Man and Dinosaurs

by Ken Ham, Andrew Snelling, and Carl Wieland

If the dinosaurs that accompanied Noah died out some time after the Flood, it would be expected that some evidence of co- habitation of dinosaurs with man in history could be discovered. Is there any evidence for this? Yes. Just as nearly every culture of the world has flood stories similar to those in Genesis 6-9, many different cultures also have dragon legends. It has been suggested that these are, in fact, encounters with creatures such as dinosaurs.

For example, in the film The Great Dinosaur Mystery (produced by Films for Christ) we find that a Sumerian story dating back to 3,000 BC tells of a hero named Gilgamesh, who, when he went to fell the cedars in a remote forest, encountered a hugh vicious dragon which he slew, cutting off its head as a trophy. When Alexander the Great and his soldiers marched into India, they found that the Indians worshipping huge hissing reptiles that they kept in caves. China has always been renowned for its dragon stories, and dragons have always been prominent on Chinese pottery, embroidery, and carvings. England has its story of St George, who slew a dragon that lived in a cave.

But we are not just referring to stories dating back thousands of years, for even in the tenth century, an Irishman wrote of his encounter with what appears to have been a Stegosaurus. In the 1500's, a European scientific book, Historia Animalium, listed several animals, which to us are dinosaurs, as still alive. A well-known naturalist of the time, Ulysses Aldrovandus, recorded an encounter between a peasant named Baptisa and a dragon whose description fits that of the dinosaur Tanystropheus. The encounter was on May 13, 1572 near Bologna in Italy, and the peasant killed the dragon. So the evidence for the existence of dinosaurs during recorded human history is strong.

We also have the description of two beasts that could very well have been such great reptilian creatures still existing in Job's day (Job 40:15, 41:1-34). The text records that God was showing Job some of the powerful creatures He had made. In Job 40, verse 15, God tells Job to look at behemoth. In many commentaries, behemoth is said to be an elephant or a hippopotamus. However, this description is unlikely, since behemoth is said to have had a tail like a cedar (verse 17). Now if there is one thing an elephant's tiny tail is unlike, it is a cedar tree! The elephant is quickly eliminated as a possibility for this beast. In fact, after reading this passage in Job very carefully, one is hard put to find any living creature to fit the description. The closest that we know could be Brachiosaurus, one of the dinosaurs. Leviathan (Job 41:1) seems to have been some sort of fire-breathing dragon. For those who wonder about this, remember that the living bombardier beetle can shoot out super- heated gases in its own defense. Why not leviathan?

So what did happen to the dinosaurs? Those that did not go into Noah's Ark certainly would have drowned. Many of these were buried quickly and therefore preserved, and their bones have been found in recent times. Those that went into the Ark with Noah survived, and after the Flood were able to breed and reproduce their offspring. However, due to the harsh conditions, shortage of food, and so on, they have become extinct. It is hard to say categorically that any animal is extinct, since one can't scientifically prove an organism to be extinct. Geologists, the traditional declarers of extinction, have been severely embarrassed several times when, after having declared animals to be extinct, they have discovered them alive and well in environments the scientists merely hadn't looked at. It is neither possible nor feasible to have one person at every point on the earth's surface looking in every direction all at one time, just to be 100 percent sure that there are no dinosaurs, and that, therefore, dinosaurs truly are extinct.

There have been reported sightings of dinosaurs even up to the present day. In Science Digest, June 1981 and as late as 1983 (Science Frontiers, No. 33), explorers and natives in Africa have reported sightings of dinosaur-like creatures. These have usually been confined to out-of-the-way places such as lakes in the middle of Congo jungles. It could even be true that the Loch Ness monster (if Nellie really exists) is a variety of Plesiosaur which still survives today. It certainly would be no embarrassment to a creationist if someone discovered a living Tyrannosaurus rex in a jungle. It wouldn't even be surprising if it happened to be a plant eater! However, this would be a tremendous embarrassment to an evolutionist.

There is no real mystery surrounding the dinosaurs when one understands the events that have happened in the past. But our understanding of these events cannot be based on the mere speculations of people who are alive in the present. Unless they are based on the carefully recorded words of the Creator God who was there, none of us has a basis for any real interpretation of history or evidence at all.

The Answers Book
Chapter 1, What Happened to the Dinosaurs?