THE WORLD OF THE DINOSAURS

The Bible teaches that the original sinless creation was very good. Even after man sinned, the world continued to be quite congenial for life up to the Flood. There is much fossil evidence that plant life before the Flood was very lush and luxuriant. Even evolution acknowledges the one-time abundance of life, though evolution has no explanation for this (see Note 6). According to evolutionary philosophy this was the kind of life existing millions of years ago, rather than thousands of years ago before the Flood. But all students of nature, whether evolutionist or creationist, recognize that the earth has gone through changes in climate from a warmer, more congenial climate to the present-day drier, less congenial climate.

From a Biblical perspective we simply recognize that the pre-Flood world of several thousand years ago was milder and more congenial for life than today's world. Large luxuriant plant growth happened not millions of years ago, but thousands of years ago before the Flood.

The world before the Flood, then, was a mild and congenial place. Living things could grow to their full potential. They could grow very large in some cases. Especially reptiles, which have no upper limit of growth, could reach beastly proportions exactly as the huge dinosaurs did. Could it be, then, that some of the dinosaurs reached their vast and huge size precisely because of the congenial environment they lived in before the Flood?

The attainment of large size, in fact, is in no way particularly evolutionary. Plants sometimes reach a large size today in various parts of the world if the growing conditions are good enough. For example, Sunken Gardens in St. Petersburg, Florida, has plants on display that are often grown as small house plants. But at Sunken Gardens these same kinds of plants are reaching heights in the tens of feet because they are carefully tended. The water supply is available year round. The climate is mild without large temperature variations. We see that there is nothing mysterious about huge life forms, because even today many kinds of life in congenial conditions can grow to a larger size than normal.

There are other examples of giant life forms in the world today where the climate is sufficiently congenial. On the islands of Indonesia giant bees grow. These bees grow as large as a hummingbird. In the parts of Indonesia where this bee is found, the climate is very good and supports huge amounts of growth. Size depends on growing conditions, not evolution. We can conclude, then, that the large dinosaurs were large because they lived in a very good world, not because of some evolutionary phenomenon.

Now let's consider what we actually know about dinosaurs. What did they really look like? How accurate are the artistic depictions of them? We need to understand that while evolutionary myths like ape-men never existed, dinosaurs were real. They probably existed pretty much as depicted in artistic conceptions. Sometimes peoples have claimed that because of all the evolutionary emphasis put on dinosaurs, they must not be real and must not have ever existed. It is said they must be figments of the evolutionary imagination, but this is not really the case.

Although we recognize that most dinosaurs are extinct today, we still see them as parts of God's creation. On the other hand, before the Flood there was likely little predation. Before man sinned there was no predation at all because there was no death (Romans 5:12). So although we can say that artistic conceptions of the appearance of dinosaurs are pretty much correct, our preconceived ideas about their fierce nature must be placed in perspective with Biblical statements (see Note 7).

In the original creation life lived in harmony. Predation and death and killing followed the coming of sin into the world. But there are so many things we know about dinosaurs from their complete preservation in the fossil record, that perhaps the only major physical characteristic we still do not know are their colors.

Many dinosaur parts have been preserved in fossil form. For example, dinosaur footprints have been unearthed around the world. There are footprints from the Connecticut River valley made by two-legged, three-toed dinosaurs that grew to only small sizes. In fact, most dinosaurs were not the huge, fierce type we often think of. Most dinosaurs were small. In fact, all were born small.