We often hear dinosaurs lived millions of
years ago, long before people.
But what does the Bible say about them?
Today on Creation Magazine LIVE!
Welcome to Creation Magazine LIVE!
I’m Matt Bondy
And I’m Richard Fangrad.
Most of us have probably read a line in a
children’s book that says something like,
“Millions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed
the earth…”
Dinosaurs are most commonly associated with
a history that involves eons of time.
But what if that history is wrong?
Well, the biblical age of the earth was our
topic last week.
So, if you missed that and have questions
about when God created, have a look at last
week’s show.
And if you didn’t PVR it, it’s now online
at creation.com/cml8-04.
Ok, so the history that Bible records reveals
that God created everything in six days approximately
six thousand years ago.
And everything would include dinosaurs, wouldn’t
it?
Yes, it would.
Since dinosaurs are such a popular topic,
it’s important to understand them in the
light of Scripture.
Today, we’ll explore some common questions
about dinosaurs like “Why aren’t dinosaurs
mentioned in the Bible?
Did they all die out in Noah’s Flood?
What do the fossils tell us about them?
And ‘Has anyone ever seen a live dinosaur?’
We’ve all heard the story that dinosaurs
evolved millions of years ago and went extinct
long before there were any people.
It’s a common theme in schools, museums,
and movies.
Now, we know dinosaurs must have been on the
earth at some point because there are dinosaur
fossils all over the world.
But which history best explains dinosaur fossils?
The millions of years history or biblical
history?
And since we’re Christians we’re gonna
start with the Bible.
Genesis 1, right there in verse 24, “And
God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living
creatures according to their kinds—livestock
and creeping things and beasts of the earth
according to their kinds.’
And it was so.”
Since dinosaurs were land animals, God must
have created them on Day 6 of creation week.
There are other creatures associated with
dinosaurs, like pterosaurs and plesiosaurs.
They would have been created on Day 5, when
sea creatures and flying creatures were created
about 6000 years ago.
That’s still very long ago, but it seems
recent when compared to the millions of years
history that we hear all over the place.
Now, in previous episodes, we summarized the
biblical reasons why trying to blend the millions-of-years
history into Scripture undermines the Gospel.
In other words, by accepting the interpretation
that because; and that’s what it is: an
interpretation; that the fossil record was
slowly built up over millions of years, that
would place millions of years of death; because
fossils are dead things; before sin.
That’s backwards.
Biblically death came as a result of sin,
not before it.
Death before sin undermines the Gospel.
We kicked off Season 8 focussing on that vital
topic.
The millions-of-years history is actually
radically different from biblical history.
But for those, like children growing up in
the church, for example, who don’t yet understand
that the nature of the origins debate is really
a war between two histories, well, they’re
going to have some questions about dinosaurs
and which history they best fit into.
And this provides an opportunity for parents
and church leaders to step up to the plate
with biblical answers.
And that didn’t happen for author Tom Holland.
He writes, "First, there were dinosaurs.
I vividly remember my shock when, at Sunday
school one day, I opened a children’s Bible
and found an illustration on its first page
of Adam and Eve with a brachiosaur.
Six years old I may have been, but of one
thing—to my regret—I was rock-solid certain:
no human being had ever seen a sauropod…A
faint shadow of doubt, for the first time,
had been brought to darken my Christian faith.”
You see, even as a child, he realized the
two timelines couldn’t both be true.
And apparently no one explained or showed
him evidences to support biblical history,
and that affected his faith.
On the other hand, the solution for some Bible-believing
Christians was to say dinosaurs never existed;
that all those fossils are a massive hoax,
because they’re not mentioned in Scripture.
Or are they?
The word ‘dinosaur’ means “terrible
or terrifying lizard”, and it was first
used by Sir Richard Owen in 1841.
But the Bible was translated into English
hundreds of years before that.
The King James Version was published in 1611
and others were even earlier.
So, when the Bible was first translated into
English, the word ‘dinosaur’ didn’t
even exist!
