A Public Statement on the Noah’s Ark Claims at the Durupınar Formation

Over the past few days you may have seen headlines claiming that the Durupınar formation in eastern Türkiye has been “100% confirmed” as the remains of Noah’s Ark. The Daily Mail reported that researchers had “100 percent confirmed” the formation near Mount Ararat to be a “man-made object.”¹ The story spread quickly on social media, and many of you have asked for my response. I offer it with deep respect for the biblical text and for everyone who is excited by this news. The claim is not confirmed, and it should never have been presented that way.

My interest in the Ark is not casual. I have researched it for years, including the question of where its remains might be if they survived. As an archaeologist, I climbed Greater Mount Ararat in 2013 to the Eastern Plateau with one of the largest scientific expeditions ever organized to document a possible structure on the mountain. We went there because the evidence available to us pointed to that location. I also served as associate producer of Finding Noah, the documentary that followed our team up the mountain. Directed by Brent Baum and narrated by Academy Award nominee Gary Sinise, the film was released by Fathom Events in select theaters nationwide in October 2015.² During that same 2013 trip, I also visited the Durupınar site in person. I mention all of this for one reason. I know exactly what it feels like to want this to be true. I have stood on that mountain and hoped. That is precisely why it concerns me when hope runs ahead of evidence.

What Is Actually Being Reported

Here is what the 2026 project has reported. Drilling stopped when the equipment struck an extremely hard layer about four to five meters below the surface, and the drill bit broke. The team also encountered several underground cavities, one of which filled with mud and water. It is now preparing a small robot, called Gopher, to enter narrow spaces through the boreholes, record video, and collect samples. One underground layer reportedly contained organic material, which is being tested to see whether it includes decayed wood.

Now look at what the project’s own spokesman has said. Andrew Jones stated that it is too early to claim he has found evidence that the Ark is buried there, even as he added, “I firmly believe the Durupinar Formation represents the buried remains of Noah’s Ark.” He acknowledged that the evidence has not definitively identified the formation as the biblical vessel. In other words, the “100%” did not come from the data. It came from someone on his team looking for a headline, and the headline went viral.

Even the press coverage admits as much. One outlet noted that the hard material has not been confirmed as wood, let alone as a ship’s timber, and that independent laboratory testing, including dating, is still required. It added that no peer-reviewed study has shown the underground features to be man-made and that no wooden vessel has been uncovered. The “100% confirmed” language now reaching the public did not come from a peer-reviewed archaeological publication. It came from a press cycle.

In fairness, I want to note that the 2026 fieldwork operates under an official permit. The field program is led by Prof. Dr. Cenker Atila of Sivas Cumhuriyet University, with Jones serving as vice president of the research project, and it has authorization from the relevant Turkish government agencies.³ Professional oversight is welcome. But a permitted dig is not a confirmed discovery. Until the project’s archaeologists publish their findings for peer review, no one, including the project’s promoters, is in a position to declare the matter settled.

We’ve Been Here Before

Durupınar is not a new discovery. The formation was spotted in aerial photographs in 1959, first investigated in 1960, and promoted as the Ark from the late 1970s onward, after Ron Wyatt took up the claim. Over more than sixty years, independent archaeologists and geologists, myself included, have examined it, and none of us has been persuaded by the archaeologial evidence. Geologists have consistently explained it as a natural formation, shaped by folding and by volcanic mudflows on the slopes of the Tendürek volcanic field.

Headlines like this one have a history. In 1994, David Fasold, once one of Durupınar’s most enthusiastic promoters, changed his mind. After expeditions that included drilling and excavation, he began to doubt that the site was the Ark. In September 1994 he visited it with Australian geologist Ian Plimer and concluded that the formation was not a boat.⁴

In 2010, a Hong Kong–based group announced that it had found the Ark on Mount Ararat itself. A member of the Noah’s Ark Ministries International team said the group was not 100 percent certain but was “99.9 percent” sure. Within hours, Dr. Randall Price, who had served as the archaeologist on that group’s 2008 expedition, wrote that the photos of the supposed discovery were fake. Price said he had reason to believe that local men had hauled wood to the site to stage a hoax, including timbers taken from an old structure in the Black Sea region.⁵ His warning applies just as much today. The pattern never changes: a dramatic announcement, a near-certain percentage, and a wave of excitement, followed by a quiet collapse that receives a fraction of the attention.

What Is Not Evidence

The headlines blur the line between data and interpretation, so let’s take the claims point by point.

