The National Geographic Society over the decades has consistently held closely to the secular perspective in its treatments of history and science. This is seen in all articles in National Geographic publications by its devotion to deep time and macroevolution. Articles on dinosaurs in particular rely heavily on the telling of stories that appeal to our human appetites for mystery and adventure. Great effort is placed on splendid (fictional) paintings with imaginative details of things discussed in the dinosaur stories. These starting points in the Nat Geo articles mean that truth can be, and often is, sacrificed. In my opinion, most National Geographic stories about dinosaurs are aimed at the readership level of the fourteen-year-old child. Unfortunately, most children of that age have not yet learned the importance of critical thinking and tend to believe everything they read. Nat Geo knows this fact and so fantastic dinosaur stories of this type are the usual result.
In 2024 Nat Geo published a book with the title, Dinosaurs—A New Look at the Prehistoric Icons.* I am writing this article as number two in a series on the various parts of this Nat Geo book. My article #2 will cover the chapter in the book called “Dino Eggs Show Their True Colors.” This particular article is one of several in the book written by Michael Greshko.
In all secular dinosaur stories, the assumption of deep time is foremost. What is not ever explained is that the deep time is a foundational assumption and not a historical or scientific fact. The geological timeline was developed based on assumed jumps of one kind of life to the next evolved kind. Various guesses about how long these jumps might have taken are then added up to get the millions of years. Of course, no one has ever witnessed any of these assumed evolutionary jumps either in the present or in the fossils in the rock record. The ages of sedimentary rocks are then determined by the artificial predesigned order of the fossils in the geological timeline. This timeline and the principle of uniformitarianism are taken totally on faith by evolutionists. It is not science! I wonder if secularists realize how true it is that they really are just “imagining dinosaurs.”
In the Nat Geo article “Dino Eggs Show Their True Colors,” the same evolutionary and deep time assumptions are everywhere inherent. A favorite quote of mine from the reference Manual of Ornithology by Proctor and Lynch (1993, page 230) provides a view at the foundational starting point for all secular scientists. It reads, “The avian egg is a miracle of natural engineering. Light and strong, it provides everything a developing bird embryo needs from just after the ovum is fertilized until the chick hatches. Bird eggs share many similarities with reptile eggs…”
In page after page inside loads of secular references the “natural engineering” of bird eggs and life forms in general is touted, all as a stated result of stupid nature and its natural selection. What would make sense to me is if the “engineering” was ascribed to the actual Engineer, and that the adaptations seen are understood to be internal to each life form rather than the result of the external forces that Darwin only imagined.
However, at the heart of the dino egg article is some very interesting science. And that is that much progress has been made in determining what causes the great variations in coloration found in bird eggs. While preliminary, this science has also been applied to the determination of the color of dinosaur eggs.
A Sampling of Bird Eggs with Various Shell Coloration
What has been known for a long time is that bird eggshells are primarily made up of the mineral calcium carbonate. Recent science has determined that the eggshell color is determined by two pigments, protoporphyrin IX and biliverdin that are inserted into or placed upon the calcium carbonate shell by the female. Nowadays every chicken farmer knows about this and uses the knowledge to control the generation of preferred coloration in the eggs they take to market. Protoporphyrin pigment results in eggshells that tend toward red-brown coloration, while biliverdin pigments cause eggshells that are blue-green. The genetics of the female are paramount to any egg makeup of course, so breeding programs are being used to control egg coloration for chickens.
The application to dinosaur eggshells described in Nat Geo Dinosaurs is as follows: “In a 2018 study [paleontologist Jasmina] Wiemann showed that when certain dinosaur eggshells are struck with a laser, the light that scatters back reveals degraded protoporphyrin and biliverdin, compounds that give modern eggs color and speckling” (page 30).
I am withholding my overall endorsement of the results in this dinosaur story until further research confirms the process and the results of the process. But if it becomes overwhelmingly accepted that it is scientifically known that dinosaur eggs were colored in a manner similar to the way that bird eggs are, I will know from God’s Word that the Engineer in the beginning used similar engineering for both bird and dinosaur eggs. Biblical creationists understand that the bird kind was created on Day 5 and the animal kind on Day 6. That being true, there could have been no evolutionary story of one kind morphing into another kind. Various secular articles that I read (while researching this article) claim that avian and dinosaur eggshell coloration had to have evolved up to three times in order to fit within their evolutionary paradigm.
Dinosaur Eggshell and Replica Egg Display at MSHCC Museum
While secular paleontology has progressed due to technological advances in imaging and computer processing, it is severely hampered by its lack of open-mindedness regarding what these tools are really revealing. These findings of possible degraded color causing pigments in dinosaur eggshells, along with numerous dinosaur soft tissue findings, and radiocarbon dating all scream that these dinosaur fossils cannot be millions of years old. The abundance of living fossils also belies the deep time evolutionary stories at each juncture.
They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. (Romans 1:25 NIV)
J.D. Mitchell
*Dinosaurs—A New Look at the Prehistoric Icons, National Geographic Partners, LLC, Meredith Operations Corporation, New York, NY publisher, 2024.
For more on dinosaur and bird eggs (but not on eggshell coloration) I recommend the secular book by Kenneth Carpenter, Eggs, Nests, and Baby Dinosaurs, Indiana University Press, 1999.
Related CEC articles that you can find on this website:
- “Radiocarbon Dating.”
- “Engineering a Hard-Shelled Egg.”
- “Soft Tissue in Dinosaur Bones.”
- “Is Iron the Answer?”
- “Historical Certainty & Millions of Years.”