But there are creatures in the Bible that
match the description of what we now call
dinosaurs.
In Job 40:15-19, for example, God says, “Behold,
Behemoth, which I made as I made you; he eats
grass like an ox.
Behold, his strength in his loins, and his
power in the muscles of his belly.
He makes his tail stiff like a cedar; the
sinews of his thighs are knit together.
His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like
bars of iron.
He is the first of the works of God; This
clearly refers to a creature God created,
not something mythical or symbolic.
Also, Job must have been familiar with this
behemoth, or he wouldn’t have recognized
it as an example of God’s creative power,
which is the point God is making.
Commentators sometimes suggest behemoth was
an elephant or a hippopotamus.
But the description includes a “tail stiff
like a cedar”.
You can see from these images neither an elephant
or hippopotamus tail looks like a cedar tree.
But the tail of a sauropod like Brachiosaurus
does fit the description.
Another example is Leviathan in Job 41.
Here, God describes a large semi-aquatic creature
with thick armour.
And Job 41:19-20 reads, "Out of his mouth
go flaming torches; sparks of fire leap forth.
Out of his nostrils comes forth smoke," Wow.
That sounds like a dragon though, doesn't
it?
Well, funny you should mention that.
‘Dragon’ is another word found in the
Bible.
But aren’t dragons just mythological creatures?
We’ll explore more about dragons after the
break.
When you consider the 206 bones in your body,
a humble toe bone does not seem that significant.
But in July 2001, Time Magazine ran a cover
story where a single toe bone was the star
attraction.
The article featured a recent fossil discovery
from Ethiopia, which allegedly showed how
mankind’s ape-like ancestors first stood
up on two legs.
Readers were told "Meet your newfound ancestor,
a chimp-like forest creature that stood up
and walked 5.8 million years ago."
Remarkably, however, they based their claim
that this creature walked upright, and was
supposedly our ancestor, on the shape of a
single toe bone.
What’s more, they found the toe bone over
16 km from the rest of the fossil material
used in the reconstruction.
The article was titled ‘One Giant Step for
Mankind’.
But maybe it should’ve been ‘One Giant
Leap in Speculation’.
To find out more from Creation Ministries
international visit our website creation.com
Welcome back!
Today, we’re talking about dinosaurs.
The word 'dragon' in the Bible often refers
to actual creatures.
for example, in Psalm 91:3 ”Thou shalt tread
upon the lion and adder: the young lion
and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.”
Or Deuteronomy 32:33: “Their wine is the
poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of
asps.”
Dragons are also featured in legends from
many cultures around the world.
One account from England in 1405 says, "Close
to the town of Bures, near Sudbury, there
has lately appeared, to the great hurt of
the countryside, a dragon, vast in body, with
a crested head, teeth like a saw, and a tail
extending to an enormous length.
Having slaughtered the shepherd of a flock,
it devoured many sheep."
Other legends include Gilgamesh slaying a
giant reptile-like creature named Khumbaba,
the Anglo-Saxon poem about Beowulf killing
a monster named Grendel, St George and the
dragon, and numerous legends from Native Americans
and others.
We also find dragons in Chinese culture.
In traditional Chinese script, the character
for dragon includes a representation of the
spine and tail.
And the Chinese character for dinosaur actually
includes the symbol for dragon.
And have a look at the Chinese zodiac, which
includes eleven recognizable creatures like
a tiger, a pig, etc. and also a dragon.
Seems odd to include just one mythical creature
doesn’t it?
Yes, the only way this makes sense, is if
dragons were real.
With all the dragon legends all over the world,
it makes sense that they were based on real
creatures.
Could they have been dinosaurs?
Palaeontology reveals that descriptions of
dragons in those legends closely match what
we call dinosaurs.
Before the word dinosaur was invented, some
of the first dinosaur fossils identified were
labelled ‘dragons’, as if ‘dragon’
was something people recognized as real, not
mythical.
In 2003, a dinosaur was found that was labelled
Dracorex Hogwartsia because it looks so much
like the typical image of a dragon.
