[3] He raised two sons, Nathan and Michael, before dying of cancer in Corvallis, Oregon, on April 26, 1998, financially broken from years of expeditions and research.

[6] Wyatt wrote a small booklet, presenting his evidence found at the site, including what he considered petrified wood from deck timbers, pitch, and metal rivets.

[7] Fasold took a different approach, concentrating on pre-biblical literature and, as a nautical engineer, recognized the likelihood that it was made, like other ancient large boats and rafts, of reeds.

He concluded that the enigmatic "gopher wood" of Genesis 6:14 was in fact a covering of bitumen and reeds, and the words was related to kaphar or pitch .

During this time, Wyatt supposedly discovered petrified wood and metal items, and exposed the remains of decayed rib timbers at the site.

[13] In 1996 Fasold coauthored a paper with geologist Lorence Collins entitled "Bogus 'Noah's Ark' from Turkey Exposed as a Common Geologic Structure" that concluded the boat-shaped formation was a curious upswelling of mud that happened to look like a boat.

[14] In April 1997 during his testimony in an Australian court case Fasold repudiated his belief in the Ark, and stated that he regarded the claim as "absolute BS".

[2]: 184 In 1986 Fasold, along with Ron Wyatt, was one of the first Americans to investigate the notion that Jabal al-Lawz in Saudi Arabia might be the Biblical Mount Sinai.

Co-plaintiff Ian Plimer, an Australian humanist and skeptic, sued Roberts's organization Ark Search under the Fair Trading Act, alleging that they had made false and misleading claims about the Durupinar site.

The case, touted as a second Scopes Monkey Trial,[citation needed] failed, with Judge Ron Sackville ruling: "Courts should not attempt to provide a remedy for every false or misleading statement made in the course of public debate on matters of general interest."