What about dinosaurs? How do they fit in with Adam and Eve, and creation? Well, the word “dinosaur” is not in the Bible because that word, meaning “terrible lizard”, was not invented until about 1840. But there are creatures whose descriptions in the Bible match those of dinosaurs. Probably one of the best ones is the “behemoth”, described in the book of Job, chapter 40:15-24. It was a huge creature with “bones like bars of iron”, further described as follows: “his strength is in his loins” (legs and belly), he moves his “tail like a cedar tree”, and is large enough to “drink up a river”, even holding his mouth against the large Jordan river.
Many modern translators try to say this was a hippo or an elephant, but hippos and elephants don’t have tails like a cedar tree! Another animal that may have been one of the large sea dinosaurs was described in Job Chapter 41 as the “leviathan.” Some try to say it was a crocodile or a whale, but the description just doesn’t fit either! Both of these animals were said to be so big that man could not trap them.
In Genesis Chapter One, verse 21, it reads in most translations that God created great “whales” or “sea monsters.” Although no doubt God did create whales, the Hebrew word used for whales here tannin, is translated “dragons” everywhere else in the Bible. When God made “beasts of the earth”, on day six, this would have also included land dinosaurs, like the behemoth. Since Adam and Eve were also created at this time, then man and dinosaur were on the earth together (see Genesis 1:21-26). When you look up “dragons” in the Bible, (mentioned about 30 times), you see that there were many different kinds, which lived in different places. There were great dragons in the sea, as in Genesis 1:21, Psalm 74:13, Isaiah 27:1, dragons that lived on land and were apparently big enough to swallow a person: “ he (Nebuchadnezzar) has swallowed me like a dragon” (Jeremiah 51:34), or the “dragons of the wilderness” (Malachi 1:3) showing they probably lived far from man’s civilization. There was also a flying serpent mentioned in Isaiah 30:6.
But aren’t dragons just make-believe creatures? Well, if you study all of the many dragon stories (and people have actually done this), the dragons show up in all cultures of the world, and the different ways they are described seem to match up with the known kinds of dinosaurs. Of course, many of these descriptions were exaggerated and mythologized, just as we might tell a big fish story. But when we tell such a story, we at least have to know what a real fish looks like, even a small one. In the same way, these dragon stories, because they come from all over the world, and describe creatures that match many dinosaurs that weren’t discovered until centuries later, must have a basis in reality. In fact, some of the dragon stories have descriptions that are written more like eyewitness reports than myths, and describe creatures that looked exactly like dinosaurs such as T-rex, or the flying Pterodactyls, or Stegosaurus! How could they just guess these right, if they were all fairy tales?! Remember, dinosaurs were not yet discovered when the dragon stories were written. There are just too many of these dragon descriptions, and from all over the world, for them to be explained as pure fantasy. See articles: Angkor saw a Stegosaur?, Bishop Bell’s brass behemoths!, Austrailia’s Aborigines- did they see Dinosaurs?
The above are just a sample. For a really good book by a careful researcher named Vance Nelson, see Dire Dragons, Untold secrets of Planet Earth, 2012, which is available online. In his book, Nelson catalogs dragon stories, with color photos of cave drawings, paintings, sculptures, artwork on pottery, brass engravings, and carvings, from all over the world. These depictions of dragons match up very well with various known kinds of dinosaurs. The resemblances are quite striking. To compare them, Nelson had artists who drew the illustrations of dinosaurs in his book draw them without knowing about or seeing the ancient artwork to which their illustrations were being compared. All the artists knew about was the basic pose of the creature in the ancient artwork, to keep from having different poses cover up similarities because of different angles and views (Nelson, p. 23)
Nelson also addresses the idea that the reason the ancient artists so accurately portrayed animals that closely resemble dinosaurs was that they dug up the bones and based their drawings on them (Nelson, pages 21-22). He asks the following basic questions:
The explanation that makes the most sense is that the ancient people actually saw these animals live.
There is therefore much evidence that man and dinosaurs were on the earth at the same time. There have been paintings found in caves in Africa that can be recognized as dinosaurs, such as Brontosaurus (now called Apatosaurus). These natives (the Bushmen) also painted other animals very accurately that are still known and alive today, so there is no reason to think they didn’t also paint the dinosaur like creatures accurately as well. A carving was found in a cave wall in France that clearly shows an elephant-like creature called a mammoth, fighting with a dinosaur-like creature, one that looks like a small T-rex, with small front legs.
