Page 436:  “We do, however, believe that the extensive mammal radiations represented in the deposits of the Fort Union and succeeding formations, especially in the Green River Formation, must postdate Genesis 8:18 (see Whitmore & Wise, 2008).”  “the Flood/post-Flood boundary falls approximately during Lance to Fort Union Time (the Cretaceous/ Tertiary boundary occurs after the Lance).” ↩ ↩

Schwartz, Hope L., and David D. Gillette.  “Geology and taphonomy of the Coelophysis quarry, Upper Triassic Chinle Formation, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico.”  Journal of Paleontology 68(5):1118–1130.  1994.  A sedimentological and taphonomic study of the Ghost Ranch quarry, which has yielded at least 1,000 Coelophysis, reading the bone-bearing beds as an abandoned stream channel blocked by carcasses.

1. 34a.

   Section Abstract:  “the quarry has yielded the remains of at least 1,000 individuals from approximately 30 cubic meters of excavated material.”  “Skeletons, partial skeletons, and bones are crudely aligned and show little evidence of predator or scavenger disturbance or surface weathering.”  “The carcasses blocked a small channel and were subsequently buried by silts.” ↩ ↩

Gates, Terry A.  “The Late Jurassic Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry as a drought-induced assemblage.”  Palaios 20(4):363–375.  2005.  A taphonomic reanalysis of the Utah quarry that holds the world's largest concentration of Allosaurus, testing the old predator-trap reading against the bones and sediments and preferring a drought die-off around a seasonal pond.

1. 35a.

   Section Abstract:  “Thousands of bones have been excavated from CLDQ, representing at least 70 individual dinosaurs from a minimum of nine genera. The fossils occur in a 1-m-thick fine-grained calcareous mudstone interpreted as a floodplain ephemeral-pond deposit. The bones show minimal carnivore modification and surface weathering”.  “Of the alternatives, catastrophic drought appears to be most consistent with available data.” ↩ ↩

Carpenter, Kenneth.  “History, sedimentology, and taphonomy of the Carnegie Quarry, Dinosaur National Monument, Utah.”  Annals of Carnegie Museum 81(3):153–232.  2013.  A monograph on the sauropod quarry at Dinosaur National Monument, built from Earl Douglass's excavation archives, the quarry face and hydraulic modelling of the ancient river.

1. 36a.

   Section Abstract:  “Three-dimensionally preserved sand bars (>1.5 m tall), bone distribution and orientation, and generally poorly sorted, conglomeratic, multi-storied, trough-cross bedded sandstones indicate repeated episodes (3–4) of flashy, rapid deposition in a Platte River-like braided system (named the Quarry River) flowing south-southeast.” ↩

Horner, John R., and James Gorman.  Digging Dinosaurs.  Workman, New York.  1988.  A popular account by the paleontologist who excavated the Maiasaura nesting grounds and bonebed of Montana, with a science writer.  Its chapter "The Herd" describes the bonebed and how Horner's team came to read it as two events, a mass death and a later flood.

1. 37a.

   Page 128:  “We had one huge bed of maiasaur bones—and nothing but maiasaur bones—stretching a mile and a quarter east to west and a quarter-mile north to south.”  “At a conservative estimate, we had discovered the tomb of 10,000 dinosaurs.”  Page 129:  “They were all oriented from east to west, which was the long dimension of the deposit.” ↩

2. 37b.

   Page 131:  “The bones lay in the ash and dirt. Some fossilization occurred, as well as some acid destruction of the bones. Then there was a flood.”  “This was no ordinary spring flood from one of the streams in the area, but a catastrophic inundation.”  Horner is describing the interpretation worked out by his student Jeff Hooker, with the breached lake suggested by the geologist John Lorenz. ↩ ↩

Varricchio, David J., and John R. Horner.  “Hadrosaurid and lambeosaurid bone beds from the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of Montana: taphonomic and biologic implications.”  Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences 30(5):997–1006.  1993.  A comparison of six duckbill bonebeds in Montana, by bone condition and by the size of the animals, read as mass deaths, most of them at drying ponds.