Scans and drilling are not excavation. Durupınar has never been excavated. Ground-penetrating radar produces images that must be interpreted, and a borehole yields a pencil-thin sample from a 500-foot hillside. Neither replaces the careful, documented, layer-by-layer removal of earth.

A broken drill bit is not evidence. This is volcanic country. The mudflow deposits here are full of embedded basalt boulders and hardened volcanic debris. Hard material four meters down is exactly what you would expect, Ark or no Ark.

Underground voids are not evidence. Cavities form naturally in mudflow deposits through settling, water movement, and slope failure. This slope is actively moving. Reports from 2023 described giant fissures opening in the formation, which faces a growing risk of landslides every year. A cavity that fills with mud and water is exactly what an unstable, waterlogged slope produces.

“No bedrock” is not evidence. Jones has argued that the absence of limestone or solid bedrock rules out two natural explanations: that the shape is a limestone block, and that mud flowed around bedrock to create it. But even if every natural model proposed so far needed revision, that would not make the formation a ship. Ruling out one explanation does not prove another. The burden of proof remains on whoever claims a man-made structure.

Petrified or mineralized wood, even if confirmed, is not evidence on its own. Wood turns up in volcanic deposits all over the world. To count as evidence of a vessel, it would need tool marks, joinery, or other signs of construction. It would also need a secure radiocarbon date and a sealed context. Ancient wood alone does not make a boat.

Pottery lying on the surface is not evidence. Surface pottery has no stratigraphic context and has almost certainly washed down from nearby ancient settlements. It shows that people lived in eastern Anatolia during the Chalcolithic period, which we already knew. The university researchers who announced the pottery finds in 2023 said as much themselves. Prof. Faruk Kaya stated that the dating does not allow anyone to say the ship is there and that extensive research would be needed to establish it.⁶

A rough match in shape and size is not evidence. The “match” to Genesis depends on choosing the Egyptian royal cubit after the formation had already been measured. Jones has said publicly that the formation measures exactly 300 royal cubits. But the width does not match, and the outline of an eroding mudflow feature is not a fixed measurement.

What Responsible Research Looks Like

If the Durupınar team believes it has found a man-made structure, the path forward is well established. Any credentialed archaeologist would expect the team to do the following.

Release the raw data. Publish the complete radar datasets and core logs, not just selected images, so that independent geophysicists can reprocess and test them.

Document the chain of custody. Record every sample’s path from borehole to laboratory so that contamination or substitution can be ruled out. The 2010 episode shows why this matters.

Use independent, blind laboratory testing. Send samples to several unaffiliated labs. Petrographic thin sections can distinguish petrified wood from mineral concretions, and wood-anatomy analysis can identify species.

Obtain radiocarbon dates from sealed contexts. Dates from surface material or disturbed fill tell us nothing about a buried structure.

Excavate. Conduct a controlled, stratigraphic excavation under the direction of the project’s archaeologists and the relevant Turkish authorities.

Submit to peer review. Publish in a recognized scientific journal before announcing conclusions to the public.

During the 2010 controversy, Dr. Randall Price stated the principle well: the greater the claim, the greater the evidence required to support it. He urged the team to make its samples available to scientists and scholars for comparative analysis. That standard applies to Durupınar today.

Why “100%” Is Irresponsible

No credentialed archaeologist would announce “100% confirmation” after a handful of scans and drill cores. In archaeology, confirmation comes at the end of the process described above, not at the beginning, and never through a press release. A claim like this is not merely sensational. It is irresponsible and unethical. It misleads believers, who deserve the truth. It exposes the faith to ridicule when the claim collapses. And it hands skeptics an easy target. When a “100% confirmed” Ark turns out to be geology, people do not just stop trusting the promoter. Some stop trusting the Bible.

I am not alone in this assessment. Colleagues whose work I respect, including Dr. Randall Price, Dr. Scott Stripling, Dr. Judd Burton, Dr. Don Shockey (deceased), Dr. Richard Bright (Ark researcher and author of The Ark Discoveries and Quest for Discovery) and Ted Wright of EPIC Archaeology have not accepted Durupınar as the Ark. Dr. John Morris of the Institute for Creation Research rejected the identification in print as early as 1990 and held that view until his death in January 2023.⁷ Morris led thirteen expeditions to Mount Ararat in search of the Ark, so his judgment reflected long experience, not casual skepticism.⁸ I discussed the site with him personally.⁹ Many others share this view.

