The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible 1

Dinosaur-like creatures are mentioned in the Bible. The Bible uses ancient names like “behemoth” (beh-HEE-moth) and “tannin.” Behemoth means kingly, gigantic beasts. Tannin is a term which includes dragon-like animals and the great sea creatures such as whales, giant squids, and marine reptiles like the plesiosaurs (PLEE-see-oh-sors) that may have become extinct (died out).

The Bible's best description of a dinosaur-like animal is in Job chapter 40…

"Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you and which feed 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; the sinews of his thighs are close-knit. His bones are tubes of bronze, his limbs like rods of iron. He ranks first among the works of God…"
-Job 40:15-19 (NIV)

The book of Job is very old, written after the worldwide flood of Noah's time and probably about 2,000 years before Jesus was born. Here God describes a great king of the land animals like some of the biggest dinosaurs, the Diplodocus and Apatosaurus. It was a gigantic plant-eater with great muscles and very strong bones. The long Diplodocus had leg bones so strong that he could have held three others on his back.
The behemoth were not afraid. They did not need to be; they were huge. Behemoth tails were so long and strong that God compared them to cedars--one of the largest and most spectacular trees of the ancient world.After all the behemoth had died out, many people forgot about them. Dinosaurs were extinct and the fossil skeletons that are in museums today did not begin to be put together until about 150 years ago. Today, some people have mistakenly guessed that the behemoth mentioned in the Bible might be an elephant or a hippopotamus. But those animals do not have tails like the thick, tall trunks of cedar trees!

Just because something is “fossilized” does not mean that it is millions (or even thousands) of years old. When the conditions and materials are right, a bone can become filled with minerals fairly quickly. The main ingredients are:
1. Quick burial.
2. Water, in the right amounts.
3. Suitable minerals.

Conditions during the Flood were ideal for “fossilizing” millions of animals and plants.

Researchers have found that chicken bones and wood can be replaced with minerals in just five to ten years. A big dinosaur bone might take hundreds of years to completely mineralize. It all depends on the burial conditions over the years.

Many dinosaur remains are still not completely turned in to rock. More than half of the fossil is still original bone, not stone! Some even have chemicals from the living animals (proteins and amino acids)! Some fish fossils still have a fishy smell when first uncovered.



Harmful radiation from the sun (and space) probably came down in much larger doses after the Flood. The original world may have been protected from this radiation by a special atmosphere. The earth's air may have contained a much higher amount of water which kept the weather warmer and more pleasant. Before the Flood, plants were watered by rivers, underground springs and dew--instead of by rain.

After the Flood, many parts of the world became too harsh for the dinosaurs. No longer did the earth have the same great forests of huge, nutritious plants. It would have been hard for the dinosaurs to locate enough food as they got bigger and bigger.

It was not just the dinosaurs that died off. Great numbers of creatures have become extinct in the thousands of years since the Flood. In the last 350 years alone, almost 400 species have disappeared. Today, some experts claim that one or more species of plants and animals may be lost every day. Most of the problem is caused by sinful and foolish human beings.

Today, many animals are only being saved by zoos. Dinosaurs became extinct long before people worried about such things.

The Flood and the changes it caused in the environment are the main reason dinosaurs died off. However, sinful people may have caused dinosaur deaths in an even more direct way.

Man has often been responsible for killing the last animals of a kind. The mammoths and mastodons were wiped out by hunters. It could be that in the ancient time, people also killed dinosaurs for meat or because of the problems these animals caused. Maybe some killing was done just for sport.

Ancient peoples all over the world have told of unusual, reptile-like creatures that once roamed the earth. There were many different types, both large and small. And there were many different names for them. The ancient people of Europe called them “dragons.” Many ancient descriptions of dragons sound similar to dinosaurs.

The ancient, original “dragon” legends must have come from memories of dinosaurs. Scientists agree that legends are almost always based on facts, not just pure imagination. It cannot be an accident that so many separate peoples of the world tell such stories.

“Dragon” legends and pictures can be found in Africa, India, Europe, the Middle East, the Orient and every other part of the world. Dinosaur-like animals have been drawn, written about and told about since the beginning of recorded history.

Sometimes people in olden times made up scary or funny stories about these animals. This made the “dragons” and their hunters seem more special. Some of the stories really got wild and crazy.

Most of the dragon legends are full of exaggeration, magic and marvelous deeds. But this is not true of all of them. Many stories seem rather believable.

Did some of these storytellers see live dinosaurs? Which stories are based on real encounters? And which are merely fairy tales based on the stories of others? Will anyone ever know for sure?

Admin Note: Posted by Jake, moved from its own thread to be continued here.


A scientist named Ulysses Aldrovandus carefully described a small “dragon” seen along a farm road in northern Italy. The date was May 13, 1572. The poor, rare creature was so little that the farmer killed it just by knocking it on the head with his walking stick. The animal had done nothing wrong but hiss at the farmer's oxen as they approached it on the road.

The scientist obtained the dead body and made measurements and a drawing. He even had the animal mounted for a museum. It had a long neck, a very long tail and a fat body. The skeletons of a number of ancient reptile-like creatures have similarities to this basic description.

