Brad Alles

Dinosaurs are a source of interest as well as confusion. Whether you like Jurassic Park or not, you need to know how they fit into a biblical worldview. First, you need to know some background about the word “dinosaur.” Sir Richard Owen, the most distinguished zoologist in Britain during the mid-19th century, was the first to use the term in 1841. Dinosaur means “terrible lizard.” You can look in books before 1841, and you won’t find the word dinosaur, since it wasn’t even invented yet! Up until then, “dragon” was the term people used to describe these creatures.

Where did dinosaurs come from? Since God made all land animals as well as Adam and Eve on the sixth day (Genesis 1:24), these creatures were part of His creation then as well. Reading the genealogies of Genesis 5 shows that people lived for hundreds of years in the pre-Flood world, partly due to a better environment. For instance, Alaska once had abundant tropical plant life, such as “mangroves, palm trees, Burmese lacquer trees, and groups of trees that produce nutmeg and Macassar oil.” Furthermore, that Antarctica was once warm and humid, growing with great vegetation, is verified by the “widespread discoveries of coal and petrified wood.”

Since reptiles grow as long as they live, it is possible that the largest dinosaurs were very old lizards, which lived for hundreds of years as well. However, we tend to think that all dinosaurs were gigantic; that is simply not the case. Based on fossilized remains, the average size of dinosaurs is about the size of a sheep. Therefore dinosaurs could have easily fit on Noah’s Ark, with the young ones taken for ease in care and for replenishing the earth after the Flood.  Obviously, most died in the Flood, but some survived and the descendants were sighted in historical accounts,  More on that next time.