The above shows a plate (stone slab) with dinosaur tracks that is considered to be one of the best in the world. It is on exhibit in the Berneski Museum at Amherst College, and we have a copy of this plate in our museum. It contains a large number of extremely high quality gralltaor dinosaur tracks. They are so high quality that these tracks are used to as the standard to define grallator tracks. But not every track on this plate is high quality. Some of the tracks are not as deep, have less detail, and are fainter. One of those is circled in a close-up view of part of the plate above. There is another faint partial print near the center of the image.

What Are These Faint Tracks?

One possibility, presented by those who believe these tracks were preserved by annual floods, is that the fainter tracks were made as the mud dried and hardened. As the mud became firmer, the dinosaur's foot would not sink as deep into the mud. If the tracks were buried by a single, annual flood, that's the only option for explaining these fainter tracks.

But...

It is an accepted fact that a dinosaur's foot distorts the layers of sediment beneath the surface. These are called underprints. Also, as a footprint is filled with sediment layers, an impression above the actual place the dinosaur's foot touched is created. This is called an overprint. Both underprints and overprints preserve a less deep, less detailed, fainter impression of the footprint.

If fossilized dinosaur footprints were made during a global flood, there would be rapidly varying conditions. The local water level did not rise steadily such as you see when filling a bath tub (see the page on BEDS) . There were tides, and tsunamis, and tsunamis on top of tsunamis. The water level locally would be going up and down, all the while continually building up. So there would be times when there was mud exposed to the air. Times when the water was shallow. And there would be times when the water was deeper. Until finally the overall water level rose to a point such that the land remained underwater. It was a dynamic situation.

How did this effect the build up of sediment?

Sediment Layers Deposited Then Dried

If sediment layers are deposited, dinosaurs walk on them, the sun dried them, and then they are buried by another annual flood of sediment-laden water, a pattern such as the one shown above might be seen. In this diagram above three annual flood cycles are shown. The light gray layer indicates the beginning of a new annual flood. The white layers accumulate during the flood. As the water level decreases dinosaurs walk on the new sediment (dark grey), leaving footprints. During the dry season the footprint bake in the sun and harden. Then next year another annual flood (light gray) fills in the footprint and puts down new layers of sediment.

Even if the footprint went as deep as the dark gray layer, it would not leave an impression in the dark layer because that layer was baked hard by the sun during the previous dry season. Thus, none of the tracks would vertically overlay other tracks.

There could be overlapping impressions within the sediment from each annual flood, but there would be boundaries between each annual flood that were not crossed by footprint impressions.

Global Flood Scenario - Overlapping Footprints

Another possibility exists if the tracks were quickly buried instead of drying in the sun, meaning new layers of sediment are deposited before the underlying layers hardened. The result is that some of the dinosaur footprint underprint impressions would extend down into the underlying layer of true footprints. This results in vertically overlapping footprint impressions, with undertrack impressions on the same layers as true tracks.

In the scenario in which the tracks dry out and harden before the next annual flood buries them, undertracks and true tracks would not be seen on the same layer.

If there was a global flood, we would expect to see all three mechanisms at work, with many underprints in the same layer of sediment as true prints. In a conversation with Kornell Nash he stated that he observed over the years was a vertical overlapping of impressions. However, this is not conclusive evidence. There are many variables and possibilities such as varying water depth and changing sedimentation rates. All we can say is that the observed evidence is consistent with a global flood scenario. We have a research program at the museum that, using sectioned tracks from the Nash Quarry, is investigating this.

The Evidence Points to a Global Flood

In this illustration we are showing the rock split such that the sediment layer with the true track is exposed. That's the dark gray layer. The illustration shows the deep true track impression in the center, and the shallow underprint impression to the left.

A fourth possibility is that the rock splits at a point between where the true tracks are located. This would result in shallow, less detailed impressions, some of which may be underprints and some of which may be overprints. This could only occur if new sediments deposited before previous layers harden, such as would happen during a Biblical flood.

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