Creation - 2018 Volume 40, Issue 3

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ENOUGH TO TAKE YOUR BREATH AWAY

After plotting the flight patterns of a water fowl known as the ruddy shelduck and tracking it to altitudes of up to 6,800 m ( 22,000 ft), researchers say it’s the world’s highest-flying duck. This duck ranges in size from about 1 to 1.4 kg ( 2 to 3 lb)

and migrates from sea level on the Indian subcontinent north to its breeding grounds on the other side of the Himalayas. To traverse that mountain range and avoid flying over the really high peaks like Everest ( 8,800 m)

means having to cross terrain at least 4,000 m high. It climbs to those great heights at an impressive rate of about 0.74 m ( 2 ft 4 in) per second. That equates to about 45 m (145 ft) every minute on a journey where oxygen levels get increasingly lower.

A researcher observed: “This species has probably evolved a range of adaptations to be able to cope with flying so high,
where oxygen levels are half those at sea level. We don’t yet know the nature of these adaptations.”
But which is the more plausible explanation of the ruddy shelduck’s high-flying capabilities? That they developed spon-
taneously over millions of years? Or that the information for such capabilities, allowing them to cope with the much higher
mountains after the Flood, was present from the first day flying creatures were created about 6,000 years ago? For more on
the incredible feats of our feathered friends, see creation.com/wings.

Parr, N., et al., High altitude flights by ruddy shelduck Tadorna ferruginea during trans-Himalayan migrations, J. Avian Biol 48(10):1310–1315, October

2017 | doi:10.1111/jav.01443.

High-flying ducks cross Himalayas, phys.org, September 2017.

FLOOD-RUNNER COULDN’T OUTRUN THE FLOOD

The fossilized tail and foot bones of a turkey-sized dinosaur were discovered in 2005 in coastal Victoria, Australia.

It has been given a new species name, Diluvicursor picker-ingi, meaning Pickering’s flood-running dinosaur.

The ‘flood-runner’ aspect of the name derives from the fossil having been found in rock layers evidently deposited by fast-flowing water. The “high-energy” floodwater entombed not only Diluvicursor but a host of other vertebrates too, all entangled in a mass of plant debris, including huge logs—one exposed fossil log measured five metres long. And the amount of sediment deposited was huge, as evidenced e.g. by a now-coalified tree stump and its root ball being completely buried, in an upright position.

Sadly, evolutionists ignore this “ancient log-jam”, similar to burial patterns seen in fossil sites around the world, as evidence consistent with a single, global event—the worldwide Flood of Genesis 6–9. In that event, the only refuge for the likes of Diluvicursor was to be on the Ark with Noah, for no ‘flood-runner’ could outrun that Deluge. And this latest fossil news is a reminder also that not all dinosaurs were huge—a key point as to how the various dino kinds could fit aboard the Ark. (Mega-dinosaurs could have been taken aboard as juveniles/adolescents—see creation.com/dinogrowth.)

Herne, M., et al., A new small-bodied ornithopod (Dinosauria, Ornithischia) from a deep, high-energy Early Cretaceous river of the Australian–Antarctic rift system, PeerJ 5:e4113, 2018 | https://doi.