Upside-Down Armored Dinosaurs

Sometimes I get to cognating that perhaps ignoring pertinent information and doing incomplete work are included in the criteria for being an evolutionary biologist. Read back several posts, and you will find several egregious examples of these things.


Ankylosaur fossils are usually found upside-down
Rock strata image before my tampering by Jebulon at Wikimedia Commons
In this instance, we have the ankylosaur fossils. You wouldn't cotton to having one of those beasties coming your way and making you think it's an M1A3 Abrams tank or something. So, why is it that most of their fossils are found upside down?

Remember, we have fossils to work with, plus some evolution-defying soft tissues now and then. But no living specimens to weigh, measure, and otherwise examine. That doesn't stop some devotees of Hanuman the monkey god from offering praise to Darwin and presenting incomplete conjecture. One idea is the "bloat and float" concept. They drowned, bloated, inverted, got carried around by the water until the carcasses beached, then they fossilized. Not hardly!

Numerous inconvenient facts were ignored, including other fossilized critters of similar size, how armored dinosaurs did not seem to be frequenting oceans, lakes, and rivers, and how they were found fossilized in their inverted positions on several continents. 

The ankylosaurs would have been quite heavy, so what moved them? The clearest explanation that secularists dismiss out of hand is the Genesis Flood. Ever see motor vehicles swept away in videos of local floods? The Genesis Flood was far more powerful, so moving armored dinosaurs is entirely plausible. In addition, the Flood would have done the rapid burial needed for fossilization. The ridiculous bloat and float story should not have seen the light of day without actual scientific research and consideration.
Why are 81% of ankylosaur fossils found belly up? With clever storytelling, you can accommodate this to evolution’s long ages.

Paleontologists since the 1930s have wondered why ankylosaurs (heavily-armored dinosaurs) are usually found buried in an upside-down position. It’s been a common anecdote among fossil hunters, so the Canadian Museum of Nature decided to investigate. A paleontologist with the museum, Dr Jordan Mallon, counted 26 of 32 known ankylosaurs—over 80%—that were reported found fossilized on their backs. He considered possible reasons:
To finish reading, click on "Most Armored Dinosaurs Found Upside Down". For a similar article with some additional information, click on "Genesis Flood Explains Bloat-and-Float Dinosaurs". ADDENDUM 1-22-2019: A new article with additional material: "The ‘bloat and float’ ankylosaurs of Alberta".