DINOSAURS

adapted from an article by

D. Curtis

B.A.

Used with the kind permission of the Creation Science Movement, 50 Brecon Avenue, Cosham, Portsmouth, England, P06 2AW.

Now that the dinosaurs are extinct, only their fossil remains are left for us to examine and wonder at. Still, the record is enough to tell of the great variety and large numbers in which these creatures once existed. Dinosaur fossils also have revealed the truly awe-inspiring size to which some of their species grew. One cannot help feeling a sense of mystery about the total absence of dinosaurs today.

Discovery

Although dinosaurs once roamed the earth in great numbers, their remains were only recognized by science comparatively recently, at about the time when James Hutton and Charles Lyell first claimed the earth was millions of years old. But public identification came slowly. In 1770, the massive head of a Mosasaurus - named after the nearby Meuse River - was found by quarry workers in the underground caverns of Maastricht, Holland, yet it was not properly examined and named until 1828. In 1810, twelve year-old Mary Anning, digging in the cliffs at the tide's edge near Lyme Regis, England, exposed what turned out to be the first complete skeleton ever found of the Ichthyosaurus (fish-reptile), but at the time it was thought to be just an odd variety of crocodile. It was not until 1825, three years after Gideon and Mary Mantell's roadside discovery in Sussex, England, of a leaf-shaped, fluted tooth, that the first “terrible lizard” relic was officially recognized. The tooth was worn flat like the molar of a herbivore, leading to its identification as an Iguanodon (iguana-tooth), the first dinosaur to be named - see cover illustration.

As time went on, more and more discoveries came to the attention of geologists, often courtesy of dedicated amateur fossil hunters. In 1824, a grown Mary Anning - now selling fossils for a living - discovered an articulated Plesiosaurus (near-reptile) skeleton in the same Dorset cliffs where she had found her Ichthyosaurus. Even though the Plesiosaurus' snaky neck was made up of thirty-three vertebrae, the whole body was probably not more than twenty feet in length, not the largest of its kind by any means.

The Americann Elasmosaurus (ribbon-reptile) measured fifty feet, having seventy-six vertebrae in its enormous neck. In 1828, the first English Pteradactyl (winged-finger) was found at Lyme Regis by the same Mary Anning. The first complete American dinosaur skeleton - a hadrosaur (big-lizard) - was not unearthed until 1858, when William Foulke conducted a dig in a New Jersey marl pit of clayey-limestone.

Variety

Two Americans, Edward Cope and Othniel Marsh, were responsible for uncovering whole graveyards of dinosaurs in Colorado and Wyoming. In just a few years, they had managed to collect complete skeletons of some of the most enormous and bizarre creatures ever to have walked the earth: the Allosaurus (other-lizard, viz., not T-Rex), the Diplodocus (double-beam, from two skids on the tail bone), the Triceratops (three-horned-face), the Stegosaurus (roofed-reptile, referring to its armour plating), the Brachiosaurus (arm-lizard), and the Apatosaurus (deceptive-lizard - deceptive because the same animal had been misnamed Brontosaurus, the thunder-lizard). Marsh called them sauropods, or lizard-feet, because their feet had five toes, like lizards, not three like many other dinosaurs. Diplodocus reached an incredible eighty-seven feet in length, and Brachiosaurus' head towered some forty feet above the ground.

The largest of the known sauropods must have weighed from thirty to fifty tons. Yet, bones are being uncovered today that might have belonged to even larger sauropods, perhaps a hundred feet in length and weighing as much as eighty tons. Reptiles continue to grow throughout their lifetime (albeit at a much reduced rate in adulthood), so one can only speculate how old these gigantic dinosaurs might have been.

Speculations about Origins

The theory of evolution postulates that dinosaurs evolved from fish and amphibian ancestors and became extinct sixty-five million years ago.

This thinking is based upon the fact that fossilized dinosaur remains are often found above those of fish and amphibians in sedimentary rock masses. Yet these same rocks are in turn dated by their fossils! Creationists believe that most fossils, not just those of dinosaurs, are the legacy of just one or two worldwide catastrophes: the great Flood and, perhaps, a division of the earth in the days of Peleg.

Dragons

Did dinosaurs have a name before Richard Owen called them “Terrible Lizards” about 150 years ago? If so, surely that name would be “dragon.”

Tales of fire-breathing monsters are found in diverse parts of the world. We have the story of St. George and the dragon in Europe, and dragons occupy a special place in Chinese culture. We also read in the Bible (Job 41) about a fearsome creature that could “light coals with its breath.”

But did fire-breathing dragons really exist? That large dragon-like creatures once stalked the earth would seem to be borne out by the fossil record. But breathing fire? Surely impossible... until we consider the bombardier beetles roaming Wales. Less than an inch in length, these little creatures are endowed with an ability to imitate exploding gunpowder.

Hydroquinone and peroxide are made to react violently by the addition of two enzymes. Catalase rapidly decomposes the peroxide, and peroxidase oxidizes the hydroquinones. The chemical reaction proceeds at an explosive rate (500 bursts each second) causing hot, smelly, bluish vapour of quinones to shoot through two nozzles at the back of the insect - quite discouraging to a predator! Could the hadrosaurs,the so-called duck-billed dinosaurs, have had this kind of defence operating from their heads? Hadrosaur skulls have cavities similar in design to the reaction chamber of the bombardier beetle and, to-date, there has been no other satisfactory explanation of their strange head crest chambers.