China

Thousands of dragon stories and pictures can be found in ancient Chinese books and art. One interesting legend tells about a famous Chinese man named Yu. After the great world flood, Yu surveyed the land of China and divided it into sections. Dragon Figure - China. Copyrighted by Eden Communications.He "built channels to drain the water off to the sea" and helped make the land livable again. Many snakes and “dragons” were driven off from the marshlands when Yu created the new farmlands.

Some old Chinese books even tell of a family that kept “dragons” and raised the babies. It is said that in those days, Chinese kings used “dragons” for pulling royal chariots on special occasions.1

Ancient Chinese books even tell of people using dragon's blood, fat, brains, and saliva for medicine.

Ireland (c.900 AD)



An Irish writer recorded an encounter with a large beast with “iron” on its tail which pointed backwards. Its head was shaped a little like a horse's. And it had thick legs with strong claws. These details match features of dinosaurs like the Kentrosaurus (KEN-tro-SOR-us) and Stegosaurus (STEG-oh-SOR-us). They had sharp-pointed spines on their tails, thick legs, strong claws and long skulls.

Africa and Arabia (c.900 AD)

The respected Greek explorer Herodotus described small flying reptiles in ancient Egypt and Arabia. These animals sound amazingly like the small Ramphorhynchus (RAM-foe-RING-kus). They had the same snake-like body and bat-like wings. Many had been killed near the city of Buto (Arabia). He was shown a canyon with many piles of their back-bones and ribs. 1

Flying Reptile. Copyrighted by Eden Communications. Herodotus said that these animals could sometimes be found in the spice groves. They were "small in size and of various colors." Large numbers would sometimes gather in the frankincense trees. When workers wanted to gather the trees' valuable juices, they would use smelly smoke to drive the flying reptiles away.

The well-respected Greek, Aristotle, said that in his time it was common knowledge that creatures like this also existed in Ethiopia. Similar animals (three feet long) were also described in India by the geographer Strabo.



“Dragons” in the Sea

Dragon in the Sea. Copyright 1996 by Julia Lacquement. All Rights Reserved. Used with permission. Like fish, some of the great reptiles of the sea could have lived through the Flood without being taken in to the Ark. Noah was told to protect land-dwelling animals and birds, not fish and other creatures that could survive in the floodwaters.

An ancient Hebrew legend says that the only animals to survive the Flood, besides those on the Ark, were "the giant og, the monster reem and the fishes." The word “og” means gigantic and long necked--a good description of the big plesiosaurs (PLEE-see-o-SORS).

In every part of the world, ships have made reports of animals like this and other types of unknown creatures. Most scientists agree there are probably many more sea creatures to be discovered. Man knows more about the surface of the moon than he does about life in the world's great oceans. There is more sworn evidence for “sea monsters” than would be needed to prove any ordinary case in the court of law.

The Navy ship U.S.S. Stein tangled with such a creature on its way to track submarines near South America. When its sonar equipment suddenly stopped working, the captain headed the ship back for repairs at the Long Beach Naval Dockyard. When the tough underwater sonar dome was examined in dry dock the crew found a big surprise. The rubber covering that protects the dome was torn and battered with dozens of big gouges. Hundreds of sharp, hollow teeth (or claws) were broken off in the covering. Some were longer than a inch.

It looked as if some sea creature had been attracted to the underwater sound of the sonar and tried to bite it and break it. Naval Oceans Center made a decision. The animal "must have been extremely large and of species still unknown to science."

The “leviathan” the Bible talks about in Job 41 is described as the greatest creature in the sea. Unlike a crocodile or fish, it was useless to try to catch a leviathan with hooks, harpoons or anything else. "Nothing on earth is his equal--a creature without fear" (Job 41:33, NIV).

What was a leviathan? The large size, strong jaws, great teeth, fast swimming ability and its protected back and underside all give clues. It could have been a Kronosaurus (KRON-oh-SOR-us) or something like it. This was one of the greatest, most overwhelming animals ever to swim the seas. It was not a true dinosaur, but it was reptile-like and had great, sharp teeth.

It seems these animals were still alive at the time of King David. Psalm 104 says they played where the ships go to and fro. This was probably the Mediterranean Sea.

It is interesting that many reports of “sea serpents” closely match the ancient pliosaurs and mosasaurs. They looked somewhat like huge lizards or crocodiles with flippers or webbed feet. Fossils show their backbones were very flexible. They could probably swim in a snake-like motion.

A creature very much like these was reported during World War I by a German submarine. Captain Georg von Forstner described what happened:

"On July 30, 1915, our U28 torpedoed the British steamer Iberian carrying a rich cargo in the North Atlantic. The steamer sank quickly, the bow sticking almost vertically into the air. When it had gone for about twenty-five seconds there was a violent explosion. A little later pieces of wreckage, and among them a gigantic sea animal (writhing and struggling wildly), was shot out of the water to a height of 60 to 100-feet. At that moment I had with me in the conning tower my officers of the watch, the chief engineer, the navigator, and the helmsman. Simultaneously we all drew one another's attention to this wonder of the seas…we were unable to identify it. We did not have time to take a photograph, for the animal sank out of sight after ten or fifteen seconds. It was about 60-feet long, was like a crocodile in shape and had four limbs with powerful webbed feet and a long tail tapering to a point."

You can find the rest of this book on this website: http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/questions.html
There are also cool videos on Youtube like these creation seminars here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VUuQ_9cKuE
If you go to description, you can find links to all the parts.