How Did Dinosaur Bones Turn Into Fossils?
Ramifications for Young-Earth Flood Geology If fossilization was simply replacement of bone with stone, fossil and living bones wouldn’t be as chemically similar as they are, and the intricate details found in fossilized dinosaur bones would not have survived [1]. Even more intriguing is the fact that some of the proteins in bone have survived the fossilization process, in dinosaurs and “older” fossils [2], a fact very consistent with a young earth. Fossilization is essentially a process of denaturing bone, similar to the denaturing of animal skin in leather manufacturing. The mineral that makes the live bone hard, apatite, combines with fluorine (in groundwater) to form fluorapatite [3]. The living tissue in bone (mostly proteins such as collagen) largely decay away, and the resulting void spaces get filled with mostly quartz minerals. Fossilization takes place when the following steps, which nicely fit a young-earth flood-geology context, occur [4]. I. Rapid burial to prevent immedia
