How do dinosaurs fit in the bible?

When God created the world, dinosaurs were one of His creations. God created all the animals (Genesis 1:20-25). God made everything in the entire universe--people, stars, planets and all that there is (Exodus 20:11a, Genesis 1, John 1:3). Like Adam, the bodies of the first dinosaurs were formed from the dust of the earth. Man and dinosaurs lived at the same time.

"For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day." – Exodus 20:11
"All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made." –John 1:3

But, are they in the Bible? Why did God create dinosaurs? Why did they become extinct? What was life like living with dinosaurs, at first?...

Are Dinosaurs in the Bible

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).

Diplodocus 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 before 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!

Baby Elephants

What is the leviathan mentioned in the Bible?

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).

Kronosaurus 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."

WHY did dinosaurs become EXTINCT?

There have been many ideas to explain why dinosaurs became extinct. At least 55 different theories have been suggested and then thrown out because of problems. For instance, a theory that works for the large animals usually does not explain the extinction of the small animals or sea creatures. Whatever happened to dinosaurs, scientists agree that it must have affected the whole world.

Were the dinosaurs killed by a meteorite?

The latest dinosaur extinction theory suggests that the earth was struck from space by a six-mile-wide meteorite (a comet or asteroid). Such a collision could have left a huge layer of dust in the atmosphere. The dust could have been enough to block out the sun's light for months and perhaps years. Because most plants need lots of sunlight, this would have destroyed many of them. The dinosaurs would have starved on a cold, darkened planet.

What is wrong with this theory?

If the meteorite collision really happened, why did other forms of life survive--including birds, small vertebrates (including mammals), big crocodiles, insects, flowering plants, freshwater plants and animals, various types of sea life, etc.?

The primary evidence for this great collision from space comes from certain types of clay with metal called iridium in them. Asteroids have this element. However, this does not necessarily mean that deposits had to come from the explosion of an asteroid.

The earth's core also has this metal in it. Iridium can be brought up by volcanic eruptions. Could some of these deposits of metal be evidence of large volcanic eruptions of iridium in the past? It is interesting that some Bible-believing scientists conclude that most of the dinosaurs were killed and buried during a relatively short period of time. And during this time, they believe, the earth was probably in the midst of the greatest earthquakes and volcanic eruptions ever known.

No matter where each of the iridium deposits came from, it is important to notice they all had something in common. The iridium was buried in the midst of tons of hardened mud and sands called sediment. Such thick layers of sediment suggest that something more than asteroids was involved in the death and extinction of dinosaurs.

Where did most of the dinosaur fossils come from?

Bible tells of a great flood that covered the entire earth--Noah's Flood. This was the greatest disaster in history. Nothing else has even come close. The Flood waters rose above all the world's mountains and killed most of the air-breathing, land animals and all but eight people in Noah's family (Genesis 6:12-13, 7:21-23). It destroyed the entire surface of the earth (Genesis 9:11).

Great supplies of water stored underground came bursting out (Genesis 7:11, 8:2). The earth's crust heaved and buckled unleashing terrible volcanic eruptions and massive earthquakes like the world has never seen before or since.

Rain poured out from a dark, thundering sky in unending torrents. Waves of loosened earth and trees slid down hillsides burying plants by the thousands. All of the cities were totally destroyed. And so was God's garden in Eden. For forty days the rains continued. And the waves continued to rise, fed by vast amounts of underground water which used to feed the rivers and springs of the world, including the Garden in the land of Eden ( Genesis 2:6; 10-14).

The continent before the Flood Under the pressure of this worldwide disaster, the earth shook again and again causing huge tsunami waves to sweep across the sinking land. So great was the destruction that every human being died and with them, millions of animals and plants.

The only people spared were Noah's family. According to God's instructions, Noah built a great barge-shaped boat to be used to refill the earth. God protected this precious ship and its passengers throughout the disaster which lasted over a year.

When the destruction was finished, peace slowly began to return to the earth. Eventually, the waters dropped to a level safe enough for Noah and his family to leave the Ark on dry ground ( Genesis 8:13, 14).

