What Happened to the Dinosaurs?

By John Whitmore

Although the monstrous creature was obviously a vegetarian, its size was overwhelming. Its hips could withstand the enormous force of each pounding step and its midsection was a mass of muscle. Its gigantic tail extended far behind him, not unlike a giant cedar tree swaying behind his body. Its bones were like steel girders with ribs like iron bars to support his enormous weight. This is the greatest creature to roam the swamps and rivers of the earth.

Is this a scene from the blockbuster movie, Jurassic Park? It could be, but it isn't. This description, which perfectly fits an Apatosaurus, is a paraphrased description taken from one of the oldest books of the Bible, Job 40: 15-24. If dinosaurs have been extinct for 65 million years, how could a writer of the Bible have accurately described the appearance, food, and habitat of this creature?

The vast majority of books on dinosaurs are written from an evolutionary perspective which assumes that the dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago. The leading model for the demise of the dinosaur involves a large asteroid hitting the earth. Yet the most obvious alternative explanation is almost always ignored. Almost all fossils are the remains of creatures buried by sediment filled water which has subsequently turned to rock. If this is due to a flood of worldwide extent, as the water rose to cover all land surfaces, animals would have been drowned, sank, and buried by massive amounts of rapidly accumulating sediment. It is not at all surprising to find a general lack of burial mixing between these very different kinds of animals due to local or ecological grouping.

Paintings of unknown creature from Kuku Yanlanji people

Genesis 7:2 states that Noah saved two of every representative "kind" of land animal on the ark. Noah would have taken young specimens, not huge, older creatures. Dinosaurs would have emerged from the ark to inhabit an entirely different world. Instead of a warm, mild climate worldwide, they would have found a harsh climate which soon settled into an ice age. If climatic hardships did not cause the dinosaur's extinction, man's tendency to destroy probably did.

In the early 1900's on the Doheny expedition into the Grand Canyon, Indian cave drawings were found which closely resembled a duck-billed dinosaur. Legends from ancient China to ancient England have recorded descriptions of dinosaur-like creatures. The Kuku Yalanji aboriginal people have paintings which look exactly like plesiosaurs. These and other intriguing evidences seem to indicate that perhaps that age of the dinosaurs ended more recently than is commonly taught.

Christians do not need to feel foolish about standing on Scripture in their understanding of the world around us. There is ample evidence to support the Biblical record.

Evolution serves as the foundational basis for the religions of humanism and atheism. These world views are popular because man, instead of God, decides on rules and moral standards. Creation serves as the foundational basis for Christianity which acknowledges that all things were created by God, that we live in a fallen universe, and that it will be restored to perfection in the future.

There is a danger of becoming so indoctrinated by evolutionary thinking that we become closed to the creation alternative. As concerned parents, we need to be careful what our children are taught by making sure they are hearing all of the facts. By teaching them the evidence for creation and the fallacies of evolutionary explanations, they will be directed toward God instead of away from Him.

John Whitmore is a MS geologist and professor of geology at Cedarville College in Cedarville, Ohio.

This Article is from Bruce Malone's book Search for the Truth