It does not help that ministries have brought large tour groups to this site for years. Visitors look down from the overlook, see the general outline, and leave convinced they have seen the Ark. I understand the emotional pull of that moment. But a shape seen from a hillside is not an archaeological finding.

The Ark Was Not a Boat

Finally, the popular image of the Ark is itself part of the problem. Genesis never calls it a ship. The Hebrew word is tēbāh, meaning a box or chest, and the only other place it appears is the basket that carried the infant Moses on the Nile. Noah’s Ark was not a sailing vessel with a rudder and drogue stones hanging off the sides to steady it. It was a life-support vessel: a rectangular, three-deck refuge, sealed by God (“The LORD shut him in,” Genesis 7:16), built to float rather than to be steered.

What Would Change My Mind

Let me be fair. If a credentialed team excavates the site and recovers timber from a sealed context, showing tool marks or joinery, supported by secure radiocarbon dates, and published in peer-reviewed literature, I will gladly say so publicly. That is how the process is supposed to work. Until then, I urge readers to hold these headlines loosely, to ask for evidence rather than excitement, and to remember that the truth of God’s Word has never depended on a hill in Türkiye.

The Full Analysis

Every few months the headlines return on the interwebs and people contact me regularly: Noah’s Ark has been found! The boat-shaped hill near Doğubayazıt has become one of the most persistent claims in popular biblical archaeology. I understand the appeal. I have stood on that hillside. From the right angle and in the right light, it looks like a ship frozen in mud. But people who love the Bible need to hear this: good theology does not need bad archaeology. Christians should care about the truth, including the truth about rocks. When we tie the credibility of Scripture to claims that collapse under examination, we do not defend the Bible. We embarrass it.

So let’s do what we should always do. First we will look at what the evidence says, and then at what the text says. The biblical text, it turns out, is far more interesting than the legend. In 1959, Turkish Army cartographer Captain İlhan Durupınar noticed an unusual, elongated feature in aerial survey photographs of the Doğubayazıt district.¹⁰ A 1960 expedition visited the site, dug in a few places, and concluded that the feature was natural.¹¹ The site was largely forgotten until the late 1970s and 1980s, when Ron Wyatt, an American nurse-anesthetist and amateur explorer, made it the centerpiece of his claims. Wyatt argued that the formation was the petrified remains of Noah’s Ark, that its dimensions matched Genesis 6:15, and that he had recovered petrified timbers, metal rivets, and anchor stones. Those claims still circulate through videos, websites, and tour groups.

Let’s examine them one at a time.

1. What the Rocks Say

The claim is that the formation is a man-made structure whose outline matches the Ark described in Genesis: 300 cubits long, 50 wide, and 30 high. Geologically, the Durupınar formation is a syncline, a downward fold in layered sedimentary rock produced when strata are compressed.¹² The fold’s resistant layers erode more slowly than the surrounding material, leaving a raised, elongated outline. Mudflows moving downslope around a bedrock obstruction then shape and sharpen that outline. That is how you get a “boat” without a boatbuilder.

The most important scientific treatment of the site is a 1996 paper by Lorence G. Collins and David Fasold in the Journal of Geoscience Education, which identified the formation as a common geologic structure.¹³ Notice who co-wrote it. Fasold had been one of the site’s most energetic promoters and had worked alongside Wyatt in the 1980s. A decade later he put his name to a paper explaining why the “Ark” was a fold in the rock. When a site’s own advocate walks away, that tells us something. The so-called walls are hardened mud and embedded boulders. No one has documented large petrified timbers, hull planking, or joinery anywhere in the formation.¹⁴

2. The “Petrified Wood” and the “Rivets”

Wyatt claimed to have recovered petrified wood, metal rivets, and other fittings from the hull. When his samples were examined, the “petrified wood” turned out to be ordinary local rock, including basalt and limestone, with none of the cellular structure that petrified wood preserves.¹⁵ The “rivets” and “metal fittings” were iron-oxide concretions such as hematite and limonite, natural mineral growths that are often mistaken for manufactured objects.¹⁶

Wyatt frequently cited analyses by Galbraith Laboratories in Knoxville, Tennessee. Those tests, however, were simple elemental assays that measured quantities such as iron, aluminum, and carbon. An elemental assay tells you what a rock is made of. It cannot tell you that the rock was once a ship’s timber, and the lab never claimed that it was.¹⁷ Iron-rich rock in a volcanic region is not evidence of shipbuilding. It is evidence of a volcanic region.

