Why Dinosaurs Are Important Dinosaurs are important because they can help us determine which geologic interpretation is more plausible. They believe that both the eggs and the rock layer containing them were created 75 million years ago. We believe there is a serious problem with that notion. Conventional wisdom says that sedimentary rock layers are deposited slowly on the bottom of a lake, sea, or ocean. Turtles don t lay their eggs on the bottom of the ocean.
Sea turtles come to the shore, dig a nest near the water s edge, and lay their eggs there.
It seems unlikely to us that a dinosaur would swim 10 or 20 miles out to sea, dive down to the bottom, and lay her eggs there. Suppose, on the other hand, that the waters that once covered the Great Plains rushed in suddenly over the land. Suppose these flood waters laid down the layers of sedimentary rock that now cover Montana in a matter of a few months. We have observed a similar phenomenon at Mount St. Helens, and repeatable sedimentation experiments done in hydrodynamic laboratories have helped us to understand why flood waters lay down stratified layers similar to those in Montana. Suppose that as the flood waters receded from Montana, they carved the coulees on their way to the Missouri River.