Torch, Summer 1993

Are Dinosaurs Read chapter 41 of Job, where Men1:ioned in another fearsome animal, leviathan, 1:he Bible? is described. Some Bible footnotes Genesis teaches that all animals were claim this animal may have been a created on days five and six of the crocodile, but some are more honest, creation week, along with man. But saying the identity is unknown. From does the Bible actually mention and the description, leviathan appears to describe dinosaurs? The word be a dragon, similar to those known "dinosaur" ·snot found in the from medieval myths and Chinese Bible-not surpr1sing because it legends. In Job's day, leviathan was wasn't coined until tfie early 1800's still a living animal and had not yet when the first skeletons were become extinct. God uses the entire ciiscovered. J'he word itself means chapter to describe this "fire "terrible Iizara." There are two such breathing" animal which may be one "terrible lizards" described in the of the dinosaurs we have in museums Bible: behemoth and leviathan. We today. fi d their descriptions in one of the There are no animals living today oldest books of the Bible, Job. These that match the descriptions of animals probably belonged to some of behemoth and leviathan. If we take a the creatures we call «dinosaurs." literal approach to the Scriptures, In the last chapters of Job, God---these were real animals that were speaks. Read Job 40:15-24, where living at the same time as Job. Since God questions Job about a large most of us have been taught that men animal called behemoth. If you check and dinosaurs never lived together, it the footnotes of most Bibles, they say never occurs to most Bible scholars behemoth was probably a that these animals could be hippopotamus or an elephant. dinosaurs, so our footnotes say Remember, footnotes are not the hippopotamus, crocodile, or inspired word of God! Look at the unknown. description carefully and see its similarities to what paleontologists would refer to as sauropods (such as brontosaurus, brachiosaul'us, diplodocus, and others). Sauropods were the largest group of dinosaurs. They had long necks, long tails, and enormous bodies. Some reached 140 feet or more in length and weighed up to 50 tons. In verse 17, l:lehemoth is described as having a tail "like a cedar." Do you know of any other animals with tails like trees? Do you see any other evidence in these verses that a sauropod is being described? Notice verse 19 which implies behemoth was one of the largest animals God made. This excavation at the Paluxy River shows a dinosaur track next to a possible human footprint. Creationists believe men and dinosaurs did live together. Did Man and Dinosaurs Ever Live To9e1:her1 Yes. It should be obvious from reading Genesis and the account given in Job that men and dinosaurs did coexist. But there is other evidence. In many cultures, people would draw pictures on cave walls of the animals they hunted. Cave drawings or petroglyphs occur in many remote places in the world. On the Doheny expedition into the Gran Ganyon in the early 1900's, scientists found some new Indian petroglyphs. One of these resembled a duckbilled dinosaur. People had to be aware of these living animals in order to draw them. Although they have been controversial, man and dinosaur footprints may occur together in Glen Rose, Texas. For many years, the nearby Paluxy River has been famous for many types of dinosaur tracks. In the 1930's, it was claimed "man" tracks were also found in the rocks near the river. Some of these tracks are carved and others have been misinterpreted as human tracks, but some may be genuine. I have personally seen the controversial tracks along the river. I helped excavate a human-like track in the summer of 1989. It had all the characteristics one would expect of a human track and it was found beside a dinosaur footprint. It couldn't have been carved because we removed undisturbed rock and clay above it. The problem is this: we have not found a good left-right sequence of footprints. Until this is done, we cannot use these footprints as proof of dinosaur and human co-existence. However, since we believe dinosaurs and man were created on the same day and lived together, finding their tracks together would be entirely possible. Of course, evolutionists categorically reject the idea of dinosaurs and men living together, so they are not open to considering the evidence for their coexistence. Wha1: Happen d io 1:he Dinosaurs1 What happened to these magajficent animals? Did they die because a great asteroid hit the earth or because their food supply disappeared, as some evolutionists propose? Does the Bible have an answer? Dinosaurs probably thrived on the pre-Flood earth. They required a warm climate to survive because of their great size and their need for large amounts of food. Many creationists believe a vapor canopy surrounded the earth before the Flood. This would have caused the earth to have a uniformly warm climate. No cold polar regions were present. Fossils of dinosaurs, ferns, and other warm weather organisms have been found in the polar regions of the earth, evidence that earth used to be much warmer. In Genesis we find the account of Noah's Flood. Many of the fossils we find all over the world today were Torch 13