3. What Radar Did and Did Not Find

Wyatt and his associates said that radar scans revealed bulkheads, chambers, and a regular internal structure beneath the surface. The site has never been properly excavated, but it has been studied by professional geophysicists. Tom Fenner of Geophysical Survey Systems, a specialist in ground-penetrating radar, took part in survey work there. He reported that the anomalies Wyatt interpreted as bulkheads were natural variations in soil density and rock composition, and that Wyatt’s results could not be consistently replicated.¹⁸

Geophysicist John Baumgardner was intrigued enough to work at the site in the mid-to-late 1980s, including joint surveys with Turkish geologist Salih Bayraktutan in 1987. His findings led him to conclude that the formation was natural, and he publicly distanced himself from the Ark identification. Bayraktutan, who also carried out core drilling at the site, likewise concluded that its features were entirely natural.¹⁹

The principle is simple. Ground-penetrating radar produces data that must be interpreted, and a regular pattern of reflections can come from layered sediment just as easily as from lumber. The question is never “Can I see a shape in the scan?” It is always “Does the shape survive testing by someone who isn’t hoping to find it?” So far, Durupınar’s shapes have not.

The same caution applies to the newest claims. In 2024 and 2025, a project called Noah’s Ark Scans released new radar imagery and soil results. According to the project’s press release, soil samples collected in September 2024 and analyzed that December showed elevated organic matter and potassium, which it presented as signs of decayed wood or organic structures. Those results appeared in a press release, not a peer-reviewed journal. Elevated organic carbon in soil is not, by itself, a timber signature. Soils accumulate organic matter from plants, animals, and human land use.

4. The Anchor Stones

Wyatt pointed to large basalt slabs with holes bored near one end, found in villages near the site, and identified them as the Ark’s “drogue” or anchor stones. Standing stones like these are found throughout eastern Türkiye. Many bear carved crosses, consistent with their identification as Armenian-era grave markers or memorial stones.²⁰ The holes also argue against the anchor theory. They sit too close to the edge to withstand the strain of a heavy stone dragging behind a vessel. They make far more sense as rope holes used to haul the slabs into place before they were set upright.

Wyatt also cited animal hair, coprolites, and antlers. That kind of organic debris is exactly what you would expect in a region that has supported wildlife and herds for thousands of years. Animal remains on a hillside in pastoral country are not evidence of a floating menagerie.

5. Playing with Cubits

The claim is that the formation’s dimensions match the Ark’s. Read this part carefully. The formation is roughly 515 to 538 feet long, depending on who measures it and where they place the ends.²¹ To produce a match, Wyatt used the Egyptian royal cubit of about 20.6 inches instead of the more common cubit of about 18 inches. The royal cubit gives an Ark of about 515 feet; the common cubit gives about 450 feet. Choosing the unit of measurement after you already know the length you want is not a prediction. It is arithmetic done backward.

The width is an even bigger problem. The formation is considerably wider than 50 cubits. Advocates explain the difference by arguing that the Ark’s sides splayed outward as it collapsed. That may sound reasonable, but it makes the claim unfalsifiable: if the length matches, it is the Ark, and if the width doesn’t match, it is still the Ark, only deformed. In any case, the outline of a mudflow-shaped fold is not a fixed measurement. Erosion and slope movement have been reshaping it for millennia, and they still are.

6. The Missing Step: Peer Review

In more than four decades of promotion, none of Ron Wyatt’s claims about Durupınar has passed peer review, the step that separates a discovery from an assertion. His methods were not transparent, his samples were not systematically made available for independent testing, and independent specialists did not support his conclusions. Scholars and scientists across several disciplines criticized his work for failing to meet basic standards of archaeological investigation. The peer-reviewed literature that does exist on the site, above all Collins and Fasold’s 1996 paper, concludes that the formation is natural.²²

The Turkish government’s handling of the site follows the same arc. In the late 1980s, amid public excitement, Türkiye declared Durupınar a national park. As the scientific case weakened, official enthusiasm cooled. Today the site functions mainly as a tourist attraction, with a small visitor center overlooking the formation.

7. The Pottery Question

The newest argument involves ceramics. Local researchers often cite pottery fragments found near the formation as evidence of human activity during the Chalcolithic period, roughly 5500 to 3000 BC. The implication, sometimes stated outright and sometimes left for readers to infer, is that the pottery connects the site to Noah.

