Dinosaurs on the Ark: How It Was Possible.............

Dinosaurs on the Ark: How It Was Possible............. How dinosaurs lived with man, how they were preserved on Noah’s ark—likely as juveniles—and what happened to dinosaurs after the flood...... People often wonder how all of the animals could have fit on the ark. Often, “bathtub arks” are loaded down with various species of animals, rather than the biblical kind, which is approximately at the family level of biological classification. Noah didn’t need to bring lions, leopards, and tigers onto the ark, just a single pair from the cat kind. We see so many illustrationsof large creatures packed tightly into a little boat. But this image is inaccurate too. Noah’s ark was so much larger than it is usually depicted, and many of the animals were probably smaller than are shown in popular pictures. The Dinosaur “Hurdle” But the biggest hurdle people have when they see any of our displays of the ark (or visit the Ark Encounter) is seeing dinosaurs depicted on the ark (or in stalls in the Ark Encounter). Due to evolutionaryindoctrination, many people can’t picture man living alongside dinosaurs, or if they do, they think of the Jurassic Park/World movies and view all dinosaurs as wanting to trample or eat people. Even if they overcome or set aside this stumbling block, we still get questions of how dinosaurs could even fit on the ark, particularly when considering the massivedinosaurs, especially the sauropods. Other oft-cited “problems” with dinosaurs on the ark are feeding the herbivores the massive amounts of vegetation that the adults eat, feeding the carnivorous ones (and avoiding being eaten by them), and cleaning up afterthem. It makes more sense to think that God would have sent to Noah juveniles (or sub-adults) or smaller varieties within the same kind. Consider the following advantages to bringing juveniles or smaller versions of a creature: they take up less space, they eat less, they create less waste, theyare often more docile and easier to manage, they are generally less susceptible to injury, and they would have more time to reproduce after the flood. And considering this last point, wasn’t that the end goal of bringing them on board the ark: to keep themalive and to ensure that they would “be fruitful and multiply on the earth" (Genesis8:17)? Bringing a full-sized dinosaur that only had a few years left and/or was past its reproductive prime seems illogical and wasteful. Neither of those is characteristic of God. How Could Noah Have Fed the Carnivorous and Vegetarian Dinosaurs? Regarding carnivorous activity, we know from the fossil record (most of which is a testimony of the worldwide, globe-covering flood) that some animals were carnivores in the post-fall/pre-flood world. Buteven if carnivory was prevalent in the late pre-flood world, it is still possible the animals that God sent did not eat meat or were omnivores that could have survived for one year without meat. There have been modern examples of animals normally consideredto be carnivores that refused to eat meat, such as the lion known as Little Tyke. Additionally during times of war or natural disaster when meat was unobtainable, zoos and wildlife parks have utilized meat substitutes1like nuts, peanut butter, coconuts, beans, soy, and other legumes as their protein-source feed for the animals.2 However, if some of the ark’s animals did eat meat, there are several methods of preserving or supplying their food. Meat can be preserved through drying, smoking, salting, or pickling. Certain fish can packthemselves in mud and survive for years without water—these could have been stored on the ark. Noah may have also brought mealworms and other insects onto the ark as food, and these can be bred for both carnivores and insectivores, providing even necessary amino acids, like taurine. Cricket or grasshopper flour could be baked into breads, as could the ground seeds of gourds. And plants like amaranthand quinoa yield high protein feed. Yeast paste and dried seaweed also contain high amounts of protein and taurine, so Noah quite likely had many options available to him. And occasionally in desperate times, like during the Nazi siege of Leningrad in 1941,even obligate carnivores (in this case, a tiger) have switched to vegetarian diets and survived for several years.3 For the plant-eating dinosaurs, the animals brought on board could have eaten compressed hay, other dried grasses, dried vegetables, seeds and grains, legumes, etc. Another factor that may have reduced foodconsumption for both vegetarian and carnivorous dinosaurs is that they went into a state of hibernation/brumation or torpor. Many reptiles today begin to eat less, reduce their metabolic rate drastically, and then “sleep” for long periods of time when theweather gets a little cooler, virtually eating nothing and waking up only for brief periods to drink before reentering brumation. Often the best conditions for this state are humidity, temperatures between 50° and 68° F (10° and 20° C), and low-light conditions.4The outside weather at the time of the flood (rainy and thus likely cool) combined with the lower-light interior compartments of the ark would make ideal hibernation/brumation conditions on the ark. If any of the dinosaurs and other reptiles and amphibianswent into brumation, then food requirements would have been severely reduced. Crunching the Numbers Noah also did not have to bring marine animals, archaebacteria, bacteria, fungi, or plants (except as food sources and possibly a few hardier live plants/fungi for fresh food) and many (if any) insects ontothe ark. Even current estimates are that there are fewer than 34,000 species of known, land-dependent vertebrates in the world today.5 Studies beginning in 