Recently, a conspiracy theorist invited people to “test their critical thinking skills” and asked, “If dinosaurs really existed, wouldn’t their bones be everywhere?” A video was published in which he asked the question.
While it’s a strange bit of critical thinking to dismiss all the evidence we have that dinosaurs existed because we can’t find any more evidence that they existed, it’s still fun. However, even searching Google for this question, which has been answered many times before recording a video and publishing it, will already show how ridiculous it is.
First of all, it should be noted that dinosaur fossils are found on all continents. Although these fossils are not evenly distributed, this is not due to some strange conspiracy to place these bones in various places. This is because fossilization is rare and only occurs under certain conditions.
When an animal dies, for its bones to become fossilized, they must be buried with sediment and then immediately covered by many more layers of sediment. As the pressure increases, compression occurs and sedimentary rock forms. During the process, minerals seep into the sealed animal bones and petrify them.
Dinosaur fossils are very rare
Because this requires sediment to accumulate on top of the animal corpse, almost all of the fossils we find are found in the sea, where sand and mud can quickly cover the body. Dinosaurs that died above ground were rarely fossilized.
Dinosaur researcher at the UK Natural History Museum, Dr. “Most of the dinosaur fossils we find belong to animals that lived near a lake or river,” says David Button in an article on his website. “Some died shortly before the area was flooded and their corpses were covered in mud and silt.” Others were washed into the river due to heavy rain.”
It would be a wonderful thing for us to study Earth history if we could find dinosaurs everywhere. However, there are many species that we will never discover because of the way fossils turn up.
“We don’t know about many dinosaurs that lived in forest or mountain environments,” Button said. “In such cases, fossils are unlikely to form,” he adds.
A 2006 study estimated that about 71 percent of dinosaurs are unknown. Theoretically, some mountain-dwelling dinosaurs could have drifted from their mountain habitat into a riverbed where fossilization could occur, but this is not common. As a result, we know very little about their adaptations.
“Although the animals in these regions may have relatives living in the plains, it is quite possible that there were smaller clades specialized in environments where the likelihood of fossils was low,” New York Institute of Technology paleontologist Karen Poole said in an interview with the Smithsonian.
In short, dinosaurs were everywhere when they were alive, but they could only fossilize under suitable conditions…
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