Mysterious Mummified Dinosaur Skin

While mummification may refer to the deliberate act of preserving a dead body, the word is also used to describe a critter that has died, then shriveled and dried up. People find mummified rodents and such in sheds and attics. If those had died in nature, scavengers and bacteria would have made short work of the remains. In yet another instance of something being remarkably well-preserved, some mummified Edmontosaurus skin falls into that category — and it is quite mysterious.

Modified postage stamp of an Edmontosaurus head from the author's collection

Secular scientists are attempting to explain the process of how it could be mummified and then preserved, and they are on the right track when they refer to burial by a flood. Of course, they reject the global Genesis Flood even though fossil layers extend across continents.

People may easily think that the Genesis Flood was lots of rain and that the fountains of the deep were opened up (Gen. 7:11), not knowing that the Flood was more than just rising waters. It involved periods of ebb and flow, burial and exposure, before the earth was covered by water. Then it receded, carving away rock and leaving more sediments while the mountains rose. Two creation science Flood models fit what was found regarding the dinosaur.

Its skin is remarkably well preserved. The authors of a PLOS ONE article explain how they think this happened. They claim that the carcass’s skin dried out first before being buried and then fossilized.

A Focus item in Creation 45(1) featured another hadrosaur with well-preserved skin, found in Alberta. In September 2022, its co-discoverer Brian Pickles argued the specimen “was covered quite quickly, otherwise it wouldn’t be this well preserved”.

Not so with this PLOS ONE report, which came out less than a month later. The authors come to this (somewhat but not completely different) ‘mummy’ conclusion.

The rest of the article is found at "Well-preserved skin may be from a mummy."