For more articles citing evidence that ancient artists saw live dinosaurs, see:Did Medieval Artists see real Dinosaurs?,
Medieval Artists saw Extinct Reptiles: more evidence
When many people are asked how they know the earth is millions or billions of years old, they will point to dinosaur fossils as proof. The prevailing wisdom teaches that we know they died off 65 million years ago or so. But recently, there have been some startling finds in dinosaur fossils that have their discoverers scrambling to explain these findings in an old-earth context. In the early 90’s paleontologist Dr. Mary Schweitzer discovered what appeared to be blood vessels in the bones of a T-rex fossil. She was quoted in Science Magazine in 1993: “It was exactly like looking at a slice of modern bone. But, of course, I couldn’t believe it. The bones, after all, are 65 million years old. How could blood cells survive that long?” [1] (also see article: The Mysteries of stunning soft tissue fossil finds)
Over the years since then, she and others have discovered red blood cells with nuclei, branching blood vessels, flexible tissue, several proteins including collagen, immunological evidence of hemoglobin, and DNA, all in dinosaur bones. (See article: Dinosaur soft tissue and protein-even more confirmation!
The collagen is very significant because it cannot be found in bacteria and so cannot be the result of bacterial biofilms[2]. DNA that has been found could not possibly survive over millions of years according to all laboratory evidence. (See article by biochemist Dr. Jonathan Sarfati: DNA and bone cells found in dinosaur bone
Efforts to prove these structures as something other than they appear to be have not been successful so far, but the old-earth paradigm has such a strong hold that most are not willing to consider that these bones are not millions of years old.
See related articles: Doubting doubts about the Squishosaur Squishosaur scepticism squashed and most recently, Does the Toast Model explain Fossil Protein persistance?
So evidence is there that shows that man and dinosaurs lived on earth at the same time after all. Even today, there are some scientists who believe they have sighted dinosaur-like creatures in a remote part of Africa, a jungle area that is unfortunately very hard to get to, even on foot or by boat, and so it has been hard to get pictures. But these are serious scientists who have claimed to have seen these dinosaur –like creatures, and have reported these sightings in well know science magazines. (see article: Mokele-mbembe- a living dinosaur?)
So wouldn’t dinosaurs have been too dangerous to have had around if man was there too? Actually, we all have watched a little too much Jurassic Park! The average dinosaur was actually about the size of a large dog or small pony. That means many were smaller even. A few were also quite large. Man if not most were vegetarians. Even T-rex may have eaten vegetables along with meat, according to the science expert for Jurassic Park. Of course, the Book of Genesis says that all creatures, even the dinosaurs that were with Adam, ate plants at first (see Genesis 1:30). Many large animals today are not dangerous to man, such as elephants. And most likely later on, when dinosaurs ate meat, men and dinosaurs did not live too close together. And man probably hunted dinosaurs as well, as they did other large animals, some of the large mammals such as the giant rhinos and giant ground sloths being even bigger than T-rex. And when dinosaurs were taken on the Ark, they were probably taken as young adults, which were quite a bit smaller than the older, really big adults. And the Ark was quite large, anyway.
We are told in school sometimes that dinosaurs only lived millions of years ago and were killed by a meteor or some other disaster and died long before man came to earth. But dinosaur bones are not dug up that have labels on them, giving how old they are. They can’t even be dated directly, but are dated by indirect methods that have many problems, and built-assumptions. No modern scientist was there to see how they dinosaurs died out, and none are really sure of their theories. And in spite of what we are sometimes taught in school, we have seen that there is evidence that dinosaurs lived with man. Most dinosaurs probably did die in a disaster, the Great Flood, with the rest going extinct gradually over many years after they got off the Ark. See article: The so-called “Age of Dinosaurs”
Most dinosaurs are found buried all together, in large layers of rock that was laid down by water. In fact, this is where pretty much all fossils are found. An animal or plant needs to be buried quickly to form a fossil, and scientists agree that flood conditions are the best for forming fossils. And since the layers where dinosaurs and other fossils are found are very deep and wide in many cases, the flood that buried them must have been very large. The Morrison Formation out West, where many dinosaur fossils are found, covers a huge area over many states! Some dinosaurs that were found were in swimming positions. The change in climate and available plant food after the Flood would have causes many animals to go extinct, and this is as good an explanation as any for why the dinosaurs died out. (See article:Dinosaur Disarray-evidence for the Global Flood at Dinosaur National Monument ) And instead of dinosaurs eating man up, hunting by man that definitely god rid of some large mammals even larger than dinosaurs, may have been the reason the last of the dinosaurs died. Now, to hunt dinosaurs, a pick and shovel are the best tools!
So the real proven scientific facts, as always, agree with the Bible.