Religious explanation for dinosaur fossils?

They lived, became exticnt and their remains are fossilised, simple as that.

I don't know of any religious explanation. Dinosaur fossils aren't even mentioned in my Bible.

The scientific explanation is the most dinosaur fossils were formed when they drowned (as shown by the characteristic death pose) and quickly buried. Some of the sedimentary deposits in which they are found are hundreds of kilometers in extent and tens of meters thick. We can infer from this that most fossils were formed in a flood of much greater size than any we have observed, probably global.

Dinosaur fossils have also been found to often contain soft tissue, red blood cells, traces of DNA, and measurable 14C. This means they can be at most a few tens of thousands of years old.

So the scientific explanation is that the dinosaur fossils were formed in a global flood within the last 50,000 years.

Dead dinosaurs?

Look, only those who have a "young-earth" interpretation of the Bible have a real problem with fossils.

Those of us who are not "YEC" do not need a "religious explanation" for fossils. It is just part of God's preparation of the earth for humankind.

Some accept them and some don't. I personally know a YEC that says man rode the dinosaurs for sport 5000 years ago. Of course, this person is crazy.

I only do science..

Researchers have found a reason for the puzzling survival of soft tissue and collagen in dinosaur bones – the bones are younger than anyone ever guessed. Carbon-14 (C-14) dating of multiple samples of bone from 8 dinosaurs from Texas, Alaska, Colorado, and Montana revealed that they are only 22,000 to 39,000 years old. Since dinosaurs are thought to be over 65 million years old, the news is stunning. And more than some can tolerate. After the AOGS-AGU conference in Singapore, the abstract was removed from the conference website by two chairmen because they could not accept the findings. Unwilling to challenge the data openly, they erased the report from public view without a word to the authors or even to the AOGS officers, until after an investigation. It won’t be restored.

The researchers presented their findings at the 2012 Western Pacific Geophysics Meeting in Singapore, August 13-17, a conference of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society (AOGS).

Carbon-14 is considered to be unassailable in its reliability among dating methods. Its accuracy as a technique has been verified by using C-14 to date artifacts whose age is known historically. The possibility that the amount of C-14 in the air has fluctuated adds a small uncertainty. But the greater possibility for error is that the amount of C-14 in bone samples has been altered by contaminants such as decayed organic matter from soils.

Dr. Thomas Seiler, a physicist from Germany, gave the presentation in Singapore. He says that his team and the laboratories they employed took special care to avoid contamination. That included protecting the samples, avoiding cracked areas in the bones, and meticulous pre-cleaning of the samples with chemicals to remove possible contaminants. Knowing that small concentrations of collagen can attract contamination, they compared precision Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) tests of collagen and bioapatite (hard carbonate bone mineral) with conventional counting methods of large bone fragments from the same dinosaurs. “Comparing such entirely different molecules as minerals and organics from the same bone region, we obtained concordant C-14 signals which were well below the upper limits of C-14 dating. These, together with many other remarkable signal concordances between samples from different fossils, geographic regions and stratigraphic positions make random contamination as origin of the C-14 signals unlikely”, he notes. “If dinosaur bones are 65 million years old, there should not be one atom of C-14 left in them.”

Oh please.... don't lump the mislead and misinformed fundamentalists & fringe cults in with ALL religious people. A "religious explanation" is unnecessary, since dinosaurs have nothing at all to do with our spiritual nature. Dinosaurs went extinct over 65 million years ago and fossils show they were once here.

YECs are a small -- but vocal - fraction of all religious people, and they are quite ignorant about theology AND about science.

The majority of people from a variety of faiths accept that evolution is a biological fact of life.

The majority of Christians and Jews and people of other faiths have no problem with evolution, or with descent through modification, and don't care that we share our DNA with our primate relatives.

It is our spiritual relationship to God that matters, not our physical development. Our physical evolution has nothing at all to do with that and the Bible is not a science textbook. Only misguided and mislead people have problems with science and faith, and they spread LIES about dinosaurs and evolution and science in general because they are pathetic.

EDIT: Dear Sister Patty -- You are spreading lies, whether intentionally or not, you should really check out Mary Schweitzer's work on legitimate sites, not YEC propaganda because she had emphatically stated that her discovery does NOT support the stupid YEC nonsense.

Spreading lies, misinformation, distortions of facts, etc. is sinning against God and ignorance is NOT a virtue.

The same as any other explanation. They were dominant on Earth for much of the time that vertebrates have been here. They died out through an act of God. All is part of God`s creating The Earth that we call home.

Don`t get wound up about things or try to wind others up either. Both are wrong.

There is evidence in both Texas and Russia of man footprints fossilized with Dinosaurs dating to the same era. This is a FACT.

Google it if you care.

Just fossils.

That they are quite recent...

In a Science article titled “Tyrannosaurus rex Soft Tissue Raises Tantalizing Prospects,” Erik Stokstad commented: “On page 1952, the team led by Mary Schweitzer of North Carolina State University in Raleigh describes dinosaur blood vessels—still flexible and elastic after 68 million years—and apparently intact cells” (2005, 307:1852). In the opening abstract of their report, Schweitzer and her colleagues remarked:

Soft tissues are preserved within hindlimb elements of Tyrannosaurus rex (Museum of the Rockies specimen 1125). Removal of the mineral phase reveals transparent, flexible, hollow blood vessels containing small round microstructures that can be expressed from the vessels into solution. Some regions of demineralized bone matrix are highly fibrous, and the matrix possesses elasticity and resilience. Three populations of microstructures have cell-like morphology. Thus, some dinosaurian soft tissues may retain some of their original flexibility, elasticity, and resilience (2005, 307:1952, parenthetical item in orig.).

The authors go on to disclose that this Tyrannosaurus rex specimen was discovered “at the base of the Hells Creek Formation, 8 m above the Fox Hills Sandstone” (307:1952). They estimated the creature’s age at approximately 18-years-old. However, the fascinating part of this report was in the pictures. Schweitzer and her colleagues included over 20 microscopic images of the soft tissue that was recovered from the dinosaur bone.

"God is testing our faith"

Actually, to be fair it's only the YECs who have to come up with a religious "explanation" for fossils.