Dinosaur

Triceratops skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History.

Dinosaurs were large, reptilian creatures which are now generally believed to be extinct. The word dinosaur was coined in 1841 by Richard Owen, from the Greek words δεινός and σαύρα, meaning "terrible lizard."

Highlights of the history of dinosaur paleontology

In the United States during the 1900s, the public imagination was caught by the discoveries of Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857-1935) and the great competitive dinosaur hunters, Edward Drinker Cope (1847-1897) and Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899). Exploring in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, they found numerous fossil dinosaurs. Their museums worked out the techniques for mounting and displaying them.

Osborn was a proponent of orthogenesis, as were many paleontologists up through the middle of the twentieth century. These paleontologists interpreted the fossil record as showing sustained, continuing, unidirectional trends in evolution, which they felt required some kind of driving principle in addition to natural selection. As the author of an encyclopedia article on variation and selection put it in 1911,

Selection cannot create the materials on which it is supposed to operate... Both sides concur in the position assumed by Darwin, that the word "chance" in such a phrase as "chance variation" does not mean that the occurrences are independent of natural causation and so far undetermined, but covers in the first place our ignorance of the exact causation.... No doubt a large amount of variation is truly indefinite, so that many meaningless or useless variations arise... But there are several directions in which the field of variation appears to be not only limited but defined in a certain direction.... When beetles, or medusae, or cats vary, the range of possible variation is limited and determined by the beetle, medusa or cat constitution, and any possible further differentiation or specialization must be in a sense at least orthogenetic - that is to say, a continuation of the line along which the ancestors of the individual in question have been forced. Darwin himself showed that different species in a genus, or varieties in a species, tended to show parallel variations.

Roy Chapman Andrews (1884–1960), said to be the prototype for the fictional Indiana Jones, is famous for his discovery of fossil dinosaur eggs in Outer Mongolia.

In the 1970, Robert Bakker catalyzed a new era of dinosaur paleontology with evidence that dinosaurs were fully warm-blooded (endotherms) and fast-moving.

Dinosaur Species

Dinosaurs were immensely varied, and included both herbivores and carnivores. Although many have been found in the fossil record, paleontologists expect that they have barely scratched the surface of the vast superorder that the dinosaurs encompassed.

• Stegosaurus was a dinosaur with plates on its back and spines on its tail. Some creationists believe the spines on its tail were to stop other dinosaurs from treading on it before the Fall.^{[Citation Needed]}

Different Perspectives

Ever since the discovery of dinosaur fossils, there has been debate about whether and how dinosaurs fit into the history of life on Earth.

Christians are often depicted as believing that God planted the fossils to test their faith, and it's true that some Christians believe that dinosaurs never existed. Few creationists believe this. Most people accept that dinosaurs existed. Young-Earth creationists, however, reject the uniformitarian time-scale, and therefore believe that humans and dinosaurs co-existed. Creationists also reject the now-popular idea that dinosaurs evolved into birds.

Creationary Perspective

Young Earth Creationists believe, based primarily on Biblical sources, that dinosaurs were created on day 6 of the creation week approximately 6,000 years ago, along with other land animals, and therefore co-existed with humans. As such, they reject the Theory of Evolution and the beliefs of evolutionary scientists about the age of the earth.

They believe that dinosaurs lived in harmony with other animals, (probably including in the Garden of Eden) eating only plants; that pairs of each dinosaur kind were taken onto Noah's Ark during the Great Flood and were preserved from drowning; that many of the fossilized dinosaur bones originated during the mass killing of the Flood; and that possibly some descendants of those dinosaurs taken aboard the Ark are still around today.

They use archaeological, fossil, and documentary evidence to argue that dinosaurs co-existed with mankind until at least relatively recent times.

Because the term only came into use in the 19th century, the Bible does not use the word "dinosaur." However, they are alleged to be mentioned in numerous places throughout the biblical account. For example, the behemoth in Job and the leviathan in Isaiah are sometimes said to be references to dinosaurs, , although others have claimed that Behemoth and Leviathan are references to a hippopotamus or elephant and a crocodile respectively. Young-Earth creationists point out that the descriptions don't fit these creatures, including that hippopotamuses and elephants don't have a "tail like a cedar".

Extinction

Creationists reject the "Great Impact Theory", pointing out multiple problems with this theory.

Creationists assert that evolutionists are frequently coming out with a "New Theory of Dinosaur Extinction" and that their theories are laden with false assumptions. It is worth noting, however, that more and more of these theories are being harmonized with one another.

Dinosaurs-like creatures in history and modern sightings

Creationists cite a number of reasons to believe that dinosaurs have existed until relatively recent times, and perhaps still survive.

• There have been a number of claimed sightings of dinosaur-like creatures.
  • A thousand people reported seeing a dinosaur-like monster in two sightings around Sayram Lake in Xinjiang according to the Chinese publication, China Today.
  • Among those who believe in the existence of the Loch Ness Monster, one popular theory is that it is a living plesiosaur.
  • Locals in the Congo have reported a creature they name Mokele-member, and from its description it appears to be a small plant-eating dinosaur. The reports have been taken seriously enough that a biologist from Chicago University has made several expeditions to find the creature. Another biologist has reported seeing the creature.