Such a great event would surely have left evidence to be found today. For instance, one would expect to find billions of dead creatures buried by water in mud and sand (now hardened to rock). And that is exactly what scientists do find around the world.

Fossil graveyard Thousand of dinosaurs bones can be found where they were washed together by violent flood waters and buried under mud, sand and rock. Many of the animals were torn apart and their bones broken and jumbled-up. The muds and sands hardened like concrete to form the great layers of fossil rocks we find today.

Quick flood burial would be the only way that so many dinosaurs and other things could have become fossilized in the way scientists have found them. Animals and plants will fossilize only if they are buried quickly and deeply - before predators, decay and weather destroy them.

Doesn't it take millions of years for a dinosaur bone to become a fossil?

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.

A Fossil Hat 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.

Tissue fragments from a Tyrannosaurus rex femur are shown at left, when it is flexible and resilient and when stretched (arrow) returns to its original shape. The middle photo shows the bone after it is air dried. The photo at right shows regions of bone showing fibrous character, not normally seen in fossil bone.

Some of the plants buried during the Flood are not fossilized either. In New Jersey, large amounts of wood from trees that were growing at the same time as dinosaurs can be found in the dirt (Cretaceous clay). They are preserved, but not turned to stone at all. In England, fragile plant hairs and tiny details of the plant's cells can be seen. The plants are not turned into rock. They are just flattened and blackened. Since the Flood happened only about four or five thousand years ago, these types of discoveries are not surprising.

Let’s not forget the living fossil…

Coelacanth

After the Flood what happened to dinosaurs?

When the Flood was over Noah opened the Ark's big door and let the animals free. Babies were born to each set of parents. After many years, the earth began to be filled with animals again.

The dinosaurs lived for at least a few centuries after the Flood, but probably never in the great numbers that there once had been. No one knows exactly when they finally died out.

After the Flood the earth was a very different place. When Noah stepped off the ship, it must have felt like getting out on another planet. Nothing would have looked familiar. Most of the world was left covered with water. Seven out of every ten spots of the globe are still under water today.

All of the landmarks were destroyed. The Garden of Eden was gone forever. So was the whole land of Eden and every other land. Mud and rock were everywhere. Cold forbidding mountains stood where none had been before.

Earthquakes and volcanoes still continued to plague animals and man, even after the Flood was over--and still do today on a smaller scale.

Temperatures had become extreme. Some parts of the world got much hotter after the Flood. This eventually dried up all the water and left great deserts. In other places, snow began to fall for the first time because of freezing cold. A short ice "age" followed the Flood in some parts of the world.

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.

The endangered red panda 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.

Mastodons were smaller than mammoths and modern elephants. Both mastodons and mammoths had more hair than modern elephants.

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.

Is there any possible connection between dragons and dinosaurs?

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?
Babylon A “dragon" story from the ancient land of Sumer in Babylon tells of the hero Gilgamesh. He decided to make a name for himself by traveling to a distant land to cut great cedar trees needed for his city. He reached the forest with fifty volunteers and discovered a huge reptile-like animal which ate trees and reeds. The story simply says that Gilgamesh killed it and cut off its head for a trophy.¹
REFERENCES & FOOTNOTES
1. Samuel N. Kramer, HISTORY BEGINS AT SUMER (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959), p.170-81. (Sumer was one of two ancient political divisions of Babylonia.)
Scandinavia

Scandinavian countries had about as many tales of dragons as anywhere in the world.1 One old legend describes a reptile-like animal that had a body about the size of a large cow. Its two back legs were long and strong. But its front legs were remarkably short. And its jaws were quite large. One of the unique things about many dinosaurs was their short front legs, compared to their long, strong back legs.² Many also had large jaws. Examples of dinosaurs which fit are the Edmontosaurus (ed-MONT-oh-SOR-us, above), and the Iguanodon (i-GWA-no-DON, below).

