Does the Bible Mention Dinosaurs?

Does the Bible mention dinosaurs? That depends on what you mean. You won’t find the word dinosaur in the Bible because no one used that word until the 1840s—long after the Bible was completed. If people described these amazing creatures before that time, they wouldn’t have called them by the name we use today.

So, what would they have been called? Take a look at some dinosaur pictures and try to describe them without using their names. You probably use words like gigantic or fierce or tough.

And those are the same sort of words the Bible uses about at least one such animal.

When God confronted Job, a man who lived within a couple hundred years after the Flood, He told Job to look at "behemoth." We can’t be completely sure what behemoth was, but God describes this grass-eating creation as gigantic, incredibly strong, and having a tree-like tail (Job 40:15–19). That’s probably how you would describe a sauropod dinosaur like Brachiosaurus—or perhaps even the tough-looking, three-horned Triceratops.

But even if the Bible had never mentioned these amazing creatures, we could be absolutely sure when they were created. Why? Because God told us exactly when He made all the land animals (which includes dinosaurs)—on Day Six of the Creation Week (Genesis 1:24–25).

What we call dinosaurs may change, but God’s Word never does.