Dinosaurs--"Terrible Lizards"


Why are dinosaurs so popular?

Children love to hear about dinosaurs, probably because of the "monster" appeal. They are bombarded daily through the newspapers, schools and other media with information regarding dinosaurs. Dinosuars are probably used more than any other topic to brainwsh children into accepting evolutionary ideas and rejecting the Bible as God's Word. One of today's leading spokesman for evolution testified that he got his start by a childhood study of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs have been used to sell everything from breakfast cereal to gasoline. In 1989 the cover of Kellogg's Frosted Flakes advertised a free mystery dinosaur drawing disk inside the package. Pepsi Cola used drawings of dinosaurs on Diet Pepsi cartons and in 1992 included dinosaur trading cards that were similar to baseball trading cards. The movie Jurassic Park was produced at a cost of approximately sixty-five million dollars, which enabled the producers to develop the most sophisticated animated dinosaurs yet. This movie grossed nine hundred million dollars and the sales of Jurassic Park--related merchandise generated an additional one billion dollars. In March 1993, a poster on dinosaurs was mailed free to seven million school children courtesy of McDonalds, which also handed out Jurassic Park mugs. In 1997, a sequel to the movie Jurassic Park, called The Lost World, was shown in the theaters. Despite not receiving rave reviews, it is still expected to ber successful. The most popular children's show on PBS television features "Barney," a big purple dinosaur. This show has 1.5 million viewers, which is more people thatn those who watch "Sesame Street." In October 1997, the Cicago Field Museum of Natural History paid a record $8.4 million for a Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil.

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Did dinosaurs actually exist?

You may have grwon up, as I did, in Missouri, the Show-Me-State, and perhaps wondered if dinosaurs actually existed or were just the product of the imaginations of evolutionists. All doubts were erased in my mind when I visited The Dinosaur National Monument Quarry near Jensen, Utah. It was thee that paleontologist Earl Douglas discovered the world's greatest single deposit of fossil dinosaur bones in 1909. A quarry was built on the site, and it was designated a nationl monument in 1915. A year-round visitor center has been built over the quarry to protect the fossilized dinosaur bones and skeletons. At the quarry, most of the bones are left in place. The fossilized remains of over 2,000 dinosaur bones are exposed as a permanent exhibit in the 200 foot-long sandstone wall. Visitors can watch paleontologists chip away the sandstone to expose the fossilized dinosaur bones. Visitors can also see the preparation laboratory where dinosaur fossils aare cleaned and preserved. Nowhere else on earth canyou see so many dinosaur bones still in their resting-place. The quarry has yielded a greater variety of species and a laarger number of individual animals thatn any other single dinosaur site. Another unique feature of the quarry is the large number of juvenile dinosaurs found in it. You can look at dinosaur bones in many museums, but only at Dinosaur National Monument can you watch as experts actually unearth and study these fossils.

Great Dinosaur graveyards have been found in various parts of the earth, giving evidence to the fact that dinosaurs really did exist.

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What does the "dinosaur" mean, and why isn't the word "dinosaur" in the Bible?

Because the term dinosaur, which means "terrible lizard," was not coined until 1841 by Sir Richard Owen, the word is not in the King James version of the Bible which ws translated several centuries before.

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What three words in the King James Version could refer to dinosaurs?

1. Dragons (Hebrew tannim) are mentioned at least twenty-five times in the Old Testament. The first use is in Genesis 1:21. Some other references are Deuteronomy 32:33, Psalm 74:13,14 , 91:13, 148:7, Isaiah 27:1, 51:9, and Jeremiah 51:34. Also the word dragon appears a number of times in the book of Revelation.

2. Behemoth means a gigantic and powerful beast. Job 40:15-24 says "...he moves his tail like a cedar..." This description doesn't fit a hippopotamus or an elephant becasue neither of their tails is like a cedar. The behemoth was probably a land dinosaur such as a brontosaurus.