REFERENCES & FOOTNOTES
1. Horace Palmer Beck, FOLKLORE AND THE SEA (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ., 1973), p.256.
2. Helen L. Hoke, DRAGONS, DRAGONS, DRAGONS (NYC: Watts, 1972), p.179.
Ireland

An Irish writer (c.900 AD) 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, above>) and Stegosaurus (STEG-oh-SOR-us, below). They had sharp-pointed spines on their tails, thick legs, strong claws and long skulls.

France and Europe The city of Nerluc in France was renamed in honor of the killing of a "dragon" there. This animal was bigger than an ox and had long, sharp, pointed horns on its head.

There were a number of different horned dinosaurs. The Triceratops (try-SER-ah-tops) is one example.

A well-known, old science book, the Historia Animalium, claims that "dragons" were not extinct in the 1500's. But the animals were said to be extremely rare and relatively small by then.¹
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REFERENCES & FOOTNOTES:
1. Konrad Gesner, HISTORIAE ANIMALIUM (Tigvri: C. Froschovervm, 1551-1587).
Verrill, p.224.
Jorge Luis Borges, THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS (NYC: Dutton, 1969), p.240.
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Italy 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.¹

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REFERENCES & FOOTNOTES:
1. The following are some of the details which are available in the documentation by Aldrovandus (sometimes spelled Aldrovandi):
The dragon was first seen on May 13, 1572, hissing like a snake. He had been hiding on the small estate of Master Petronius near Dosius in a place called Malonolta. At 5 PM, he was caught on a public highway by a herdsman named Baptista of Camaldulus, near the hedge of a private farm, a mile from the remote city outskirts of Bologna. Baptista was following his ox cart home when he noticed the oxen suddenly come to a stop. He kicked them and shouted at them, but they refused to move and went down on their knees rather than move forward. At this point, the herdsman noticed a hissing sound and was startled to see this strange little dragon ahead of him. Trembling he struck it on the head with his rod and killed it. Aldrovandus was surprised that the reptile did not run when he saw the man, but instead bravely raised its head and stood its ground.

Aldrovandus reported that it was definitely a reptile and the first of this type that he had seen. The creature was rather strange in appearance, but seemed to be completely harmless. It was a small specimen; Aldrovandus believed that it was only a baby judging by the incompletely developed claws and teeth. The corpse had only two feet. It moved by slithering like a snake and by using its feet, he believed. It could hiss like a snake and hold its head up in the air. Its slender neck had white markings like circling its neck. It had a very long tail and neck and a thick body. Aldrovandus mounted the specimen and put it on display for some time in a museum.
n Ulysses Aldrovandus, THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SERPENTS AND DRAGONS (Bologna, Italy: Mark Antony Bernia, 1640), p.402.
-- Henry F. Scott-Stokes, PERSEUS: OF DRAGONS (NYC: E.P. Dutton and Co., 1925). Has a loose and imcomplete translation of the account.
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Africa and Arabia

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

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.
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REFERENCES & FOOTNOTES:
1. See the writings of Herodotus. (There are a variety of published translations available.)
Perle S. Epstein, MONSTERS: THEIR HISTORIES, HOMES, AND HABITS (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), p.43.
Herodotus lived during the fifth century B.C.
"The reliability of Herodotus as an accurate eyewitness is more and more being recognized. De Selincourt writes thus: 'As to the reliability of Herodotus's information about Egypt, one can safely say that he is accurate and trustworthy when he describes what he saw with his own eyes. ' ... His turn of mind was skeptical; he was a born investigator. ... Since Herodotus is said to have seen the flying serpents, it would follow that his account is 'accurate and trustworthy.'" (William A. Springstead), "Herodotus, the Bible, and Flying Serpents," BIBLE-SCIENCE NEWS (May 15, 1971), p.5.
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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. 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.²
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REFERENCES & FOOTNOTES:
1. Legge, CHINESE CLASSICS, Vol. V, Book X, Year XXIX, par. 4, p. 729
2. Marinus Willem de Visser, THE DRAGON IN CHINA AND JAPAN (Wiesbaden: M. Sandig, 1969) and (London: 1913).
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So what happened to the "Dinosaurs"?

They died. Can you imagine the steak burgers!