Signs at the exhibit in Indianapolis read
things like, “It’s a new type of dinosaur
that looks like a dragon” and “Is it a
dragon or a dinosaur?”
Well, what's the answer?
The answer is: Yes.
And some of the artwork found around the world
closely matches how palaeontologists envision
certain dinosaurs would have looked based
on fossil reconstructions.
One example is a carving on a temple in Angkor,
Cambodia, which includes depictions of several
recognizable creatures, like a monkey and
a water buffalo.
I was there a few years ago and took these
pictures.
Here’s one that looks a lot like a stegosaurus,
but this temple was built around eight hundred
years ago!
So, the artwork was created long before dinosaur
fossils were identified and put together in
museums.
If dinosaurs lived millions of years before
man, how did the carver here know what a stegosaurus
looked like before the days of palaeontology?
Here’s a petroglyph, a carving, in Utah
done by the Anasazi people sometime before
1200 AD.
Petroglyph expert Fran Barnes wrote a description
of it, saying it “bears a startling resemblance
to a dinosaur”.
No kidding.
But how did they carve that?
Did they watch Jurassic Park or copy it out
of a dinosaur book?
Don’t think so.
In 1496, Bishop Richard Bell died and was
buried in the floor of Carlisle Cathedral
in the UK.
Around the top of his tomb are brass engravings
of different animals.
You can see a dog, a fish, a bird, and…wait,
that looks like two sauropod dinosaurs!
So, were there dinosaurs roaming England in
the late 1400’s?
Well, what logical conclusions can we draw
from these carvings?
Well, it’s logical to think that some dinosaurs
may still have been living, and people were
familiar with them.
Or maybe they had recently gone extinct and
these artists were working with memories.
That's logical.
Either way, they didn’t die out millions
of years ago.
These things support biblical history, not
millions of years.
A similar image can be made using this cylinder
seal from ancient Mesopotamia.
These were used to make impressions on clay
tablets, and this one creates an image that
looks very similar to the engravings in Carlisle
Cathedral.
That’s two different artists, in different
parts of the world, creating very similar
images thousands of years apart.
What’s more logical: that they both dreamed
up the same thing, or they actually saw dinosaurs
in action?
OK, maybe we need to slow down here.
Let’s just review a little bit.
We can deduce from the history in Scripture
that dinosaurs were created about six thousand
years ago, they’re mentioned in the Bible,
and there’s evidence that people have seen
dinosaurs as recently as a few hundred years
ago.
That’s radically different from the standard
millions-of-years story we normally hear.
Don’t you just love it when there’s evidence
that supports the Bible?
Hey, as we always say, Christianity is an
evidence-based faith.
And after the break, we’ll look at some
fossil evidence that shows dinosaurs are not
millions of years old.
Stick around.
The vigorous promotion of evolution as established
fact is causing many Christians to question
the biblical creation account.
And some non-Christians won’t consider Christianity
because they believe the Bible has been disproved
by science.
That’s where Creation magazine comes in!
Creation magazine is a family friendly publication
packed with cutting edge science that supports
the Bible, presented in an easy to understand
format by some of the leading experts in their
fields of study.
Visit creation.com to subscribe today!
We’ve been talking about dinosaurs.
How old are they, really?
Since none of us today were around to actually
see dinosaurs live, most of what we know about
them has to be deduced from their fossils,
which almost always gets filtered through
the millions of years history.
Evolutionists interpret the fossil record
within a framework of deep time, with many
layers of rock being laid down slowly over
millions of years.
And the fossils in the upper layers are supposedly
creatures that evolved from so-called ‘simpler’
creatures in the lower layers.
Creationists, on the other hand, understand
that most fossils are a record of mass burial
in Noah’s Flood, which would mean the fossils
are thousands, not millions of years old and
can’t be used as evidence for evolution.
Two weeks ago, in Episode 3, we saw evidence
that layers of rock, even very thin ones,
can form very quickly.
