Were Animals Bigger Before the Flood?

Arianna (grade 5) asked,

Did animals used to be bigger before the flood than today?

Thank you for your question, Arianna!

Because of people’s wickedness, God destroyed the world he had created with a global flood about 4,500 years ago. This dramatically changed earth’s surface and led to many creatures being rapidly buried and fossilized.

These fossils give us the best guess at what animals were like when Noah built the ark. They indicate that some kinds were either smaller or about the same size as they are today. But some kinds were larger.

Those really big creatures included dinosaurs, marine reptiles, flying reptiles, and giant crocodile-like amphibians called temnospondyls (tem-noh-SPON-dills)—which are all extinct today. There were also giant insects before the flood. Seagull-sized dragonflies and car-sized millipedes have been discovered in the fossil record.

Many other big creatures are in the fossil record from the ice age, such as Castoroides ohioensis (a giant beaver) and Smilodon fatalis (the saber-toothed cat). During the ice age, some creatures got larger. Larger creatures could have stayed warmer in the cold temperatures.

We see variation in animal size throughout history. This variation in size points to the incredible genetic diversity that God put in each created kind to make it possible for them to adapt to different environments. God really did think of everything!

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