1. 38a.

   Section Abstract:  “All six localities are single, highly concentrated bone horizons within silty mudstones.”  “Four are associated with small lacustrine or waterhole environments and may be the result of drought-related mortality. Within the Two Medicine Formation drought was apparently a common mechanism for generating fossil assemblages.” ↩ ↩

Rogers, Raymond R.  “Taphonomy of three dinosaur bone beds in the Upper Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation of northwestern Montana: evidence for drought-related mortality.”  Palaios 5(5):394–413.  1990.  A taphonomic study of two Styracosaurus beds and one Prosaurolophus bed in Montana, arguing from the climate, the soils and the age profiles that the animals died in droughts.

1. 39a.

   Section Abstract:  “Evidence supporting a drought hypothesis includes: 1) a seasonal, semiarid paleoclimate, 2) associated caliche horizons, 3) aqueous depositional settings, 4) apparent age distributions characteristic of modern drought mortality (CBB and DRQ), and 5) the intraformational recurrence of low-diversity bone beds.” ↩

Snyder, Keith et al.  “Over 13,000 elements from a single bonebed help elucidate disarticulation and transport of an Edmontosaurus thanatocoenosis.”  PLoS ONE 15(5):e0233182.  2020.  A twenty-year excavation of the Hanson Ranch bonebed in Wyoming by a team from Southwestern Adventist University led by the young-earth taphonomist Arthur Chadwick.  It tallies more than 13,000 bones by element and weathering stage and reads the bed as one herd's death, weeks to months of decay, and burial by a debris flow.

1. 40a.

   Page 2:  “Approximately 13,000 elements (including ~8,400 identifiable bones) have been recovered in 506 m2 of excavated area between 1996 and 2016.”  Page 24:  “A large herd of Edmontosaurus died, either by drowning, or by some other mass catastrophic process.” ↩

2. 40b.

   Page 24:  “Aerial exposure was limited to a period of time long enough (weeks to months) to result in decay-mediated disarticulation of the skeletons but was not long enough (months to years) for weathering to affect the bones.”  Page 27:  “The most parsimonious scenario for the HR Bonebed is that of a large number of individuals dying in a single catastrophic event, followed by decomposition over weeks to months”. ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩

Purifoy, Thomas Jr.  “10,000 Dinosaurs in One Meter of Mud.”  Is Genesis History?  Jul 7, 2016.  A blog post from the young-earth film project Is Genesis History?, reporting an on-site interview with Arthur Chadwick at the Hanson Ranch quarry.

1. 41a.

   Section A Catastrophic Process:  “The only way I know how you could develop a graded bed is if you had a catastrophic process that transported these bones and laid them all in as a single event.”  Chadwick, as quoted.  The post's figures of "over a million bones" across 80 acres are not in his team's paper. ↩ ↩

DePalma, Robert A. et al.  “A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(17):8190–8199.  2019.  The first description of the Tanis site, a river-channel deposit at the very top of the Cretaceous packed with fish and capped by impact debris, which the authors date to within an hour of the Chicxulub impact.

1. 42a.

   Page 8190:  “Acipenseriform fish, densely packed in the deposit, contain ejecta spherules in their gills and were buried by an inland-directed surge that inundated a deeply incised river channel before accretion of the fine-grained impactite. Although this deposit displays all of the physical characteristics of a tsunami runup, the timing (<1 hour postimpact) is instead consistent with the arrival of strong seismic waves”. ↩ ↩ ↩

Ham, Ken.  “First victims of dino-killer asteroid found?”  Ken Ham Blog.  Answers in Genesis.  Apr 8, 2019.  A blog post by the head of Answers in Genesis on the Tanis report, quoting the ministry's geologist Andrew Snelling and placing the Chicxulub impact inside the Flood year.

1. 43a.