A global flood is a superior explanation for
the fossil record.
The evolutionist’s interpretation of the
fossil record has led them to conclude that
there was an “Age of the Dinosaurs” from
approximately 230 million to 65 million years
ago.
At that point, they say dinosaurs went extinct
because their fossils disappear in the upper
layers.
But not everything that lives and dies becomes
a fossil.
Right.
A great example of this is a fish called coelacanth,
a really ugly fish.
At one time, evolutionists thought that the
coelacanth used its lobed fins to crawl along
the ocean floor, suggesting they must have
evolved into land creatures.
It was also thought to have gone extinct with
the dinosaurs because the fossils don’t
appear in those upper layers.
But surprise!
A living coelacanth was found in 1938 and
more have been found since then.
They’re not only still alive, their fins
have nothing to do with walking.
Also, they apparently haven’t changed in
the last 360 million years, according to evolutionary
dates.
So, where’s the evolution?
There are many out-of-sequence fossils.
For example, evolutionists once taught that
only small shrew-like mammals could have been
living at the time of the dinosaurs; yet there
have been over four hundred species of mammals
found in the dinosaur strata, like beavers
and flying squirrels.
Here’s a mammal that was found with fossilised
remains of a small dinosaur in its stomach.
Mammals eating dinosaurs!
That’s not the image we normally see in
movies and museum exhibits.
And we often hear of evolutionists who claim
that dinosaurs evolved into birds.
Yet, in addition to fossils of mammals found
alongside dinosaur fossils, several types
of modern bird fossils have been found, like
parrots, ducks, and owls.
Of course, Noah’s Flood explains why fossils
of dinosaurs, mammals, and birds, are found
in the same layers.
We would expect that sort of thing.
Rapid burial is needed for fossilization to
occur, otherwise dead things are scavenged
or just rot.
And evolutionists often suggest that various
fossil creatures were buried quickly in some
kind of local flood; but of course, they don’t
want to admit that it was a global flood.
The Bible’s history, which includes a global
flood, provides the best framework for understanding
dinosaur fossils!
It does!
There are some very dramatic examples that
dinosaurs did not die out millions of years
ago.
Beginning in 1993, Dr Mary Schweitzer found
red blood cells in a dinosaur bone.
This is from a T-rex here.
Since that time, dozens of discoveries of
soft tissue have been found in dinosaur bones.
Yes, blood vessels, dinosaur proteins, collagen,
and even dinosaur DNA have been discovered.
Jurassic Park, here we come!
It’s been estimated that DNA could potentially
last a maximum of 6.8 million years if it
was kept frozen at minus 5 degrees Celsius…
but none of these fossils were frozen when
they were dug up.
Again, dinosaurs did not die out millions
of years ago!
Let’s add even one more thing: Carbon 14
has been found in dinosaur bones.
It shouldn’t be there if the bones are really
millions of years old.
You see, carbon 14 has a half-life of only
5,730 years, meaning that there should be
no detectable C14 in anything that’s older
than about 100,000 years.
Once again, science supports biblical history,
not millions of years.
Noah’s Flood explains the massive number
of recently buried dinosaurs worldwide, clearly
some dinosaurs survived the Flood, as we saw
earlier.
Were dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark?
We’ll explore that one next.
Abraham’s life left a legacy in many different
ways, but have you ever stopped to consider
the legacy of his Y chromosome?
The Y chromosome is unique to men.
Fathers pass it on to their sons—so, according
to the Bible, Abraham would’ve passed it
on to Isaac, then to Jacob, whose descendants
gave rise to the Jewish nation.
Abraham also passed his Y chromosome to Ishmael,
through whom Arab nations have come.
A recent study of Y-chromosomes in Jewish
and Arab men strongly supports the biblical
account that they all descended from one man.
The results, published in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences (USA),
revealed remarkable similarity between the
Y chromosomes of Jewish and Arab male populations.
These results prompted one of the researchers
to say: ‘Jews and Arabs are all really children
of Abraham’.
I am not surprised, are you?
