Smoky Mountain Bible Institute
Lesson #39
Welcome back class. Please get settled in and take a hold of your
pick point rock hammer and hand lens so that we can continue our study in
geology. Our discussion on fossils has
led to a discussion on dinosaurs, which may be better addressed in our biology
wing. However since we have started down this road, let us give it a full
treatment.
When
discussing dinosaurs, we touch on a number of different scientific disciplines:
geology, biology and even history. In the 1500’s, a European scientific book called
‘Historia Animalium’ listed several dragons as still living but rare. In medieval times, the Scandinavians wrote of
swimming dragons, and the Vikings carved dragons as their figure heads on the
front of their ships. The story of
Beowulf and the story of Saint George killing a dragon may have some basis in
fact. In 1572, Ulysses Aldrovandus reported
that a peasant had killed a small dragon in northern Italy . The carcass of that "dragon"
was put in a museum. Its description matches that of a Struthiomimus, a type of
dinosaur. In China
there accounts of family's that raised dragons to pull the royal wagons for
parades. The first dinosaur fossils were
probably found in China
as early as the fourth century, but they were referred to as dragon bones. In France, near the city of Nerluc, there is
record of a creature that was armed with tusks that were sharp like pointed
swords, a body larger than an ox, and it would lay in wait in the river. Its
description matches that of a Triceratops.
In tenth century Ireland ,
a large beast was described as having large iron nails pointing backwards on
its tail, a head shaped like a horse, and thick hideous legs with iron claws. This sounds a lot like a Stegosaurus. In Scandinavia ,
we have medieval reports of a creature with a body like an ox, two long back
legs, two short front legs, covered with scales, with monstrous jaws, and it
leapt like a frog. Could this be a Dryptosaurus? Alexander the Great even reported a
dragon-like creature when he went to India . They saw a large reptile
over 30 meters long that the Indians kept in a cave. Georg von Forstner, a German submarine
Captain in World War I, reported seeing with four others, a large 65 foot long
crocodile-like creature writhing in the wreckage of a British steamer after
they sank it with a torpedo on July 30, 1915. Many of the rock drawings by
ancient peoples all over the world have a clear resemblance to large
dinosaurs. Reports exist from ships at
sea like a 1970's fishing vessel that pulled up a carcass of what looked a lot
like a Plesiosaur, and another that pulled up a 6 ft long eel larvae. The list
of modern day discoveries like this is long.
In discussing dinosaurs,
there is no good reason for us to exclude any report of dragons, dragon
ingredients, or other mentions of dragons in history. We must, of course, examine the sources of
the information and admit that many ancient (non-biblical) documents are
corrupted with exaggeration and embellishment.
However that does not negate the significance of these accounts and what
they might reveal and add to our knowledge of extinct species of any animals
including dinosaurs. There are enough
dinosaurs living today to justify such an approach (over-sized alligators, monitor
lizards, and komodo dragons, the largest specimens living in very remote
areas).
So
what happened to most of the dinosaurs? Well, in this creation cursed by the fall of
man, extinctions are not uncommon. Many
can be attributed to the very good earth becoming less than very good after the
curse in Genesis 3, and perfect environments that once supplied all the needs
of all life now made survival difficult for all life, especially the very large
that need much more resources to survive, and this got worse after the flood. But even worse in this fallen creation are
fallen sinful human beings who are poor stewards of God’s creation, and when
you look at even recent history over the past few hundred years, we can see the
memory of large dangerous animals lingers in a large society long after they
have been killed to extinction. If we simply look at the places where the
largest human populations are, we find large predators like bears, large cats,
and even wolves that were hunted to extinction in places like India , Europe, and North
America . We have done the same thing to animals we eat to
extinction or near extinction—fish, birds, large game like antelope and
buffalo. Not to mention habitat we replace with our living spaces. There is no shortage of places for us to live
but we are lazy, and where we live in very high concentrations, one of the
problems is a complete loss of habitat for animals. Not to mention where there
are high concentrations of people, there are high concentrations of sin. That is why God did what He did at the Tower of Babel
In closing, let’s talk
about one more kind of fossil: fossilized tracks. If you have a mud flat that is full of tracks
that is quickly covered and fossilized by a softer mineral, then this can later
erode away leaving fossilized tracks. I call to your attention "Taylor Trail ,"
one of many on the Paluxy River near Glen Rose, Texas .
On this trail is a series of 14 human footprints with at least 134
dinosaur tracks in the same layer. If
man and dinosaurs did not coexist.....then what can explain this rock solid
evidence????
Okay, next month back to
more geology—Impact Craters, Volcanoes, Mountains & Valleys. We still have
a few more rock formations to look at through a biblical lens.
In Christ,
Pastor Portier