Dinosaurs Today

An examination of the facts does not diminish the mystery of the dinosaurs. Where are they now? Well, Japanese fishermen seem to have discovered a recently-deceased Plesiosaurus near New Zealand in 1977. This find suggests the identity of the sixty-foot sea monster thrown up a U.28 torpedoed the ship Iberian in the North Atlantic during the First World War. So there is evidence of modern-day monsters living in the deep ocean.

But we can roam the land without fear of encountering a lumbering Diplodocus or a Triceratops in a hurry. The land-dwelling dinosaurs are missing. In fact, we are not even sure of how these dinosaurs looked when they were alive. Fossilized bones do not tell the whole story. The bones of a poodle alone, for example, do not tell us about the most distinguishing features of the poodle. Except for a few fossil skin impressions suggesting at least some dinosaurs were covered in a bumpy reptilian hide, we can only speculate about most of the soft-tissue characteristics of the dinosaurs.

Cause of Extinction

Hypotheses abound as to why the dinosaurs disappeared. In a remarkable departure from uniformitarianism - the bedrock of evolution theory - most evolutionists now accept the idea that the demise of the dinosaurs was sudden. The prevailing explanation is that the impact from a massive meteorite threw up so much dust that the skies darkened, causing the climate to cool and the vegetation sustaining the giant, cold-blooded herbivores to die. Then, so the theory goes, with widespread starvation among the herbivores, carnivores were left without adequate prey on which to survive. But Bible-believing creationists have another explanation.

Except for the animals taken into the Ark, the Flood would have drowned all land-dwelling dinosaurs. Those that became fossilized were quickly and completely buried; all others either rotted or were scavenged, leaving no trace of their existence for modern man to find. The Flood would have caused movements of unimaginable quantities of earth and rock. The rapid deposition of this material as the Flood waters calmed down could easily have engulfed even massive creatures like the dinosaurs. At one site in Belgium, thirty-one Iguanodons have been found entombed together, something highly suggestive of cataclysmic burial.

It is reasonable to suppose much of the water needed to drown the world in Noah's Flood came from the waters above the “firmament,” having been placed there at the time of Creation (Genesis 1:7). Prior to the Flood, atmospheric water could have provided a protective vapour canopy, ensuring a warm, temperate climate over the entire globe. Lush vegetation would have abounded. It is generally agreed that most dinosaurs were herbivores; maybe all were - sharp teeth do not always indicate a diet of animal meat (e.g., the fruit bat). Even the famed Tyrannosaurus rex had dentition ill-suited to predation. (Genesis 1:30 records that all animals were originally herbivores.)

Therefore, creationists can agree with evolutionists that one possible reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs was a dramatic change in climate sometime in the past. For the creationists, however, the agency was not a metorite; it was the catastrophic, worldwide deluge known as the Flood.

Some creationists believe a second cataclysm befell the earth about one hundred years after the Flood, when the earth was “divided” in the time of Peleg (Genesis 10:25). The sudden appearance of ice at the poles and the manifestation of glacial conditions in surrounding regions could have wrought a secondary mass extinction of plant and animal life. As has been noted, massive herbivores would not easily survive a major climate change; but smaller, less voracious creatures, such as the tuatara and crocodile, might well make it through lean times.

Dinosaurs and Man

We seem to have an eyewitness account of two awe-inspiring dinosaurs in Job 40:15-41:34. A Diplodocus could easily have been described as having a “tail like a cedar” and being “the chief of the ways of God.” And the animal that regards “iron and straw” and “bronze as rotten wood” would seem to be an apt description of a hadrosaur. No wonder we read, “When he raises himself up, the mighty are afraid.”

Ancient depictions of dinosaur-like creatures provide more evidence for dinosaurs and man having been contemporaries. A carving on the rock wall of the Havasupal River gorge, near Arizona's Grand Canyon, appears to show a dinosaur with his long neck arched backward, as if defending itself against an attacker. Similar rock paintings have been found elsewhere in North America and in Africa, as well.

At Glen Rose in Texas, dinosaur footprints and impressions that look like human footprints have been found together in limestone beds. Yet more evidence for dinosaurs having lived in the recent past is that sometimes, when their remains are cut with a diamond saw, the distinctive smell of burning bone can be detected. These fossils still contain organic matter accumulated when the animal was alive, which surely could not have been sixty-five million years ago.

Conclusion

We are left with the melancholy thought that we have only just missed seeing the dinosaurs. Our ancestors probably had to step aside to avoid being trodden on by the gentle giants with their kitten-sized brains, munching away on nearby foliage. They likely had to move a good deal faster to stay out of the way of creatures like Triceratops, which were probably capable of high-speed charges. The evidence is strongly in favour of the Biblical view that dinosaurs and men coexisted, that “dragons” lived until comparatively recent times, and that some dinosaurian “sea-monsters” survive to this day.