PRIMORDIAL EARTH

We know that nowadays the creation is flawed, but in the original sinless creation, creatures filled the earth that God had perfectly designed for life. On the fifth day of the Creation Week, Genesis 1:20-21 tell us, God created flying creatures, including reptilian flyers like pterodactyls, and marine creatures including reptilian swimmers like the plesiosaurus. Some of these creatures were quite large. For example, the pterodactyl had wing spans up to twenty feet.

Other flying creatures such as the archeopteryx date from day five of the Creation Week. While "ordinary" birds also date from day five, many of God's creatures like the archeopteryx were quite strange by ordinary standards. The now extinct archeopteryx had teeth, and on its forelimbs it had claws. But despite these unusual features, there is nothing particularly evolutionary about archeopteryx.

Several existing birds, for example the hoatzin (pronounced "watson") native to Central and South America, have claws on their wings, and many extinct birds had teeth. So rather than being a sort of evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds, the archeopteryx was a full-fledged bird. Although it was unusual, it had feathers as do other birds. And in fact, many creatures that are now extinct seem strange only because we do not see them every day.

On day six of the Creation Week God created land-dwelling life. According to Genesis 1:24-25, land-dwellers include beasts, cattle and creeping things. "Beasts" include large animals like deer and elephants, but also many large animals that are now extinct like the big dinosaurs (see Note 3). Tyrannosaurus rex and apatosaurus (brontosaurus), for example, were beasts made on day six of the Creation Week. Rather than being proof of evolution, dinosaurs fit right into the Creation Week as do all other creatures. If dinosaurs have evolutionary ideas connected with them, it is because of our preconception of what they mean, rather than reality.