   “There is absolutely no doubt that the reported field observations are a stunning confirmation of what occurred at this level in the geologic record during the global Flood cataclysm, as described in Genesis 7–8.”  Snelling, as quoted by Ham. ↩

Hunt, Robert M. Jr.  “Taphonomy and sedimentology of Arikaree (lower Miocene) fluvial, eolian, and lacustrine paleoenvironments, Nebraska and Wyoming: a paleobiota entombed in fine-grained volcaniclastic rocks.”  Volcanism and Fossil Biotas, 69–113.  Geological Society of America, Special Paper 244.  Edited by Martin G. Lockley and Alan Rice.  1990.  The main taphonomic study of the Agate Fossil Beds and nearby sites, by a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Nebraska State Museum, reading the bone bed as a waterhole in a drought and estimating how long death and burial took from the bones' condition.

1. 44a.

   Page 95:  “In the deposit, rhinoceroses number in the hundreds, but no more than 50 to 75 chalicotheres are present.”  Page 104:  “the four sedimentation units enclosing the lower and upper Agate bone beds formed over a prolonged period of time (a number of months to years), and that the lower and upper bone beds were the result of a death event also spanning an interval of time in excess of several months’ duration.” ↩

Akridge, A. Jerry, and Carl R. Jr. Froede.  “Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park, Nebraska: a post-Flood/Ice Age paleoenvironment.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 42(3):183–191.  Dec 2005.  A young-earth site review of the Ashfall rhinoceros beds, accepting rapid burial in volcanic ash but placing the event a few thousand years ago, after the Flood, during the Ice Age.

1. 45a.

   Page 183:  “we interpret the bone bed and associated stratigraphy as a postFlood/Ice Age paleoenvironment that was destroyed by volcanic ash and later covered by fluvially-deposited sediments no more than a few thousand years ago.” ↩ ↩

2. 45b.

   Page 187:  “It shows clear evidence of the excess bone growth caused by suffocation over a period of weeks (hypertrophic pulmonary osteodystrophy)”.  “Every fossil mammal so far discovered at the site has abnormal patches of highly porous superficial bone on various parts of its skeleton, especially on the lower jaw and the shafts of the major limb bones and ribs. Veterinarians have reported very similar growths on animals that have died of lung failure.”  Akridge and Froede quoting first a display at the park, about a rhinoceros skull, and then the site's excavator, Michael Voorhies (1992).  On p. 188 they accept that the disease was present but argue it "could have developed in their bodies for months before the ashfall." ↩

Smith, Jon Jay et al.  “First U-Pb zircon ages for late Miocene Ashfall Konservat-Lagerstätte and Grove Lake ashes from eastern Great Plains, USA.”  PLoS ONE 13(10):e0207103.  2018.  A laser-ablation study of zircon crystals from the Ashfall ash, which dates it and matches it to a caldera in Idaho.

1. 46a.

   Section Abstract:  “The Ashfall tephra was correlated with ignimbrites from the Bruneau-Jarbidge volcanic field (12.7–10.5 Ma) in southwest Idaho based on geochemical analysis.” ↩

Friscia, Anthony R. et al.  “Chronology and spatial distribution of large mammal bones in Pit 91, Rancho La Brea.”  Palaios 23(1):35–42.  2008.  A study of one La Brea tar pit that radiocarbon-dated 46 individual bones and mapped where they lay, to test how the deposit accumulated.

1. 47a.

   Page 35:  “Overall, 90% of the specimens are carnivores, which is the inverse of studied trophic pyramids where herbivores outnumber carnivores 10 to 1”.  Page 38:  “The 46 dates suggest three distinct episodes of entrapment”.  Page 41:  “This gives an entrapment rate of one herbivore trapped about every 70 yr”.  The rate assumes the dated bones are a random sample of the pit's history. ↩ ↩

Weston, William.  “La Brea Tar Pits: evidence of a catastrophic flood.”  Creation Research Society Quarterly 40(1):25–33.  2003.  A young-earth paper arguing from the disarticulation of the bones, the carnivore excess and the insects that the La Brea deposits were laid down by a flood rather than by animals trapped one at a time.

