A museum dedicated to showing off evidence supporting Creationism is unveiling an unusual new exhibit this Memorial Day weekend - a 30-foot long 10-foot high dinosaur skeleton. The perfectly preserved Allosaurus skeleton, the museum claims, is evidence that Noah's flood actually happened.
The skeleton is slated to go on display Saturday, and was donated to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, by Michael and Stephen Peroutka of the Elizabeth Streb Peroutka Foundation.
According to a press release from the museum, the Allosaurus skeleton, which if often confused with the larger apex predator, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, will be displayed in the museum's "Flood Geology" section as evidence that Noah's flood actually happened.
Donator Michael Peroutka said on Friday at the exhibit's private dedication that this fossil "is a testimony to the creative power of God in designing dinosaurs, and that it also lends evidence to the truth of a worldwide catastrophic flooding of the earth in Noah's time."
According to the museum, the dinosaurs bones - discovered in northwest Colorado - date to roughly 150 million years, B.C.E. and are perfectly preserved in such a way to suggest that an immediate and massive amount of water washed over the creature, drowning it.
"For decades I've walked through many leading secular museums, like the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., and have seen their impressive dinosaur skeletons, but they were used for evolution," museum founder Ken Ham said in a statement. "Now we have one of that class for our museum."
However, critics of the museum argue that the perfect preservation of the remains can be explained with events not as cataclysmic as a biblical flood.
The ancient remains of one of America's first humans - a young girl - was recently discovered in a similarly preserved state; so perfect in-fact, that scientists were able to extract DNA from a tooth to prove her people were the ancestors of modern Native Americans. According to scientists, the girl, called Naia, likely fell through a sink-hole 13,000 years ago when looking for fresh water.
For the ancient dinosaur, experts suggest that a mud slide, or even just local flooding could have preserved the Allosaurus remains so perfectly, given the right conditions.
The Creation Museum has invited skeptical experts to come and examine the skeleton for themselves, but so far, there have been no takers, UPI reports.