The full title of this article is too long to use for a blog article (which is why the shortened version appears), so let me put the full title here:

If dinosaurs died out 63 million years before humans existed
Why have so many humans seen dinosaurs?

Evolutionary theory claims that the age of dinosaurs began about 250 million years ago and ended 65 million years ago when they were wiped out by what many secularist believe was a huge asteroid strike. Humans, the theory claims, only came on the scene 2 million years go. (For a pictorial, see this timeline.) So according to evolutionary theory, the last dinosaurs died out some 63 million years before humans existed, and no human should ever have seen a living dinosaur. If that is the case why have so many  humans in all countries in all ages persistently claimed to have seen dinosaurs? This article suggests that the reason is two fold: 1. The earth is not that old, it is about 6,000 years old so the evolutionary time frame is entirely off, and 2: Humans and dinosaurs were both created on day 6 (Gen 1.24-26; 31) when God made all the other land creatures. We will examine the evidence for item 2: that humans and dinosaurs were created on the same day, and thus have lived together concurrently on the earth for as long as the earth has existed.

 But before we get started, let's clear the path of  red herrings.

Dispensing with Straw Men and Red Herrings

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophies  entry on "Fallacies" (hereafter referred to simply as the "IEP") regarding the Straw man fallacy states:

Your reasoning contains the Straw Man Fallacy whenever you attribute an easily refuted position to your opponent, one that the opponent wouldn't endorse, and then proceed to attack the easily refuted position (the straw man) believing you have thereby undermined the opponent's actual position.

Evolutionists are understandably upset when creationists claim evolutionists believe "humans descended from apes."  Technically, that's not what they believe, they believe humans and apes have a far distant common ancestor. Thus the "humans descended from apes" argument is a straw man argument that creationists shouldn't use when discussing with evolution.

Likewise evolutionists shouldn't claim that creationists believe that dinosaurs died out in the global flood because Noah didn't have enough room for them on the ark.[1] That likewise is a straw man argument.  First, check out the size of the ark with the life sized ark at Ark Encounter in Kentucky, and realize that Noah would have brought on young or juvenile (and thus small) dinosaurs, and there was plenty of room. Second, all the dinosaurs didn't die out, as we'll see below, though numbers have been greatly reduced, in large part due to hunting or clearing out by man. If you're building a city or farm, who wants a Tyrannosaurus Rex living next door? Thus as ancient accounts state, the practice of driving off dinosaurs was common when making new establishments[2] and is a large part of why dinosaurs were driven away from humans. Thus I will ask old earth believers to refrain from this vacuous argument, as I ask creationists to refrain from the "humans from apes" argument.

Regarding Red Herrings  the IEP states:

A red herring is a smelly fish that would distract even a bloodhound. It is also a digression that leads the reasoner off the track of considering only relevant information.

Likewise there are arguments that are no more than distractions and digressions that evolutionists use when discussing this issue of dinosaurs and its related issue of the age of the earth. Since this article is intended to be primarily a short list of the many instances where people have seen dinosaurs, I will not spend much time here on the many fallacious thought processes people have around this topic, but I do want to point out two common ones. Here's the first one:

"Humans cannot have seen dinosaurs because everyone knows that dinosaurs died out millions of years before humans existed."

This fails for a number of reasons, most obviously because of the appeal to a (fallacious) common belief. The IEP on the appeal to a common belief refers you to two other errors incorporated in this one: the fallacies of appealling to the people and appealling to traditional wisdom. Suffice it to say this objection is based on a faulty assumption generated by the erroneous  evolutionary world view propagated by secular scientists which I discuss elsewhere. The evolutionary worldview requires dinosaurs to live an earlier age than man. But is that true? How would you know? By looking at the evidence. That is precisely why we're looking at evidence, and not going merely on assumptions of those with an evolutionary worldview axe to grind.

"The Bible is not trustworthy in this matter because it never mentions dinosaurs."

This is sort of like saying the Bible is untrustworthy in speaking about God because it never mentions the word "God."  This is an obvious example because almost everyone knows the Bible was not written originally in English. The Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek, and in those languages, obviously what we call in English "God" (hebrew: אלהים - (elohim) and Greek: Θεος - (theos) ) is mentioned many times.