Some background helps. In 2023, a research team formed by Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen University and Istanbul Technical University announced preliminary results from rock and soil samples collected at the site.²³ The headline finding was evidence of human activity in the region during the Chalcolithic. Lost in the coverage was a remark by Prof. Faruk Kaya, one of the university’s own vice-rectors: the dating does not allow anyone to say the ship is there, and establishing that would require extensive further research. He is right. Mainstream archaeologists, geologists, and biblical scholars reject any link between these fragments and the Genesis narrative, for five reasons.

First, geological context. Durupınar is a natural syncline, not a vessel. Artifacts found near a structure that does not exist cannot be attributed to it. You cannot have a ship’s galley without a ship.

Second, surface context. The fragments were collected from the surface and lack a secure stratigraphic context. In archaeology, context is nearly everything. An artifact gains meaning from where it was found, sealed in a datable layer alongside other material. Surface finds on an eroding slope have almost certainly been moved, carried downhill over millennia by landslides, erosion, and seasonal runoff from ancient settlements nearby. That movement severs any connection between the pottery and the formation it happens to rest on.

Third, typology and chronology. In style, clay composition, and firing technique, the pottery consists of standard regional utility wares typical of Late Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age cultures in Anatolia and the Caucasus. Nothing about it is unusual. It shows no sign of specialized maritime use and nothing that points to a single catastrophic event. These are the everyday cooking and storage pots of farmers and herders.

Fourth, settled habitation. Pottery of this kind turns up across Ağrı province. Its distribution reflects generations of settled life, including herding, farming, and trade, not the sudden arrival of eight survivors. If anything, the pottery tells a story of continuous occupation, which is the opposite of what an arrival event would leave behind.

Fifth, no direct radiocarbon or organic link. Preliminary soil analyses have measured organic carbon levels, but no peer-reviewed study has connected the pottery, or its clay or residues, to structural timber, to ancient bitumen (recall Genesis 6:14, “cover it inside and out with pitch”), or to a destruction layer matching the Genesis account. Such a claim would require secure, peer-reviewed radiocarbon dates on sealed organic remains recovered in context. That is the standard any archaeologist would apply to any site. Durupınar does not get an exemption because the stakes feel high.

In short, the pottery shows that people lived in eastern Anatolia during the Chalcolithic period. We already knew that. It does not show that one of them built the Ark.

8. What the Text Actually Says

Now for the part that matters most, because this is where the popular image gets wonky before anyone picks up a shovel. When most people picture Noah’s Ark, they imagine a ship with a curved hull, a pointed bow, and perhaps a small cabin on deck. Children’s books and theme parks have done their work. But Genesis doesn’t call the Ark a ship.

The Hebrew word is tēbāh (תֵּבָה). It appears in only two contexts in the Hebrew Bible: Noah’s Ark (Genesis 6–9) and the basket that carried the infant Moses on the Nile (Exodus 2:3, 5).²⁴ Hebrew had perfectly good words for seagoing ships, including ʾŏniyyāh (אֳנִיָּה), the common term for a ship, and sĕpînāh (סְפִינָה), used for Jonah’s vessel (Jonah 1:5). The biblical writer used neither. Most Hebrew lexicons treat tēbāh as a probable loanword from the Egyptian ḏbꜣt, meaning “chest,” “box,” or even “coffin.”²⁵ Consider what that implies. The word for Noah’s refuge from the flood is the same word for Moses’ refuge from Pharaoh. Both are containers built for a single purpose: to keep someone alive through waters that are destroying everyone else. Neither is steered or sailed. In both stories the person inside is passive, and God does the preserving. Genesis 7:16 says it plainly: “The LORD shut him in.”

This is deliberate literary design. The writer of Exodus wants readers to see Moses’ basket as a miniature Ark. Israel’s deliverer is carried through the waters in a tēbāh, just as humanity was. The Genesis dimensions support this reading. Three hundred by fifty by thirty cubits describes a rectangular box with a 6:1 length-to-width ratio, the profile of a barge rather than a ship. The text mentions no keel, rudder, sails, or oars. It describes a floating, three-deck, compartmentalized refuge.

