Long necked Sauropods had All-or-Nothing Design Features

The Bible’s history provides a framework that best explains the most significant facts about Sauropods, such as Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. They were immense, four-footed dinosaurs. Sauropods’ long necks allowed them a wide reach through the treetops. They were able to eat the massive amount of foliage required to maintain their size without having to expend extra energy moving from tree to tree. Some of the largest may have needed up to a ton of vegetation every day. This is according to Fredric Heeren's report in Nature.¹

Clearly, sauropods had all-or-nothing design features. Without small heads, hollow vertebrae, long necks, pillar legs, specially shaped pelvis bones, and fast growth rates—all at the same time—sauropods could not have existed. This is why sauropod evolution has been imagined as having happened in “an evolutionary jump.”¹

If sauropods evolved, then why are there no fossil “pre-sauropods” that have at least two, three, or four of the uniquely sauropod features, instead of just one or merely a possible part of one? If sauropods evolved over eons, then most of these fossils should be transitional. For example, why are gradually lengthening dinosaur necks not apparent as one ascends the rock record? Instead, these candidate “prosauropods” were perfectly developed creatures of their own types, showing no hint of evolutionary experimentation.

The Bible’s framework best explains the facts. First, sauropods were intentionally formed at one time, not morphed from other creatures. This is why no single undisputed ancestor exists, why their evolution is imagined to have happened in a “jump,” and why sauropods have all-or-nothing design features.

And the very reason that sauropod fossils exist “on almost every continent” is because, being a worldwide phenomenon, the Genesis Flood was powerful enough to totally overwhelm even the world’s most massive land creatures of that time. Unlike the miserable state of evolutionary guesswork, these observations confirm the biblical record!

(excerpted from Brian Thomas and Frank Sherwin, What the Fossils Really Say about Sauropod Dinosaurs, Acts & Facts, November 2011, Institute for Creation Research)

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References (selected)

1.Heeren, F. 2011. Dinosaurs: Rise of the titans. Nature. 475: 159-161.