To find out more from Creation Ministries
International visit our website creation.com
Our subject this week is dinosaurs, and one
of the big questions that often comes up is:
were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark?
They must have been since Job and others since
biblical times have seen dinosaurs.
Genesis 6:17 reads, “For behold, I will
bring a flood of waters upon the earth to
destroy all flesh in which is the breath of
life under heaven.”
And in verse 19, “And of every living thing
of all flesh, you shall bring two of every
sort into the ark to keep them alive with
you.”
‘Living thing’ here refers to animals
that breathe air, which would include dinosaurs.
But how could they possibly fit?
In episode 3, we talked about how huge the
ark really was, holding the equivalent volume
of over 500 railway stock cars.
Not all dinosaurs were huge.
Some were as small as a chicken.
Remember the one found in the belly of that
mammal?
But what about the big ones?
Even the biggest ones started out as eggs,
and the largest was no bigger than a football;
and research into dinosaur bones shows many
of them went through a growth spurt, unlike
most reptiles.
This graph shows the growth pattern of an
Apatosaurus.
At about age five, it would weigh about a
tonne, but during its growth spurt, Apatosaurus
would grow by over 5 tonnes a year, levelling
off around age twelve or thirteen.
All Noah needed on the ark was a couple juveniles
that hadn’t started their growth spurt yet.
In other words, don’t bring grandma and
grandpa, bring the junior-highers!
How many dinosaurs?
Noah took pairs of each created kind, not
individual species.
Instead of more than six hundred dinosaur
species, it’s been estimated there were
only about 50 or so created kinds.
Let’s back up a bit and think about another
question about dinosaur behaviour.
If dinosaurs and people were both created
on day 6, would the dinosaurs in the garden
of Eden have eaten Adam and Eve?
Remember, Tom Holland the author there, had
a hard time with that idea as a child, blending
the two together, because he’d only been
given the millions-of-years story.
Once again, the Bible gives us the answer.
Genesis 1:29-30 reads, “And God said, ‘Behold,
I have given you [referring to Adam and Eve
here] every plant yielding seed that is on
the face of all the earth, and every tree
with seed in its fruit.
You shall have them for food.
And to every beast of the earth and to every
bird of the heavens and to everything that
creeps on the earth, everything that has the
breath of life, I have given every green plant
for food.’”
In other words, there was no meat-eating;
not for people or animals.
So, the original kinds that became today’s
carnivores, like lions and tigers, and even
T-Rex, initially ate plants.
In our Creation Answers Book several possibilities
are suggested for how some animals were changed
to include defense and attack structures after
the creation was cursed.
But even some carnivores today can thrive
on a vegetarian diet.
In Creation magazine over the years there
have been two articles about vegetarian lions.
Back in 2000 there was, “The lion that wouldn’t
eat meat”.
Then in 2007, “Lea, the spaghetti lioness”,
about a lion that was raised on Italian pasta!
Both of these are now online at creation.com.
Pass the parmesan!
Now, God gave man permission to eat meat only
after the Flood, but what about animals?
Dr Jonathan Sarfati writes: when Cain was
enraged that God (YHWH) rejected his sacrifice,
God counseled him that “sin is crouching
at the door” (Genesis 4:7b).
God pictures sin as ‘crouching’, but this
means ‘ready to spring forth’.
The same imagery is used in Genesis 49:9,
“he crouched as a lion”.
This gives us a hint that animal predation,
a predator/prey relationship, started before
the Flood.
And the fossil record, again, most of which
was produced at the time of the flood, includes
a lot of evidence of animals attacking one
another.
Here’s Sue the T-rex, one of the largest
T-rex’s ever found.
She’s got the tooth of another T-rex embedded
in her rib cage.
Ouch!
You know, God has promised a time when there
will again be no death or bloodshed, like
it was before Adam sinned.
Isaiah 11:7 gives us a picture of what a restored
‘very good’ world will look like: The
cow and the bear shall graze; their young
shall lie down together; and the lion shall
eat straw like the ox.
