death pose -- Fossil Butte National Monument,
Wyoming
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Lastly, also from the Green River
formation and on display at Fossil Butte National Monument, is this
fossil snake. (sorry for the blurry picture again!)
Did it die like this, or was
it fighting dath? Perhaps by sudden buiral in mud while it was
still alive? The breaks in the bones would suggest that these
"varves" in the Green River formation weren't as gentle as they have
been proposed to be.
Again the mouth is closed, and the body seems to be in strange
contortions. Now, I haven't seen too many dead snakes.
Y'know, scavengers, decay and all. But that immediately begs the
question: Why do we have a fossil snake? The answer is
simple: Rapid burial. I won't get into the arguments against the
interpretation of the "varves" in the Green River formation, I will
simply point out the contortions in the body and make the suggestion
that I think this snake was under duress as it died. The duress
of being buried alive.
Like all the other animals buried alive in the fossil record, once
you're buried, you cannot open you mouth again. If you are being
buried, your instinct is to close your mouth. However, if
you are suddenly buried in mud with your mouth open, you won't get it
closed again.
To say that the "death pose" is common in the fossil record is an
understatement. It is unusual
to find an articulated fossil creature that does not exhibit some kind
of struggle - evidence that it was buried alive. We find this all
over the world, and I would suggest it is a strong indicator that the
world's fossil record was laid down by a global flood.