By Ercill Hunt

It always amazes me how often this question comes up as I am teaching the early chapters of Genesis, and how much it reveals about the inquirer. The question often is ask by those who think you are naïve for taking Genesis 1-11 so literal, and who think they have presented you with an intricate and difficult problem—a question to which you can only give conjecture for an answer. These “old earthers” may be Christians who have not grown in the faith, or just Bible skeptics. We will address this group in the next Memo.

There is another group of persons who ask the question out of genuine inquisitiveness, and from these you must find out just what their question is. You may need to address where and when the dinosaurs lived or how they became extinct. Are there any references to dinosaurs in the Bible? Were there dinosaurs on the ark?

In order to answer many of the concerns of this group we will focus our attention on the question “When did they live?” To this you will find two completely different answers. Evolutionists say dinosaurs lived, died, and became extinct at least 60 million years before man evolved. We believe Scripture in that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them (Exodus 20:11), so man and dinosaurs lived at the same time. If we look at the evidence, we should then be able to sort out which of these very different answers makes the most sense.

Is there any evidence that dinosaurs become extinct at least 60 million years before man evolved? That is what you will find in most textbooks. That is what you will hear from the media, at Disney World, and at amusement parks—and it is presented as fact. National Parks presentations often begin something like this, “Two hundred million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth ...” You may even hear that every educated person knows this (the implication being that only the uneducated believe anything else). But regardless of their condescension, none of this is evidence.

Is there any evidence that man and dinosaurs live at the same time? There are over 2,000 dinosaur footprints alongside tracks “resembling human footprints” in the same layer of rock, which has been reported on by scientists in the former Soviet Union. Similar findings have been made in Arizona. Were it not for the theory of evolution, few scientists would doubt that these were human footprints. Soft dinosaur tissue has now been recovered from several dinosaurs: three tyrannosaurs (T rex) and one hadrosaur. It is ridiculous to believe that soft tissue can be preserved for more than 60,000,000 years, but it could be preserved for 5,000 years.

In the Book of Job, one of the oldest books ever written, God describes an animal, called behemoth, as follows: Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you [note: along with you - not 60 million years before you] and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength he has in his loins, what power in the muscles of his belly! His tail sways like a cedar [If the behemoth were an elephant or hippopotamus the tail would be more like a rope than a huge cedar]; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron. (Job 40:15–18).

In Job 41 God describes the leviathan as a huge, fierce sea monster—not a whale or crocodile, because the Hebrew language had other words to describe such animals. The leviathan may be a plesiosaur (PLEE see uh sore); a large seagoing reptile that evolutionists say became extinct 60 million years before man evolved. Read through Job chapter 41 and you will definitely sense that God was describing something that was both familiar and contemporary to Job.

Paul said that sin came into the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin (Romans 5:12). Taking this verse literal we believe that all death, which includes the dead animals of the fossil record, is the result of Adam’s sin. Therefore the fossil record was made after Adam’s sin, and the only event which could have caused all that death is the Flood of Genesis 7. Since the fossil record includes dinosaur skeletons, the flood is the primary cause of the dinosaur extinction. Some dinosaurs, such as the plesiosaur described above were semi-aquatic and a few may have survived the flood. But because most of the food chain was also destroyed in the flood, these survivors would find it very difficult to find food, and likewise likely became extinct.

Were dinosaurs on the Ark? Yes. God told Noah to put representatives of every kind of land animal on the Ark. But why put adult dinosaurs on the Ark? Young dinosaurs would take up less room, eat less, and be easier to manage. The purpose for having animals on board was so they could reproduce after the flood and repopulate the earth. Young dinosaurs would have more potential for reproduction than old dinosaurs.

Now let’s look at something that Jesus said, “But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6). Jesus said that Adam and Eve were made at the beginning of creation (which means during the six days of Creation Week), and not 60 million years after the dinosaurs became extinct. Evolutionists have man coming on the scene billions of years after the beginning; Jesus has man coming on the scene at the beginning.

Understanding our roots (Genesis) will lead us to understand that at one time dinosaurs did roam the earth and that man and dinosaur were in fact contemporary. There is a book entitled “In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood” by Walt Brown, Ph.D., which can be ordered from the Center for Scientific Creation, 5612 N. 20th Place, Phoenix, AZ 85016, Phone 602 955 7663. You can also order the book from the website www.creationscience.com. This book is a most important read for Christians who want to be in the know about hundreds of current issues.