Maybe they’ll be eating spaghetti again!
We have one last question to explore and that
is: ‘where are they now?’
We’ll talk about dinosaur extinction after
the break.
Refuting Evolution is a powerful, concise
summary that explains where the common ‘evidences’
used to promote evolution in textbooks are
wrong, while at the same time showing how
creation is better supported by scientific
observations.
It will stimulate much discussion and help
students and teachers think more critically
about the creation/evolution debate, particularly
the often overlooked differences between operational
and historical science and how they relate
to the topic of origins.
Order your copy today at creation.com.
We’ve been exploring some of the common
questions people have about dinosaurs.
Let’s recap: Are there dinosaurs in the
Bible?
- yes.
Were they on Noah’s ark?
- yes.
Have people seen dinosaurs?
- yes.
Are they millions of years old?
– No.
But where are they now?
Of course, the vast majority of dinosaurs
were wiped out in Noah’s flood, except the
ones on the ark.
There are dinosaur fossils all over the world,
often found in ‘graveyards’, with several
dinosaurs buried together.
Many of these are well-preserved with no evidence
of scavenging from other animals after they
died.
This indicates rapid burial, and considering
the size and numbers of dinosaur fossils found,
we’re talking about a lot of sediment which
means a lot of water.
Dinosaur fossils, as well as others, are often
found in the “dead dinosaur posture”,
with head back, tail extended, and hind limbs
bent.
Paleontologists have explored several possible
explanations, including tendons drying out
or getting dragged into that position by moving
water after they died.
But the explanation that fits best is muscle
spasms from death throes as the animal was
being asphyxiated or drowned.
Fossils in this position indicate a fast underwater
burial.
Global flood maybe?
What about the dinosaurs that survived the
Flood?
We’ve seen evidence that dinosaurs were
around up until a few hundred years ago, and
there have been stories of even more recent
‘sightings’ within the last century.
But there’s been no hard evidence of dinosaurs,
or even reported sightings, for decades now.
So, as far as we can tell, dinosaurs are extinct
now.
So, what happened?
Evolutionists have many theories, like mammals
eating their eggs or loss of vegetation.
But the most popular one is the asteroid impact
theory.
This suggests an asteroid hit the earth near
the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico about 66.4
million years ago.
Dust in the atmosphere then caused a ‘nuclear
winter’ that wiped out the dinosaurs.
But not the mammals and birds?
Apparently not.
This idea is based on a worldwide layer of
clay discovered around 1980 containing a relatively
high amount of iridium thought to have come
from meteorites, from the impact.
It was claimed this layer correlates to the
end of the so-called ‘Age of the Dinosaurs’,
about 65-66 million years ago.
But the iridium layer isn’t as clearly defined
as originally thought and could have been
produced by massive volcanism (volcanos).
And yes, several other light-sensitive species
obviously did survive.
But, even within a deep-time interpretation
of the fossil record, the extinction wasn’t
that sudden.
There are challenges to explaining dinosaur
extinction in a deep-time scenario.
But how do biblical creationists explain it?
There are several possibilities.
Climate change.
There was an Ice Age right after Flood.
Less vegetation after the flood may have made
it harder for them to find enough food.
And of course, hunting.
Hunting dinosaurs to extinction.
That’s not usually considered.
Well, remember those legends about St George
and Beowulf?
They were considered heroes for killing the
dragon that was considered a threat.
History has shown that people have been able
to hunt down some very large creatures, including
whales.
A lot of factors can lead to the extinction
of any species, like genetic drift, changein
habitat, disease, drought, parasites.
There’s already lots of reasons animals
go extinct today, we don’t really need to
come up with a new one for dinosaurs.
Rather than being a stumbling block to faith,
dinosaurs fit with biblical history far better
than the millions-of-years history, and because
of that they can actually be a great topic
for evangelism.
Join us next week when we talk about biology
and the Bible.
And remember, Christianity is an evidence-based
faith.
And science supports Scripture.