3.Leviathan was a type of dragon that was impractical to hook or harpoon (Job 41:2). It says of this creature, "he makes the deep to boil..." (Job 41:31). This leviathan was probably a marine dinosaur, such as plesiosaurus.

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What were dinosaurs like?

Besides the biblical descriptions, all we know about dinosaurs comes from fossilized bones and footprints. Whereas a biologist can learn about a modern animal by dissecting it, working down through skin, muscles, and organs to the bones, a paleontologist must work in the opposite direction, starting with the bones. For example, the leg bones of a sauropod are stout, straight, and broad-ended. This enabled the legs to a support a huge, heavy body, but didn't permit much flexibility in the joints. A modest amble of two or three miles an hour was probably the top speed of a full-grown sauropod.

Some things people can't determine from dinosaur bones and footprints are skin color and texture, flesh and othe soft parts such aas ears, eyes, and muscles that rot away. One also can't be sure whether the creature was warm-blooded or cold-blooded, not can it be determined if the creature was vegetarian or meat eating. According to Genesis 1:29,30, man and animals were originally vegetarian. It wasn't until after the Flood that man was given permission to eat meat. I don't think the teeth of men changed at that time, so one can't tell by the teeth if creatures were carnivorous.

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When did dinosaurs live?

According to Genesis 1:20-25 dinosaurs must have been created on the fifth or sixth day. Evolutionists say that dinosaurs became extinct about 65 million years ago. Evolutionists place dinosaurs in the so-called Mesozoic era. The Bible, however, says that "through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men..." (Romans 5:12), thus dinosaurs could not have died before man sinned. Creationists believe there was no death of any kind until Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit. If this is the case, then men and dinosaurs coexisted. There are several lines of evidence for this that have been ignored or rejected by evolutionists. Two human skeletons were found a few miles away from the dinosaur fossils in the Dinosaur National Monument in the same Utah sandstone.

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Did Noah take dinosaurs on the ark?

If dinosaurs did not become extinct before the Flood, then Noah probably took representative ones on the ark. He could have taken young ones. The fact that Job describes behemoth and leviathan seems to indicate that dinosaurs lived for awhile after the Flood. Also dinosaur drawings, made by early tribal artists, have been found in Arizona, Siberia, Zimbabwe and elsewhere. It is significant to know also, that in the ancient records and traditions of many nations, especially China, tales of dragons abound.

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How did dinosaurs become extinct?

Creationists and evolutionists disagree as to when and how dinosaurs became extinct. An adult bull elephant can consume 300-600 pounds of fodder per day. Dinosaurs are estimated to have weighed over fifteen times as much as an elephant and probably consumed tons of food daily. Creationists believe that the lack of available food after the Flood was the cause for the extinction of dinosaurs. It is likely that their final extinction came due to the changes in climate after the Flood. The leading evolutionary theory for the extinction of dinosaurs is that a large asteroid or comet struck the earth and the resulting dust killed the dinosaurs. A big question left unanswered then is "Why didn't this dust cloud kill the other animals also?"

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Are any dinosaurs living today?

A picture was taken of a dinosaur-like creature dredged up near New Zealand in 1976. In fact, some people think dinosaurs may still be alive today. It is also thought that many reptiles never stop growing until they die. Could it be that some reptiles are miniature dinosaurs that never reach large sizes due to shortness of life? Some people feel that the Loch Ness monster in northern Scotland is a dinosaur. I have my doubts about this. Reports of a monster date back to the sixth century and have continues into the twentieth century. The monster has been described as a creature about thirty feet long.

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What conclusions can be made regarding the finding of dinosaur bones?

1. Fossil graveyards all over the world give evidence for a global flood, since fossils are produced by sudden burial.

2. Dinosaurs in Alaska give evidence for a warm uniform climate that existed before the Flood.

3. Change of climatic conditions after the Flood presents the best explanation for the "extinction" of dinosaurs.

4. Dinosaur fossils give credence and confirmation to the dragons, behemoths and leviathans of the Bible.

The Mathematical Imporabability of Life Occuring by Chance

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