Virtual tour of the Creation Science Museum of Canada

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Creation Science Museum of Canada

Display #15: Dinosaur egg nests

Probably one of the most favourite arguments used by a skeptic of the global flood is dinosaur egg nests. The nests that are found are indeed found in what would be considered flood-rocks by creation geologists, and so the skeptic argues "How could a dinosaur be laying intricate nests of eggs underneath the raging flood waters of Noah's flood?"

However, such comments betray an ignorance of what the scriptures say about the flood, and what can be deduced from dinosaur egg nests.

On the right is one of the displays in the CSMC traveling museum. This would be a "text book" example of an Oviraptor egg nest. I will use it here as an example of how a dinosaur would like to make its egg nest.

Apparently Oviraptor laid two eggs together; possibly at the same time, but noone knows. The dinosaur would stand in the middle with its tail pointing out, and would lay eggs in pairs, rotating between the laying of each pair. Sometimes these eggs are found in two tiers (another layer of eggs on top of the first) or three tiers.

The Global Flood:

Skeptics typically attempt to depict the flood as happening overnight. The scriptures are clear that the flood waters continually rose, lifting the ark on the 40th day and finally covering the highest mountain on the 150th day. Thus, even if the dinosaurs wandered on what was left of the land for 50 days or so, that's a month and a half! Dinosaurs are going to have eggs in that time, and they are going to have to do something with them. Instinct would tell them to do one of two things: prepare a nest, or get rid of the eggs.

Also, during this time of continually rising waters, you have other forces and actions present, such as tides. Even with a small tide of 5 or 6 feet, each tide would be higher than the last, and thus would wash in a new layer of sediments every twelve hours. During low tide, these new layers would be exposed and dinosaurs would go out foraging for food, making tracks that now appear as fossil footprints, and either making egg nests or getting rid of eggs.

Even "complex" and "intricate" nests like these would only take a few hours at most to make - so how is this and evidence against the flood, or evidence of millions of years? Even the evolutionary community acknowledges that dinosaur egg nests are on "flood plains."

A look at the evidence:

What is usually found is not nests per se, but clutches of eggs. This is more in line with dinosaurs getting rid of their eggs. Furthermore, eggs with embryos are exceedingly rare - showing that there was no incubation time. In other words, the eggs were ditched and promptly destroyed during burial.
The few embryos that are found can develop while the mother is still carrying the eggs around.

Although an egg nest could potentially be made in minutes (i.e., 3 minutes per egg, 9 eggs = 27 minutes), we find eggs on different levels - even within the same nest! This Hadrosaur nest on the right was found in Laiyang, China. The upper rock layer cuts between the top of the lowest egg, and the bottom of the highest egg. Apparently the dinosaur laid its eggs in rising mud! As it rotated around, the mud it was standing in was probably rising above its ankles, and thus as the eggs were laid in a counter-clockwise direction, each egg was higher than the last.

We do not know how a dinosaur would behave when it faced certain death during the worst catstrophe the world has even seen. If the dinosaur has been carrying around eggs for weeks, with no chance or place to lay them because of the catastrophe, why would it not just wander out onto the flats in between tides? And if the tide started to come in while it was laying its eggs, why should it stop? The dinosaur's doom has become apparent.

Oviraptor egg "nest" from Montana:

Found in the two-medicine formation, this clutch of eggs has been called a "nest" but there is nothing "nest like" about it. One very reasonable explanation is that the Oviraptor was ridding herself of eggs while trying to escape from something.

Unfortunately, many skeptics have not stopped to examine the "nests" they refer to. Most nests are not nests at all, but simply bunches of eggs. Many of these "nests" are good evidence for a watery catstrophe, and even the intricate ones are not a good argument for long geological time.

Futher reading: The reconstructions of dinosaur egg nests were inspired by the Creation Research Society Quarterly article "Dinosaur Egg Nests Reinterpreted" by Walter R. Barnhard, and is available for free on line.