British Museum: Prototype for Noah's Ark was round
Gee Marv, IIRC the blue prints of the Ark are written down in the OT. Naturally they were written thousands of years after the BIG flood. The time it was written the ship or Ark must have resembled the boats that were trading at that time up and down the coasts.
We have had floods up the yin yang since time began, all cultures on earth have story's of an event at some time that wiped out most of their civilization's, stands to reason that each would have some differences in each story.
Was the ARK round, may well have been in some parts of the world. Also some one had to have witnessed a deluge to tell others about it.
As far as the saved animals, most likely the people gathered up what was on hand, live stock ETC. and no worry about trying to save the Lions, Tigers and Bears.
So if the OT story is true for that part of the world, the time it would take to repopulate our planet would have been in the thousands and thousands of years in order to raise such huge numbers of men to form armies to sacrifice themselves in battle for any reason.
I have read that on the shores of the Black Sea there have been found a unknown civilization that must have thrived there for quite some time, at some time the Sea overtook them, did any escape ?
Fascinating book the OT, all kinds of amazing story's some that have been proven with science to have been true. Some are frankly strange, can a man live in the belly of a whale ???