1. 48a.

   Page 25:  “Fossil deposition by catastrophic flood seems to be global in scope. These considerations provide strong confirmation for the young Earth-Flood model of geologic history.” ↩

2. 48b.

   Page 26:  “Of the thousands of herbivore bones recovered, not one exhibits teeth marks.” ↩

De Pauw, L. F.  Notes sur les fouilles du charbonnage de Bernissart: découverte, solidification et montage des Iguanodons.  J. & P. Jumpertz, Brussels.  1902.  The excavation notes of the Brussels museum's curator, who led the extraction of the Iguanodon skeletons from the Bernissart coal mine between 1878 and 1881.

1. 49a.

   Page 9:  “Dans cette galerie, nous avons trouvé 5 niveaux ossifères et des plantes dans tous les bancs. Quatre de ces niveaux étaient à ossements d'Iguanodon et le cinquième contenait surtout des poissons.”  “Dans l'épaisseur d'un banc apparaissaient des centaines de lignes de stratification très régulières prouvant que le dépôt s'était formé lentement.”  Page 15:  “L'extraction de 25 squelettes d'Iguanodons dura 3 ans.”  In translation:  "In this gallery we found 5 bone-bearing levels, and plants in all the beds.  Four of these levels held Iguanodon bones and the fifth mainly fish."  "Within the thickness of one bed there appeared hundreds of very regular lines of stratification, proving that the deposit had formed slowly."  "The extraction of 25 Iguanodon skeletons took 3 years." ↩ ↩

Subalusky, Amanda L. et al.  “Annual mass drownings of the Serengeti wildebeest migration influence nutrient cycling and storage in the Mara River.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114(29):7647–7652.  2017.  A five-year field survey and ten years of reserve records counting wildebeest drowned while crossing the Mara River in Kenya, with a model of where the carcasses' nutrients go.

1. 50a.

   Section Abstract:  “Mass drownings (>100 individuals) occurred in at least 13 of the past 15 y; on average, 6,250 carcasses and 1,100 tons of biomass enter the river each year. Half of a wildebeest carcass dry mass is bone, which takes 7 y to decompose”. ↩ ↩

Häussermann, Verena et al.  “Largest baleen whale mass mortality during strong El Niño event is likely related to harmful toxic algal bloom.”  PeerJ 5:e3123.  2017.  An aerial and boat survey of a 2015 die-off of sei whales in a gulf of southern Chile, with oceanographic data tying it to a toxic algal bloom.  Gutstein also worked on the Miocene whales of Cerro Ballena.

1. 51a.

   Section Abstract:  “In March 2015, by far the largest reported mass mortality of baleen whales took place in a gulf in Southern Chile. Here, we show that the synchronous death of at least 343, primarily sei whales can be attributed to HABs during a building El Niño.” ↩ ↩

Smith's 2 to 20 years is 730 to 7,300 days.  730 ÷ 110 = 6.6 and 7,300 ÷ 110 = 66.  The 110 days are Days 40 to 150, which Clarey gives to the Absaroka and Zuni megasequences together.^{9 5} ↩

Eberth and Getty treat the 70-m Dinosaur Park Formation as fourteen overlapping 10-m slices, because ancient channels cut up to 5 m down and bonebeds closer than about 10 m cannot be told apart in level.⁷  The lowest 40 m therefore contain at least four slices that do not overlap, each with "many tens" of bonebeds.  At least one bonebed in each of the four lies above the bonebeds of the slice below, so at least four drown-expose-bury cycles happened one after another.  The true number is almost certainly far higher, since tens of bonebeds per slice are unlikely all to lie on one surface.  At Snyder's lower bound of a few weeks per cycle, four cycles need a few months, which fits inside a 110-day window;  forty would not. ↩