There and Back Again, the Story of Brontosaurus

Have you heard about the Brontosaurus? You might know it as the long-necked herbivore (plant-eating) dinosaur that lived peaceably with other animals a long time ago. Brontosaurus is in the sauropod family, the same family the Apatosaurus is in, and the two are a lot alike.

When the first Brontosaurus was discovered, the paleontologist that dug up the bones didn’t find its head. Around 20 years later, another scientist decided Brontosaurus looked too similar to Apatosaurus, so for a long time, people saw Brontosaurus as a fake name for the Apatosaurus.

Recent research, however, suggests that the Brontosaurus could be its own dinosaur after all. Researchers scanned the bones of both dinos and found some small differences that they weren’t able to see by older technology, so some scientists see the two as different creatures.

For creation scientists, the differences don’t matter all that much. The Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus are from the same family and biblical kind (Genesis 1:24), and fossil records from both of them show the beauty of God’s creation. Even if you look at several types of cats, you can see differences in color, coat length, and personality! God created the plants and animals of this world to be adaptable so they could survive in their environment, so we have many more species of animals than we did to begin with! If he created so many amazing types of dinosaurs, many of which we probably don’t know about yet, just think about the thought he put into his most precious creation—humans like you and me!

Science, at its root, means “knowledge." Researchers are constantly coming up with different methods and theories, and that includes finding problems in those methods and theories. After all, just like you and me, scientists are human. We don’t know everything about our world, but God is giving us more and more ways to dive deeper into our history.

Although we can theorize and observe what we see in the present, we don’t know for sure what happened in the past. That’s why we need a historically accurate resource written by someone who was there and saw what happened firsthand. Thankfully, we have one, and you probably have it in your home!

Our historical record is the Bible, God’s Holy Word. God has all the answers, and although the Bible doesn’t mention Brontosaurus or Apatosaurus, it does say God created all things, including dinosaurs (though that word wasn’t invented until recently), on the sixth day (Genesis 1:25).