Likewise the English word "dinosaur" did not exist until some 17 centuries after the Bible was completed so we wouldn't expect it to be in the Bible. It was first used in 1842 - by sir Richard Owen, head of the British museum who invented the word.  Words used in the Bible to describe dinosaurs include:

Most commonly:
Tanniyn (תננים - typically translated dragon, sometimes serpent, used some 28 times) example:  Psalm 91.13 "You will tread upon the lion and the cobra; you will trample the great lion and the תננים" (dragon). Notice it is in a group with real creatures.

But also:
Behemoth (בהמות - exact meaning unknown, by description Diplodocus or Brachiosaurus) example: Job 40.15 ff (ff=and following) ("Look at בהמות, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox.) Read the  description that follows that verse in Job - it's the description of a large dinosaur.

Above - Diplodocus

And:
Leviathan (לויתן Sea monster, dragon) example: Job 41.1 ff

So the first thing we need to understand as we start our investigation is that dinosaurs are more ubiquitous than is commonly realized because they've gone for a long time by an unrecognized name: Dragon.

Dinosaurs used to be called Dragons

Most people believe that tales of dragons are mere myths. But we've already seen that in the Bible, dinosaurs are called dragons. And as everyone knows, dragons show up in many legends of old. Legends typically start out with some real, tangible event or object, as John Morris, President, Institute for Creation Research points out:

"Most anthropologists will tell you that whenever you have a legend or mythology, that there's something that happened that started that myth."[3]

What evidence (in addition to the Bible) do we have that the dragons of yesterday are the dinosaurs of the today?
 

Dinosaurs - called dragons - have been seen everywhere

Darek Isaacs, author of  Dragons or Dinosaurs Creation or Evolution states:

"Dragon legends are absolutely a phenomenon. There are literally too many legends to count. They're in every tribe and nation, every people group. And you have them in China, Australia, Africa, Europe, North America, South America. Everywhere where people inhabit."[4]

Anthropologist David Jones marvels not only that they're found everywhere, but they typically have the same characteristics. After studying over 100 cultures around the world, he remarks:

"...there's no way to explain how Eskimos could imagine the same dragon that let's say the Polynesians would imagine, that a Chinese classical scholar would image, that the knights of king Arthur would imagine. So clearly we're not talking about something that's imagined here."[5]

These dragons were not imagined creatures. These are creatures that were seen by humans.  Let me dispense with one more red herring that's been used regarding much of the evidence in the form of pictures, carvings, etc. that confirm humans seeing dinosaurs: the claim that ancient people drew or carved dinosaurs based on having figured out what they look like after re-constructing bones and fossils of dinosaurs. That reveals great ignorance regarding how difficult it is to construct a dinosaur, having never seen it, from bones.  I demonstrate that difficulty here.  I am not the only one holding to that opinion. Speaking of a carving of a stegosaurus found in the Angkor Watt Temple complex in Cambodia, Otis Kline, founder of the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum points out the problem with stating ancient people drew dinosaurs from bones:

"Unless it were living, how would it get its anatomy correct? They had to see it in order to reproduce it correctly. And that's just one of over 80 instances around the world in every single continent where it's been found that humans and dinosaurs have co-existed because the humans have reproduced dinosaurs in one art form or another."[6]

So understanding that ancient cultures were able to depict dinosaurs in various types of art (drawings, paintings, carved in rock, etc.) only because they had seen them, let's look at the evidence. We'll start with the ancient, and move to the more recent.

Ancient Dinosaur Depictions and references

• Behemoth In the Bible, God speaks to Job and says:
  "Look at the behemoth, which I made along with you..."  (Job 40.15)
  Why would God tell Job to look at something that didn't exist?
  Notice also when God says he made the dinosaur - at the same time he made humans.
   
• The Chinese Calendar has 12 creatures: 11 real animals, and one which most assume is a mythical creature. It is reasonable to surmise that when the calendar was first developed over 4,000 years ago, all the animals were known to be real - not mythical.  Particularly when you consider that 4,000 years ago when the Sumerians first developed their cuneiform  writing system in Mesoptamia (modern day Iraq), what did they write about? Dragons.[7]
   
• The Ishtar Gate In 600 BC Nebuchadnezzar  commissioned the artwork on the Ishtar Gate, upon which are depicted various animals, including a dragon.[8]
  
  On the gate, "The animals appear in alternating rows with lions, fierce bulls (rimi or reems in Chaldean), and curious long-necked dragons (sirrush). The lions and bulls would have been present at that time in the Middle East. But, on what creature did the ancient Babylonians model the dragon? ... [archaeologist and discoverer Robert] Koldewey believed that the sirrush was a portrayal of a real animal and in 1918, he proposed that the dinosaur Iguanodon was the closest known match to the sirrush."[9]
   
• Alexander the Great, the great conqueror, disseminated Dinosaur stories across several continents.[10]
   
• Viking ship bows The Vikings typically had dragons carved on the bow of their boats.[11] What did they base their imagery on?
  