The wider ancient Near Eastern setting makes the point sharper. Flood stories were common across Mesopotamia, and each imagined the rescue vessel differently. In Tablet XI of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim’s boat is a perfect cube, equal in length, width, and height.²⁶ A cuneiform tablet published by Irving Finkel of the British Museum describes the Atrahasis boat as a giant round coracle.²⁷ The Genesis Ark, by contrast, is a long, stable box. Of the three designs, only the one in Genesis could actually ride out rough water. A cube would tumble end over end, and a giant coracle would spin.

9. Built to Float, Not to Sail

Is a box with 6:1 proportions actually seaworthy? The question has been tested. In the early 1990s, a team at the Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO), led by Dr. Seon Won Hong, compared twelve hull designs of equal volume but different proportions. They evaluated each for stability, structural strength, and seakeeping, meaning how a vessel behaves in waves.³⁰ Long, narrow hulls tended to be structurally weak, and short, wide hulls rolled excessively. The Genesis proportions came out at or near the best balance of all three factors. According to the study, a vessel with those proportions could have handled waves of 30 meters or more.

Readers should know where the study appeared: the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, a creationist periodical, not a mainstream naval engineering journal. The authors were qualified naval engineers, and their modeling methods are standard. Still, I would rather tell you the venue than have you discover it later and wonder what else I left out. The broad conclusion also agrees with basic naval architecture. Long, box-shaped hulls are stable load carriers, which is why barges are built that way.

The point for our purposes is simple. The Ark described in Genesis is coherent as an engineering concept: a stable, passive, life-preserving barge. That concept has nothing to do with a fold of rock in the Tendürek foothills.

10. Boots on the Ground

Everything above can be checked in the published literature. But I also went and looked for myself. In 2013 I investigated the Durupınar site in person. I walked the formation and examined the exposed material, the “walls,” the surface debris, and the surrounding slope. As an archaeologist, I came away unconvinced. The site lacks the archaeological and geological features needed to support the identification. Everything I saw matched natural processes: folding, erosion, and mudflow, on a slope that is still moving. Dr. John Morris was right and I still stand by his conviction.

I will add something personal. I went hoping to find something significant. Anyone who spends a career in biblical archaeology hopes to see the text and the ground meet. Sometimes they do, and when they do, it is thrilling. That hope is exactly why we must hold ourselves to the evidence. The discipline exists to protect us from finding what we want to find.

Final Thoughts

The Durupınar formation will keep capturing the public imagination, and new press releases will keep appearing. The evidence, however, has been consistent for more than sixty years. The formation is a natural geological structure. The “timbers” are rock, the “rivets” are concretions, the “anchors” are grave markers, the dimensions depend on selective measurement, the radar anomalies are geology, and the pottery reflects ordinary village life in ancient Anatolia.

Researchers from very different camps have reached the same conclusion, from critics of creationism such as Collins to young-earth creationists such as Andrew Snelling.³¹ When scholars who disagree on almost everything agree on this, it is worth noticing. If the search for the Ark continues, it must meet credible scientific standards to have any legitimacy.

Here’s what I want readers to take away. The Ark of Genesis is not a treasure buried under a Turkish hillside, waiting to prove the Bible true. It is a tēbāh: a box of refuge, sealed by God, carrying the remnant of creation through the waters of judgment into a new beginning. The text invites us to see Moses in that picture, and later writers see even more (1 Peter 3:20–21). That theological reading loses nothing because a boat-shaped hill turned out to be a fold in the rock. If anything, it comes into sharper focus once we stop staring at the hill. If you want to understand the Bible, read it in its own world and on its own terms. And test every claim, especially the ones you would like to be true.

Footnotes

1. Western Journal, “Report: Suspected Site of Noah’s Ark ‘100 Percent Confirmed’ to Be a ‘Manmade Object,’” September 24, 2026, westernjournal.com/report-suspected-site-noahs-ark-100-percent-confirmed-manmade-object/; Charisma News, September 2026, mycharisma.com/news/report-suspected-site-of-noahs-ark-100-percent-confirmed-to-be-a-manmade-object/; Euro Weekly News, “Noah’s Ark Is 100% Confirmed as Huge Discovery Is Made, Scientists Say,” September 26, 2026, euroweeklynews.com/2026/09/26/noahs-ark-is-100-confirmed-as-huge-discovery-is-made-scientists-say/; Total Pro Sports, September 2026, totalprosports.com/general/noahs-ark-durupinar-man-made-structure-scans/. All four summarize the Daily Mail’s report of September 23, 2026.