• There are drawings of creatures resembling dinosaurs.
  • An expedition which included Charles W. Gilmore, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology with the United States National Museum, examined an ancient pictograph which he claimed portrays dinosaurs and man coexisting..
  • The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina, a second century piece of art, is said to appear to be a piece of artwork that shows a dinosaur and man coexisting.
  • Engravings in the floor of Carlisle Cathedral appear to be of dinosaurs. They are on the tomb of bishop Richard Bell, who died in 1496.

• Creatures matching dinosaurs and similar creatures have been described by various people groups.
  • The description of the "Thunder bird" of American Indians matches the descriptions of pterosaurs.

• Descriptions of dragons are widespread and match descriptions of dinosaurs, suggesting that dragons were real creatures and were actually dinosaurs.
  • The World Book Encyclopedia states that: "The dragons of legend are strangely like actual creatures that have lived in the past. They are much like the great reptiles [dinosaurs] which inhabited the earth long before man is supposed to have appeared on earth." . Dragons exist in the folklore of many European and Asian cultures. World Book Encyclopedia says, "In Europe, dragons are traditionally portrayed as ferocious beasts that represent the evils fought by human beings. But in Asia, especially in China and Japan, the animals are generally considered friendly creatures that ensure good luck and wealth."
  • Dragons appear in the flag of Wales, in traditional Chinese New Years' Day celebrations, and in the Chinese calendar. Every other creature on the calendar is a real creature.

• That dinosaurs are not known from the fossil record above the Jurassic strata is not reason to believe that they have not survived until more recent times.
  • Living specimens of orders of animals that were believed to have been extinct for millions of years have been found before, such as the Diatomyidae Squirrel , the Wollemi Pine and the Coelacanth .

• The recent dinosaur tissue find is a strong rebuttal of the claim that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago.

Dinosaurs and birds

Creationists contend that the idea that birds are descendants of dinosaurs is not demonstrated by the evidence , and that the dinosaur-bird connection is even disputed by some evolutionists.

In his article, "Fifteen ways to refute materialistic bigotry", Dr. Jonathan Sarfati wrote regarding dinosaurs being descendants of birds:

The same logic applies to the dinosaur-bird debate. It is perfectly in order for creationists to cite Feduccia’s devastating criticism against the idea that birds evolved ‘ground up’ from running dinosaurs (the cursorial theory). But the dino-to-bird advocates counter with equally powerful arguments against Feduccia’s ‘trees-down’ (arboreal) theory. The evidence indicates that the critics are both right — birds did not evolve either from running dinos or from tree-living mini-crocodiles. In fact, birds did not evolve from non-birds at all!

Creationists also cite the evolutionist Ernst Mayr who in 1942 stated the following:

“It must be admitted, however, that it is a considerable strain on one’s credulity to assume that finely balanced systems such as certain sense organs (the eye of vertebrates, or the bird’s feather) could be improved by random mutations."

The March 2003 issue of Scientific American is also cited by creationists:

"Of all the body coverings nature has designed, feathers are the most various and the most mysterious...The origin of feathers is a specific instance of the much more general question of the origin of evolutionary novelties--structures that have no clear antecedents in ancestral animals and no clear related structures (homologues) in contemporary relatives. Although evolutionary theory provides a robust explanation for the appearance of minor variations in the size and shape of creatures and their component parts, it does not yet give as much guidance for understanding the emergence of entirely new structures, including digits, limbs, eyes and feathers...."

Creationists also assert that the comparative anatomy analysis done by evolutionists comparing bird bones and dinosaur bones is flawed.

---

Evolutionary Perspective

The view of evolutionists and others who accept the uniformitarian timescale is that dinosaurs existed on earth from 230 million years ago to 65 million years ago. In this view, the entire population of dinosaurs were wiped out by a mass extinction event (usually thought to be an asteroid) about 65 million years ago. Of course this precludes humans and dinosaurs co-existing.

Extinction

According to most scientists, close to 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, and the beginning of what is called the Tertiary period, an event occurred which has come to be known as the K-T Event. This event would have obliterated most life on Earth, plunging the world into something that would now be likened to global nuclear winter, through which few extant species could survive. Although these scientists dispute the nature of the K-T Event (selecting among any number of catastrophes that could have caused the significant global cooling that resulted), most find that the claimed K-T Event was caused by the collision of a massive asteroid with the Earth, the dust and debris from which would have shrouded the sky for thousands of years, cooling Earth considerably. According to this view, the dinosaurs did not survive this cataclysm. The dust from this impact is supposedly still visible as a line of metal of extraterrestrial origin and is often visible in sediment worldwide, occurring as a result of the vaporization and then fall of dust from the meteorite's impact, and its compression within the subsequent geological record. The crater is also visible.

An Explosion of new species

The mass extinction of the dinosaurs removed a major food competitor, and predator, of smaller animals. As a result of a new "vacancy" in the food chain, following the K-T Event, vast speciation occurred, as the evolutionary pressure of a new cold age propelled animal species to adapt or die out. According to this view, mammals were some of the main beneficiaries of this explosion: their fur allowed them to adapt to the cold, and their small size allowed them to conserve energy relative to the huge dinosaurs of the previous age.

Dinosaurs and Birds

As a number of feathered fossils (claimed to be dinosaurs) have been discovered, and evolutionary scientists claim the similarity in the bone structure between birds and dinosaurs show that modern birds are a descendants of dinosaurs. This is often cited as an example of macroevolution. Cladists place modern birds within the clade dinosauria, meaning all bird species today are, technically, dinosaurs.