  Above - Viking Longboat with dragon bow
   
• St. George and the Dragon - One of the  most famous dragon slayers of the middle ages is St. George, patron saint of England. One must ask, exactly what was he slaying?(Why call it a dragon?)[12]
   
• Topsell's "History of Four Footed beasts" published 1607
  and "The Historie of Serpents or The Second Booke of Living Creatures " (1608)
  Rachel Doggett,  Curator of Rare Books, Folger Shakespeare Library, describes the contents of Topsell's catalog:
  "Topsell books primary does include real animals. But he includes the dragon and other creatures that we think of as mythical, and even alludes to the possibility of having been seen in England and Scotland." [13]

• Indian Legends of  "thunder birds"
  In the Black hills of South Dakota tales are told of creatures that fly and bring thunder with them. (Though likely it was the other way around - the thunderstorms brought the large creatures because they need strong winds to propel them to high heights.)
  It has been postulated that it was giant pteranodons (above flying beside Tyrannosaurus) catching thermal updrafts from thunder storms that would lift them to places like the top of the black hills. [14]
   
• Indian Witness
  Reg Crowshoe,  Elder of Blackfoot Nation
  Elder Crowshoe relates a story told by his elders: "The old people tell stories about when an iniskin(?)(indian word)  would go by, and they would hide behind a rock. And as the the iniski- or dinosaur or the creature went by, they were bouncing about a foot off the ground, because of the ground moving when a group passed."[15]
   
• Flying Reptiles in Wales
  "  'dinosaurs', in the form of flying reptiles, were a feature of Welsh life until surprisingly recent times.  As late as the beginning of the present century, elderly folk at Penlllyn in Glamorgan used to tell of a colony of winged serpents that lived in the woods around Penllyn Castle."[16]
   
• The tomb of the Bishop of Carlisle, decorated with brass trimmings of  Sauropod dinosaurs
  Carlisle Cathedal  in Northern England  houses the 600 year old tomb of Richard Bell, the Bishop of Carlisle. The bass trimmings around his tomb are engraved with sauropod dinosaurs.
  "Although worn by the countless feet that walked over it since the Middle Ages, a particular depiction is intriguing in its similarity to a sauropod dinosaur. "[17]
  
  "... on the brass trimmings around his tomb, a number of engravings of animals. Many of which are familiar to us today, but there's also some that look very much like sauropod dinosaurs. In fact any 21st century child would immediately recognize them as being sauropod dinosaurs."[18]

• Beowulf's monster
  "If you read about his description about this big beast that he killed because it was terrorizing the villages, it's a very accurate description of a Tyrannosaurus Rex."[19]
  (T. Rex is pictured above beside the flying Pteranodon.)
  
  "Most people say Beowulf is entirely mythical because there's all these monsters in it. But if you read Beowulf - the poem - it doesn't say fairies and magic elves. It's talking about the 'Grendel.' It's talking about a bipedal monster with giant mouth and big teeth that ate people just like we might image a therapod dinosaur might do."[20]
   
• The Historian Herodotus
  Herodotus visited Egypt and Arabia around 460 BC and described a flying animal with a snake-like body and bat like wings.[21]
  "The winged serpent is shaped like the water-snake. Its wings are not feathered, but resemble very closely those of the bat."[22]
   
• The Historian Josephus speaks of winged serpents being scared off by flying birds called "ibes".

"...for when the ground was difficult to be passed over, because of the multitude of serpents (which it produces in vast numbers... and an usual fierceness of sight, some of which [serpents] ascend out of the ground unseen, and also fly in the air, and do come upon men at unawares"...)

"Moses invented a wonderful stratagem to preserve the army safe, and without hurt; for he made baskets like unto arks, of sedge, and filled them with ibes, and carried them along with them; which animal is the greatest enemy to serpents imaginable, for they [the flying serpents] fly from them when they [the ibes] come near them"...