2. Finding Noah, directed by Brent Baum (Fathom Events, 2015). See “Documentary Search for Noah’s Ark Features Metro Business Owner,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, September 29, 2015, arkansasonline.com/news/2015/sep/29/documentary-search-noahs-ark-features-metro-busine/; Fandango film listing, fandango.com/finding-noah-2015-185694/movie-overview.

3. End of the American Dream, “Yes, the Resting Place of Noah’s Ark Has Been Discovered, and Scientists Are About to Prove It,” September 2026, endoftheamericandream.com/yes-the-resting-place-of-noahs-ark-has-been-discovered-and-scientists-are-about-to-prove-it/. Cited only for the project’s leadership and permit details.

4. “Durupınar Site,” Wikipedia, citing contemporary press coverage of Fasold and Plimer’s September 1994 visit, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durupınar_site. See also Ian Plimer, Telling Lies for God: Reason vs Creationism (Milsons Point, NSW: Random House Australia, 1994).

5. “Baptist Scholars View Noah’s Ark Discovery Claims with Skepticism,” Baptist News Global, April 2010, baptistnews.com/article/baptistscholarsviewnoahsarkdiscoveryclaimswithskepticism/; “Noah’s Ark Discovery Could Be Hoax, Critic Says,” Catholic News Agency, May 5, 2010, reporting the Christian Science Monitor of April 28, 2010, catholicnewsagency.com/news/noahs_ark_discovery_could_be_hoax_critic_says.

6. “According to the Noah’s Ark Report of the Mount Ararat Committee, the Flood Occurred 5 Thousand Years Ago,” Arkeolojik Haber, 2023, arkeolojikhaber.com/haber-according-to-the-noahs-ark-report-of-the-mount-ararat-committee-the-flood-occurred-5-thousand-years-ago-38242/.

7. John D. Morris, “That Boat-Shaped Rock . . . Is It Noah’s Ark?” Creation Ex Nihilo 12, no. 4 (1990): 16–19.

8. Lauren Green, “Noah’s Ark Hoax Claim Doesn’t Deter Believers,” Fox News, foxnews.com/world/noahs-ark-hoax-claim-doesnt-deter-believers.

9. John D. Morris, personal conversation with the author, June 2016.

10. The feature appeared in 1959 aerial survey imagery taken for the Turkish military’s mapping of eastern Anatolia. It lies between the villages of Telçeker and Üzengili in the Doğubayazıt district of Ağrı province.

11. The 1960 expedition, which included Arthur Brandenberger of Ohio State University, reported no evidence of human construction. For accounts of the early investigations, see William H. Shea, “The Ark-Shaped Formation in the Tendurek Mountains of Eastern Turkey,” Creation Research Society Quarterly 13, no. 2 (1976): 90–95; and Morris, “That Boat-Shaped Rock,” 16–19.

12. Lorence G. Collins and David F. Fasold, “Bogus ‘Noah’s Ark’ from Turkey Exposed as a Common Geologic Structure,” Journal of Geoscience Education 44 (1996): 439–444.

13. Collins and Fasold, “Bogus ‘Noah’s Ark,’” 439–444.

14. Andrew A. Snelling, “Amazing ‘Ark’ Exposé,” Creation Ex Nihilo 14, no. 4 (1992): 26–38; Bill Crouse, “The Durupinar Site. Ron Wyatt: Are His Claims Bona Fide?” Ararat Report, no. 17 (Christian Information Ministries International, 1988).

15. Snelling, “Amazing ‘Ark’ Exposé,” summarizing the laboratory reports and assay results that Allen S. Roberts shared openly from his files at a meeting on June 11, 1992. Those files included laboratory reports on rock samples, assay results, and a Madison, Tennessee, newspaper clipping.

16. Collins and Fasold, “Bogus ‘Noah’s Ark’”; Snelling, “Amazing ‘Ark’ Exposé.”

17. Snelling, “Amazing ‘Ark’ Exposé”; Roberts, evidence files shared June 11, 1992.

18. Thomas J. Fenner, telephone conversations, 1992, and faxed letter, July 22, 1992, as reported in Snelling, “Amazing ‘Ark’ Exposé.”

19. John Baumgardner, circularized family letters dated October 1985, July 3, 1987, and August 19, 1988; John Baumgardner and Salih Bayraktutan, “July 1987 Geophysical Investigation of Noah’s Ark (Durupinar Site), Mahser Village, Doğubayazıt, Ağrı” (report submitted to the Governor of Ağrı Province as Chairman of the Ağrı Province Noah’s Ark Commission, 1987); Salih Bayraktutan, telephone conversations, 1992, and unpublished 1988 seismic survey data.

