Kids Feedback: When Did Dinosaurs Live?

on May 19, 2011

My 10 year old daughter asked me a question that I could not answer: When did dinosaurs live, did Noah take them on the ark, and if so, when did they become extinct?? The popular opinion evolutionary based takes millions of years for them to finally disappear. But I know this is wrong.

– H. C., California

Thanks so much for sending in your daughter’s question. You are correct in pointing out that dinosaurs did not disappear from the earth millions of years ago. Dinosaurs were created around 6,000 years ago1 by God, on Day Six of the Creation Week (see Genesis 1:24–31).

Noah did take dinosaurs on the ark, according to Genesis 6:19–20. Animals that fit the descriptions of dinosaurs are mentioned in the Bible, after the Flood had occurred. For an example, read about behemoth in Job 40:15–24.

Utahraptor

Animatronic Utahraptor at the Creation Museum.

Did you know that scientists have found soft dinosaur tissue embedded in fossils?2 This soft tissue could not survive for millions of years.

There are also some relatively recent dinosaur encounters recorded in history.

In the 1500s, a European scientific book, Historia Animalium, listed several living animals that we would call dinosaurs. A well-known naturalist of the time, Ulysses Aldrovandus, recorded an encounter between a peasant named Baptista and a dragon whose description fits that of the small dinosaur Tanystropheus. The encounter was on May 13, 1572, near Bologna in Italy, and the peasant killed the dragon.

Petroglyphs (drawings carved on rock) of dinosaurlike creatures have also been found.3 [Please refer to the source article for an expanded list of historical dinosaur encounters.]

Although it is believed that dinosaurs are extinct, we can not be completely sure.

One cannot prove an organism is extinct without having knowledge of every part of the earth’s surface simultaneously. Experts have been embarrassed when, after having declared animals extinct, they were discovered alive and well. For example, in the 1990s explorers found elephants in Nepal that have many features of mammoths.

Scientists in Australia found some living trees that they thought had become extinct with the dinosaurs. One scientist said, “It was like finding a ‘live dinosaur.’” When scientists find animals or plants that they thought were extinct long ago, they call them “living fossils.” There are hundreds of living fossils, a big embarrassment for those who believe in millions of years of earth history.

Explorers and natives in Africa have reported sighting dinosaur-like creatures, even in the twentieth century. These have usually been confined to out-of-the-way places such as lakes deep in the Congo jungles. Descriptions certainly fit those of dinosaurs.

Cave paintings by native Americans seem to depict a dinosaur. Scientists accept the mammoth drawings in the cave, so why not the dinosaur drawings? Evolutionary indoctrination that man did not live at the same time as dinosaurs stops most scientists from even considering that the drawings are of dinosaurs.

It certainly would be no embarrassment to a creationist if someone discovered a dinosaur living in a jungle. However, this should embarrass evolutionists.3

To learn more about dinosaurs, please read the following:

Parents, if your children have any questions, please submit them using the “contact us” section on our main website.

Related Media

Dinosaurs & Dragon Legends

Footnotes

  1. Answers in Genesis, “Were Dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark?”, April 3, 2000, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2000/04/03/dinosaurs-on-noahs-ark.
  2. Marcus Ross, “Those Not-So-Dry Bones”, Answers Magazine, Vol. 5, No. 1, January–March, 2010, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v5/n1/not-dry-bones.
  3. Ken Ham, “What Really Happened to the Dinosaurs?”, The New Answers Book, http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/what-happened-to-the-dinosaurs.