Is This Petroglyph Evidence That Humans and Dinosaurs Coexisted?

Did humans and dinosaurs ever live at the same time? Dinosaurs were land animals. From the Genesis 1 creation account, we know that God made land animals on day six of the creation week, so God must have made dinosaurs on day six. Genesis 1 also tells us that God made man on day six, so man and dinosaurs must have lived at the same time, at least for a while. Since all we know about dinosaurs is from their fossils left in sedimentary rocks that we think were deposited during the flood, it stands to reason that both humans and dinosaurs lived on earth at least until the flood. That is why in the Creation Museum we depict people and dinosaurs together before the flood. Since the purpose of the ark was to preserve flying and land animals (Genesis 6:19–20), there must have been dinosaurs aboard the ark.

If dinosaurs were aboard the ark, then why don’t we see dinosaurs today? Perhaps the environment after the flood was not as conducive for dinosaurs as it was before the flood, making dinosaurs less successful after the flood so they eventually went extinct. Even so, humans and dinosaurs would overlap some after the flood, so then might there be archaeological or historical evidence of this? Displays along the entrance of the Creation Museum present some of the evidence some creationists have claimed for dinosaurs and people coexisting after the flood. But not all the evidence. One piece of evidence missing from our exhibits is the Kachina Bridge sauropod petroglyph. And the only other mention of this interesting petroglyph on the Answers in Genesis website is an article by Andy McIntosh two decades ago, in which he described his trip to Utah in 2006.

My Photograph of the Petroglyph

I reported on my recent research trip to Utah. The purpose of that trip was to examine the three large arches of Natural Bridges National Monument that formed from the cutoffs of gooseneck meanders. I have proposed a similar formation mechanism for Rock Bridge in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge, so the trip was an extension of my work on Rock Bridge. In planning the trip, I realized that the sauropod petroglyph is under Kachina Bridge, one of the natural bridges of national monument. Therefore, a secondary goal of my trip to Utah was to obtain some good photographs of the sauropod petroglyph. Once I arrived under Kachina Bridge and found the petroglyph, I realized that getting a good photograph of the petroglyph was not going to be easy. It’s not just a matter of lighting—most of the petroglyphs are faint and hence difficult to make out. But once you see a particular petroglyph, such as the sauropod, it is difficult to unsee.

Fortunately, details in photographs can be enhanced, and we have employees at Answers in Genesis who are adept at doing this. Note that this process does not add anything to photographs; it merely brings out detail that is already there. I show here an unedited original photograph of the sauropod petroglyph and the enhanced version. If you don’t readily see the sauropod in the original photo, viewing the enhanced version makes it very easy to pick it out in the original photo. As I said, once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

The petroglyph certainly resembles a sauropod, with its long tail, long neck, and four legs.

The petroglyph certainly resembles a sauropod, with its long tail, long neck, and four legs. Admittedly, the drawing is a bit out of scale, with the thickness of the tail and its length exaggerated. And the head looks too large. Or are the legs just too small? Perhaps the artist took some liberty with the details. For instance, to the upper left is what appears to be a person, though it resembles a person less than this sauropod drawing resembles a sauropod.

Sauropod or Pareidolia?

Or are we seeing in this petroglyph what we want to see? Nate Loper, the director of Canyon Ministries, thinks that some creationists have misinterpreted this petroglyph. Nate has studied many petroglyphs in the Southwest. For instance, on our Grand Canyon raft trips, Nate has shown me some petroglyphs that indicate the direction to sunrise and sunset on the December solstice and hence probably were used to mark the passage of time. The Native Americans who lived there a millennium ago spent winters farming at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and spent summers on the rim hunting and gathering. They had to keep track of time to know when to migrate twice a year.

From his studies at and around Kachina Natural Bridge, Nate has reached a very different conclusion about what this sauropod petroglyph is. What has Nate concluded? Nate has submitted an abstract to present his findings at the meeting of the Creation Research Society on July 24–26 in St. Louis. What is Nate going to say? I’m not at liberty to tell you before the meeting (hint: it’s not a sauropod). Why don’t you go to this meeting to find out what Nate has to say? You can sign up here.