20. Crouse, “The Durupinar Site”; Snelling, “Amazing ‘Ark’ Exposé.”

21. Measurements vary between reports. Some press accounts give the formation’s length as 538 feet, others as 515 feet.

22. Collins and Fasold, “Bogus ‘Noah’s Ark,’” 439–444.

23. The Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark Research Team was formed through a partnership between Ağrı İbrahim Çeçen University and Istanbul Technical University. It conducted its first fieldwork in December 2022 and sent soil and rock samples to ITU laboratories for analysis. In Turkish press coverage, Kaya stated that the samples dated to between 3,500 and 5,000 years ago and that human activity in the region is thought to go back to the Chalcolithic period.

24. Genesis 6:14–16; 7:1, 7, 9, 13, 15–18, 23; 8:1, 4, 6, 9–10, 13, 16, 19; 9:10, 18; Exodus 2:3, 5.

25. Ludwig Koehler and Walter Baumgartner, The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: Brill, 1994–2000), s.v. “תֵּבָה”; Thomas O. Lambdin, “Egyptian Loan Words in the Old Testament,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 73, no. 3 (1953): 145–155.

26. A. R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), Tablet XI, lines 28–30, 57–58.

27. Irving Finkel, The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014).

30. S. W. Hong et al., “Safety Investigation of Noah’s Ark in a Seaway,” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 8, no. 1 (1994): 26–36.

31. Collins and Fasold, “Bogus ‘Noah’s Ark’”; Snelling, “Amazing ‘Ark’ Exposé”; Morris, “That Boat-Shaped Rock”; John D. Morris, “The Boat-Shaped Formation,” Ararat Report, September–October 1990, 3–5.

Bibliography

Baumgardner, John. Circularized family letters, October 1985, July 3, 1987, and August 19, 1988.

Baumgardner, John, and Salih Bayraktutan. “July 1987 Geophysical Investigation of Noah’s Ark (Durupinar Site), Mahser Village, Doğubayazıt, Ağrı.” Report submitted to the Governor of Ağrı Province as Chairman of the Ağrı Province Noah’s Ark Commission, 1987.

Bayraktutan, Salih. Telephone conversations, 1992; unpublished 1988 seismic survey data.

Bright, Richard. Quest for Discovery. Green Forest, AR: New Leaf Press, 2001.

———. The Ark Discoveries. iUniverse, 2021.

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Collins, Lorence G., and David F. Fasold. “Bogus ‘Noah’s Ark’ from Turkey Exposed as a Common Geologic Structure.” Journal of Geoscience Education 44 (1996): 439–444.

Crouse, Bill. “The Durupinar Site. Ron Wyatt: Are His Claims Bona Fide?” Ararat Report, no. 17. Christian Information Ministries International, 1988.

Crouse, Bill, and Gordon Franz. “Mount Cudi—True Mountain of Noah’s Ark.” Bible and Spade 19, no. 4 (2006): 99–111.

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Fenner, Thomas J. Telephone conversations, 1992; faxed letter, July 22, 1992.

Finkel, Irving. The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2014.

George, A. R. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Hong, S. W., S. S. Na, B. S. Hyun, S. Y. Hong, D. S. Gong, K. J. Kang, S. H. Suh, K. H. Lee, and Y. G. Je. “Safety Investigation of Noah’s Ark in a Seaway.” Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal 8, no. 1 (1994): 26–36.

Koehler, Ludwig, and Walter Baumgartner. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Leiden: Brill, 1994–2000.

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Roberts, Allen S. Noah’s Ark Research Project (Ark Search) Newsletter, no. 2 (1992).

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Shea, William H. “The Present Status of Surface and Technological Study of the Ship-Shaped Formation in the Tendurek Mountains of Eastern Turkey.” Unpublished manuscript, n.d.

Shea, William H. “A Review of Recent Data from the Region of the Ark-Shaped Formation in the Tendurek Mountains of Eastern Turkey.” Origins 8 (1981): 77–92.

Snelling, Andrew A. “Amazing ‘Ark’ Exposé.” Creation Ex Nihilo 14, no. 4 (1992): 26–38.

Stark, Reinhard. “In Search of Noah’s Ark: An Interview with Dr. Allen Roberts.” Nexus, January–February 1992, 37–40.

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