"As soon, therefore as Moses was come to the land which was the breeder of these serpents, he let loose the ibes, and by their means repelled the serpentine kind." [23]

Modern Sightings,

Mokele-Mbembe  meaning: "One that stops the flow of rivers"
A sauropod dinosaur (Apatosaurus?) which many natives in Cameroon claim to have seen.
Examples:

• Witness: Nawouya Bernard
  States he saw Mokele Mbembe, 2006, Dja River, Southeast Cameroon
  He's one of many locals who claim that it does in fact exist. [24]
   
• Witness: Edimo Ferdinand
  Another eye witness says:
  "The Animal is like an elephant, but the neck is very long"[25]
   
• Witnesses: Many Locals state they have seen it
  Regarding Mokele-Mbembe, Rich Mullins, part of an expedition to Cameroon states :
  "I'm not really concerned with whether western science says this animal can exist. I'm more concerned with the fact all of the local people say that it does exist."[26] (emphasis added)
  
  Dr. Roy Mackal,  Prof of Biochemistry, retired, writes about Mokele Mbembe in the book:  "A Living Dinosaur?: In Search of Mokele Mbembe"
   
• Witnesses: Baka pygmies in Cameroon also identify seeing a Saurapod dinosaur and a triceratops [27]

The Loch Ness (Plesiosaur?)
Loch Ness is a body of water 24 miles long ; 1 - 1.1 miles wide; up to 900 feet deep
It's so large the entire population of the world could fit in it. It is home to the well known Loch Ness Monster.  Sightings were scarce until they put in a road to the loch in 1933 making access easy. Since then, thousands have claimed to see it.  Some of those are no doubt fake sightings.
What about those from more reliable people? Here are some sightings from more credible witnesses:

• A Highly Respected British Naturalist and Painter
  Sir Peter Scott, one of Britain's most respected naturalists, who was also a painter, claims to have seen it and painted this painting of it. [28]
   
• Veterinary Student
  Arthur Grant - a veterinary student, almost ran into the creature on his motorcycle on Jan 5, 1934 at  1:30 AM. When he sketched what he saw, it looks like a plesiosaur [29]
   
• Army Officer
  Lt. Colonel Percy Fawcett of the British Army 1907 |
  Saw what he believed to be Diplodocus [30]
   
• The Game Warden for Loch Ness
  Alexander Campbell game warden - said he saw it 18 times in 47 years as the water bailiff. [31]
   

Canada's Lake Monster

• Lake Okanagan in British Columbia, Canada
  There's a creature the natives call the "Ogopogo"
  Similar to the Loch Ness Monster,  Seen by thousands [32]

America's Loch Ness Monster
In Lake Champlain, Northern New England a creature  named "Champ"
Hundred's claim to have seen it.
 

• Sandra Mansi, on July 5, 1977 near St. Albans, Vermont
  Saw the creature for 5 or 6 minutes, and snapped a photo [33] 
  (which of course is strongly debated.)

Other Locations

Similar sightings[34] have been made in:

• Lake Kusshara, Japan
• Lake Ikeda, Japan - where lives a creature they call "Issie"
• Lake Ostersund, Sweden
• Seljord Lake in Norway

Conclusion

So why have so many people seen dinosaurs? There are many more sightings that could be listed, but the answer is clear. The reason so many people have seen dinosaurs is because dinosaurs have always lived during the age man, not a separate age of dinosaurs.

The evidence is clear: for the last 6,000 years (the entire age of the earth) people in all locations, of all nationalities all over the world have reported and recorded seeing what we today call dinosaurs. The evidence shows  dinosaurs have lived with man since God created both man and dinosaur on day 6, and have lived on the earth ever since that time, though many have since died out. The primary reason people don't believe that is because secularists have scientists toeing the  evolutionary line, and people fall in line behind the scientists, and thus few dare stand against the sacred secular doctrine that "dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago." Thus to the huge body of evidence (of which this is only a portion) they are forced to say all of these people: historians, artists, scholars, entire tribes, etc. all of them are either lying or mistaken. They must claim the same for the Bible. Because they are simple unwilling to face the prospect that they themselves and their worldview are wrong.

But the evidence is overwhelming - for those who care to open their eyes and look at it. But just as some doubted the truth of the risen Messiah - even with him standing before them (Matt 28.17) - some will disbelieve the evidence before them that dinosaurs have always lived in the same time period with man. That is not an evidence problem. That's an "I've made up my mind, don't confuse me with the facts" worldview problem.

Duane Caldwell | posted 7/17/2016
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