Existence of Dinosaurs: Real or Fake? Important or Non-sense?

Existence of Dinosaurs: Real or Fake? Important or Non-sense?

            There are many creatures that continuously exist in our minds, but the question is; are they real? People nowadays use science to explain a certain phenomenon or happening. They use this to determine whether a certain thing was a fact or a lie. But do you know where can there be more evidences to prove something? It's the bible. People should be aware that there are many facts that were written in the bible before it was discovered by the scientists and discoverers.

            Dinosaurs draw doubts on most of the people because they were not able to see them. The unbelievers also throw questions like; if dinosaurs were really real, where are they now? Yes it’s true that no one have ever seen a dinosaur. That is because they had become extinct 60 million years before man came upon the earth, ¹ so if you had browsed a book and see pictures of people together with a dinosaur, that is just an imagination.

You may also say that if dinosaurs were gone before the man came, how did they know that there were dinosaurs that lived here on earth? When you study science, you will see that there are many paleontologists who had already proven the existence of these big creatures. Maybe you are asking how? Well, that is because of the fossils. These were the strong evidences to prove that they lived here on earth for several years. According to Roy Chapman Andrews (1953), author of “All About Dinosaurs”, Fossil comes from the Latin word fossilis, which means “dug up”; a fossil therefore, must have been buried at some time. It is the remains of a plant or an animal that once lived here on earth. Also, Harper Collins Dictionary also defined the word fossil as:

“the relic, remnant or representation of an organism that existed in a past geological age, or of the activity of such an organism, occurring in the form of mineralized bones, shell, etc, and molds as frozen perfectly preserved organisms.”

Suspicions and doubts will be gone only if our minds would be open to the reality. There’s no wrong in believing things that were proven true. Even though it is not what you think the fact from the very first, still we have to be aware that sometimes our theories or own beliefs are not happening on the reality.

Way back to the topic, we have here sample of fossils. (See figure 1 and 2.)

Figure 1

Figure 2

Just like what we’ve said on the first page, some facts about science were written on the bible before it was discovered by the people. And do you know that even the creation of dinosaurs was written in the bible? We can find the verse that pertains to the creation of big creatures at Genesis 1:21 that say:

“God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.”²

 You may say that, this was poor evidence since the word dinosaur was not mentioned. This may be true, that the word dinosaur can’t be found everywhere in the bible. But that is because the one who coined the term “dinosaur” were just humans only few years ago. On the book of Herbert Zim, entitled “Our Wonderful World”¹ it stated that:

“In year 1882, the first fossil of a dinosaur was discovered by the wife of Dr. Gideon Mantell. She found some peculiar teeth in the rocks of Sussex, England. NO ONE AT THAT TIME, OF COURSE, HAD EVER HEARD A DINOSAUR.”¹

The next thing happened was, Dr. Gideon Mantell sent the teeth to several other scientists, but they said that the teeth belonged to a rhinoceros. It doesn’t seem right to Dr Mantell so he went back to where the bone was found. Then he dug up a number of bones and studied those. After that, he presented a new type of a large reptile and named it Iguanodon. But Sir Richard Owen stated that these extinct reptiles needed a generalized name. That’s why he called them dinosaurs, meaning “terrible lizards”. I think this is the proof that the word “dinosaur” was made only few years ago that’s why it was not written in the bible.

Aside from the bones, footprints of dinosaurs were also found at the Connecticut Valley. We can easily identify that it’s not a footprint from an ordinary animal since it was so big! Here is a picture showing the footprint that was preserved. See figure 3

Figure 3

Now the existence of dinosaurs were proven real and they had extinct before the man came here on earth, maybe you are asking what is the significance of their existence to us if they were dead before we came here on earth. Well the truth is, their existence were not important to people, it’s their death that matters. To prove this, think about the oil that was used to make diesels and other chemicals that are very important to mankind. Those came from the fossil fuel. According to the Macmillan Illustrated encyclopedia,

“Fossil fuels are the coal, oil and natural gases. They were formed from the remains of prehistoric plants and animals that died; they were burned in sand and mud. Over thousands and millions of years, the sand and mud turned to rock. Then heat from the rock turned the plant and animal remains into oil.” ³(See figure 4)

Figure 4

Aside from oil, there’s another importance of fossils. They give us history of life on our planet. Because of the remains of the dinosaurs or simply fossils, people were able to know the great changes on earth throughout the ages. People were able to know the situation, climate and condition of the earth before. Isn’t that interesting?

By the way, can you imagine what will happen to us if dinosaurs still exist nowadays? The arrangement of the jaws and teeth of the dinosaurs tells us what they eat. The scientists found out that most of the dinosaurs are meat-eating animals. We will serve as their food if they continuously exist today. Also, their sizes were so big compared to us. In one step of their foot, they can kill us. The fossil skeleton of Diplodocus was the largest dinosaur in history. See the picture below. Compare the size of it to men. ⁴

Figure 5

As you can see, it seems that the size of the Diplodocus were several times as big as human.

Now imagine how good our creator is. God took away the life of the dinosaurs first before he put man on earth. Because he knows that the existence of those creatures might harm us.

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References:

 v¹(p.2-10 Our Wonderful World, Herbert S. Zim, PH.D.)

 v  ²(King James Version Bible, Genesis 1:27)

 v  ³(p. 62 The Macmillan Illustrated Encyclopedia, (1995)

 v  ⁴(p. 2“All about Dinosaurs” by Roy Chapman Andrews. Adopted by permission of Random House,            Inc. 1953)

 v  Harper Collins Dictionary