Genesis 7 - 9

So God gathered Noah, his family and all the animals He wanted to save from the catastrophic flood He was about to create, then He shut up the ark and sealed it. Noah was 600 years old when the flood hit. People lived longer then, when the atmosphere was unpolluted. Adam lived to be 930 years old and Noah's grandfather, Methuselah, lived 969 years, possibly the longest anyone has ever lived on earth. Noah was 500 years old before he had his three sons who went into the ark with him.
After 40 days and nights of rain, the whole earth was covered with water. In Chapter 7 of Genesis, we read it rose at least 20 feet above the highest mountain, so every mammal and bird outside the ark drowned.
There is some good research concerning this world-wide flood event at the website of the Institute of Creation Research, http://www.icr.org/noahs-flood/. Some make a case for the Grand Canyon on the North American Continent being carved out by this flood.
The ark floated over 150 days, then came to rest on the mountains of Ararat, but it was several months later when the water went down enough for Noah to emerge from the ark. It strikes me here that God began his human creation in the Middle East near the mountains of Ararat; He started over near the same location; and when Jesus returns to rule the earth, Revelation says He will place his feet down not too far from that location. The cradle of civilization. There is a pattern to everything God does.
Then God made a promise to Noah there would never be another world-wide flood and the first rainbow was seen in the sky, as a reminder of that promise.
God laid down some new guidelines for Noah and his sons for the repopulation of the earth, including some new dietary rules. Until that time, humans were vegetarian. Now God told them they could kill and eat animals as long as they did it in a humane and sanitary manner.
Noah, accustomed to being a farmer in his life before the flood, set about planting a vineyard. We get the idea here he liked to drink the fruit of the vine and one day he imbibed a little too much, which caused him to become drunk and fall down naked in his tent. Too much alcohol can cause one to do that, but Noah was discovered there in this drunken state by his son, Ham, who proceeded outside to snicker about the old man lying drunk and naked in his tent, where he told the sordid tale to his two brothers. The two brothers had compassion for their father, so they placed a robe between them on their shoulders and walked in backwards to cover their father without subjecting themselves to the sight. Love covers a multitude of sins!
When Noah found out what his son Ham had done, he put a curse on him and his descendants and proclaimed they would be slaves to the offspring of Shem and Japheth, the two true sons. We will learn later that Ham migrated south to the Egyptian region and his descendants on into Africa, where they did, indeed, become slaves taken from there.
Noah lived another 350 years after the flood and died at the ripe old age of 950 years at the end of chapter 9, one of the most long-lived people in the scriptures. Human life spans would only get less and less from here on out. Animals and reptiles probably had longer life spans then, too, which could explain why there are no dinosaurs remaining. A reptile continues to grow it's entire life. So little lizards could have become large dinosaurs back then with a longer life span--something to think about.