Kiwi's 'Noah's Ark' samples test negative

A New Zealander's quest to find Noah's Ark has suffered a double blow, with two samples he gathered in Turkey turning out to be rock, not petrified timber.

Ross Patterson delivered the samples last week to crown research institute Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS) in Wellington.

Senior geologist Hamish Campbell, who examined the samples, told NZPA today they were not wood or fossil material, as Mr Patterson had hoped, but volcanic rock.

The GNS service, which involved cutting the rock into slices 300ths of a millimetre thick, would cost about $60.

"I'm the geologist at Te Papa, and I get to see a vast amount of curious rocks that people bring in -- meteorites, things that are fished out of the ocean," Dr Campbell said.

"But I have to confess, this is the first time I have been presented with rocks that are considered to be of some religious and/or archeological significance."

One of the samples had "a lovely platey fabric" and Dr Campbell said he could see why Mr Patterson thought they might be fossil wood.

"I'm all for somebody chasing something like this -- it makes life interesting. GNS offers a service and we are very happy to sample rock in this way."

According to the Bible, Noah was commanded by God to build the ark and herd two specimens of all animal life into it before a great flood which lasted 40 days and 40 nights.

Mt Ararat, in eastern Turkey, is considered by many Christians to be the ark's resting place.

However Mr Patterson, 40, a freelance computer programmer based in Whangarei and Lower Hutt, took his samples from a ridge 19km from Mt Ararat, believed to be an alternative landing site.

A Christian with a Seventh Day Adventist background, he believes there is evidence remnants of Noah's floating zoo lie beneath the ridge 2000m above sea level, within a national park.

With his brother Keith Patterson, Whangarei retired pilot Geoff McCall, and three non-denominational friends from the United States and Sweden, Mr Patterson took his samples from the surface of the site, as the group did not have a permit to dig.

"The site has not been excavated because every winter it gets covered in snow, so if anything was exposed it would deteriorate, and the Turkish government has stipulated that for a full excavation to go ahead it would need to be housed, and that would be very expensive."

Mr Patterson told NZPA that despite his sample results, he would not give up and had "only scratched the surface".

Research by controversial American author the late Ron Wyatt and others claimed petrified timber and iron rivets existed under the ridge, he said.

A radar scan in the late 1980s had shown large structures and Wyatt said he had found exotic animal hairs at the site.

Mr Patterson hoped to return next year when an American university would carry out another scan, and use it as a basis to apply for permits to excavate.

He believed the Biblical ark, said to be three storeys high and a tenth of a mile long, could have carried juvenile species of animals that had evolved over 4000-5000 years into the many species now in existence.

Mr Patterson and his brother want to make a DVD from film footage of their trip, which includes interviews with local Turkish elders and a Scotsman who has climbed Mt Ararat seven times in search of the ark.

- NZPA