Creation Expeditions Team Discovery

Fossilized skin imprints from “Ezekiel” the Edmontosaurus point to recent catastrophic death of this duck-billed giant. Find counters the myth that the Edmontosaurus was a transitional dinosaur with feathers.

For Immediate Release
July 21, 2003

A team of home schoolers and paleontologists from Creation Expeditions have excavated a partially-mummified, giant duck-billed dinosaur from the badlands of South Dakota. Dubbed “Ezekiel,” the discovery of this thirty-foot-long Edmontosaurus comes just over one year since the Creation Expeditions team made headlines with their discovery of the world’s fourth and largest Allosaurus skull in northern Colorado. In addition to recovering the complete skull and more than eighty-five percent of Ezekiel, the group found excellent samples of fossilized skin.

Evolutionists theorize that the Edmontosaurus died millions of years ago, and some have recently speculated that this was a partially feathered type of dinosaur which eventually evolved into modern birds. The Creation Expedition team believes their discovery challenges such theories.

“Our find dispels the myth that the Edmontosaurus was a pre-bird,” said Pete DeRosa, president of Creation Expeditions and team leader on the South Dakota dig. “The rich ash and sulfur content in the soil beautifully preserved the animal’s skin down to the very pigment. It is clear that this was a reptilian-like animal with skin closer to that of a crocodile than a bird. Our discovery demonstrates that there is no reasonable possibility of feathers on this animal.”

The “Hand” of Ezekiel

DeRosa continued, “Buried in the same strata with Ezekiel were evidences of animals which, by evolutionary standards, should not be there, including garfish and turtles. The deposition of the animal, the fossilization and preservation of the skin, the full articulation of the animal, and the fact that it appears to be part of a fossil graveyard, all point to the relatively recent death of Ezekiel. We believe he died thousands, not millions, of years ago. His death is best explained by the catastrophic events surrounding the flood of Noah’s day, as described in the Bible.”

The discovery was announced this week and the partially-restored skull was revealed for the first time at the 2003 Christian Booksellers Association in Orlando, Florida.

“The human credit for the find goes to my two boys, Peter and Mark,” DeRosa said. “They were the ones who first discovered Ezekiel, organized the heavy lifting for the excavation, and performed the restoration on the skull. Of course, all honor goes to the Lord for leading us to the site and blessing us with such a tremendous discovery.”

Five of the Team Members
Gathered Around the Skull

After learning about the 2002 Colorado Allosaur skull, a Christian family from South Dakota invited Creation Expeditions to visit their property to look for dinosaurs. The team accepted the offer. Several days of searching revealed evidence in the form of “float material” which pointed to the possibility that the diggers were near a large bone bed containing the remains of several different kinds of dinosaurs.

The team first discovered the frill of a triceratops. Later they excavated several specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex teeth. But it was the discovery of a line of unidentified but fully articulated vertebrae which captured their attention and tipped them off to the possibility that they were onto something significant. Almost four weeks and hundreds of man hours later, a thirty-foot-long Edmontosaurus had been scientifically mapped, plaster-jacketed, and excavated.

Skin from Ezekiel

“We always hope that the Lord will bless our work, but I certainly had no idea that he would lead us to such a remarkably substantial discovery,” son Pete DeRosa, Jr. explained. “It was a few days before we knew for certain what kind of a dinosaur we had discovered. But the pelvic bones gave it away. Once we found them, we knew we had some form of Hadrosaurus. It was clearly a bipedal ornithopod, not a quadruped.”

To reach the skull, Creation Expeditions had to dig nine feet down and twenty-one feet into the rock matrix, while painstakingly removing three tons of dirt. But the results were worth the work and effort. The beautifully-preserved skull, with its magnificent crest intact, measured almost four feet in length.

Believed to be an herbivore, the duckbilled Edmontosaurus has teeth which form a large grooved surface, well-suited for grinding plants in a manner similar to modern cows and horses.

The Edmontosaurus discovery comes less than a year after the release of the Vision Forum film Raising the Allosaur, which documents the story of the successful 2002 home school expedition with the DeRosas to locate the world’s fourth complete Allosaurus skull.

Partially-Restored Skull of Ezekiel on Display
at the 2003 Christian Booksellers Association
in Orlando, Florida

“There were some skeptics and critics who belittled the DeRosa brothers after their remarkable 2002 Allosaurus find, claiming that these home schooled young men were incapable of the discovery, excavation, and restoration of a world-class dinosaur,” said Doug Phillips, President of Vision Forum and team member on the 2002 mission to find the Allosaurus skull. “The discovery of Ezekiel should silence such ignorant claims.

“We are dealing with some of the best and the brightest that the home school movement and the community of creation scientists has produced. These are men who grew up in the field working on bones. They are genuine prodigies whom God appears to be blessing with one remarkable discovery after another.

“I predict the DeRosa brothers will become for creation science, what the Larson brothers of the Black Hills Institute have meant to the world of evolutionary paleontology,” Phillips said. “In a sense, they have already won the ‘Triple Crown’ of field paleontology with their significant finds in Florida, Colorado, and now South Dakota.

“There are paleontologists who spend their lives hoping to unearth one significant discovery. Before reaching the age of twenty-one, Peter and Mark DeRosa have excavated and partially restored a world-class Columbian Mammoth jaw, an historic Allosaurus, and now a fully-articulated Edmontosaurus. In my view, this is a clear case of God blessing the faithfulness of a ministry dedicated to uniting the principles of family discipleship with excellence in a field once dominated by evolutionists.”

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Contact: Kevin Turley at 210-340-5250, ext. 228 for press contacts with the DeRosas.