2012 estimate that there are fewer than 1,400 known living and extinct kinds among land-dependent vertebrates. In a worst-case scenario, it is projected that Noah was responsible forabout 6,700 individual animals—most of them small and easily maintained. Even if the biblical kind were expanded from the family to the genus level (4416 genera-according to a 2013 study)6,we would still be talking about approximately 16,000 animals total, as in the case study done by researcher John Woodmorappe in 2007.7 Based on the Hebrew common cubit (which Woodmorappe used) that, from records, was 18 inches, we can calculate that Noah’s ark was 450’ L x 75’ W x 45’ H—large enough to contain approximately 350 semi-trucktrailers. Based on the Hebrew royal cubit, which we know from estimates of a cubit and a handbreadth (Ezekiel40:5 and 43:13) to be equal to 20.4 inches (and believed to be the older cubit measurement), we can calculate that Noah’s ark was 510’ L x 85’ W x 51’ H—large enough to contain approximately 450 semi-truck trailers. The Hebrew royal cubit is the standard we usedwhen we built the Ark Encounter’s ark. Back to the dinosaurs, the average dinosaur is about the size of a bison, and the estimated number of dinosaur kinds (of which only a pair of each was brought) may have been about 85—-meaning a maximum of170 dinosaurs were taken aboard the ark. Therefore, the ark had adequate space for every kind of dinosaur, particularly if God sent sub-adults to Noah. For example, the average 24 x 7 ft. cattle trailer can safely haul a maximum of eleven 1,200-pound cows.8If cattle were transported with a common semi-truck trailer9of 53 x 8.5 ft., an average of 28 such animals could be safely hauled.10That means even assuming the maximum number of dinosaur kinds, only six of the 450 semi-truck trailer storage capacity (for a royal cubit sized-ark) would be needed for the dinosaurs. But How Could Noah Care for the Dinosaurs on the Ark? Creation researcher John Woodmorappe has written extensively on this topic in his book, Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study. Some of the methodologies he mentioned were practical, labor-saving devices like food and water troughs, slatted floors for waste disposal, ventilation systems, and lighting. Answers in Genesis also has a detailed book, a children’s book, and several articles on ventilation and lighting, animal care, logistical questions, as well as several videos of how Noah and his family could have prepared for and taken care of the animals. We need to keep in mind that Noah was a very intelligent man and was obeying God’s commands by faith (Hebrews11:7). And it was God’s desire that the animals on the ark were well cared for and able to disembark healthy and repopulate the new world. To use a perhaps overused phrase, but in this case highly appropriate, God did not set Noah up for failure but sethim up for success. After all it was God’s own promises to Noah that were on the line (Genesis6:20-23, 7:1-3), and God does not go back on his Word (Numbers23:19; Titus 1:2). Although Scripture records only a few basic instructions on the design of the ark given by God to Noah, it is safe to assume that he providentially guided Noah to ensured that the ark was designed well, durable, and that it could do what heintended it to. Some good resources for looking at the technical aspects, and even possible floor plans for the layout of the ark, its animal enclosures, and labor-saving technologies can also be found on the Answers in Genesis website: Caring for the Animals on the Ark, How Could Noah Fit the Animals on the Ark and Care for Them? and Was There Really a Noah’s Ark & Flood?. Dinosaurs Were on the Ark and Dinosaurs Came off the Ark........... The evolutionary story is that dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago, long before humans evolved. But Scripture tells a quite different account. All land animals were created on day six of creation week. And two of every unclean land animal were commanded by God to be brought onto the ark. Therefore Scripture testifies that dinosaurs would have survived the flood and coexisted with mankind. Then later in history we read of Behemoth,likely a sauropod dinosaur (Job 40), marine reptiles like Leviathan (Job 41, Psalm 104:25–26), and numerous references to dragons and flying serpents (possibly pterosaurs) throughout the Bible—all living alongside mankind. And man, specially created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), was given dominion over all of God’s creation (Genesis 1:28). But dinosaurs did not prosper in the post-flood world, and they died out for many of the same reasons that some animals go extinct today. The post-flood world was radically different from the tropical/semi-tropicalpre-flood world, and many plant species that the herbivorous dinosaurs likely fed on (cycads and gymnosperms) went extinct or were severely reduced in number and variety. Predation on some of the smaller dinosaurs by larger ones or large mammals and diseasealso could have contributed to their demise. Mankind may have hunted some dinosaurs for meat or destroyed them because they ravaged crops or were a threat to human survival. As Ken Ham has written, as they began to be seen less and less, they faded from memory and later remembered as legends. Dragon legends though likely containing kernels of truth about the size and ferocity of some of the larger dinosaurs, became stories told around campfires and hearths. But the very nature of their encounters with mankind after the flood in Scripture and in several historical accounts is testimony to their survival on the ark and their continued presence with man for a few thousand years afterward. Footnotes 1.Mayumi Itoh, Japanese Wartime Zoo Policy: The Silent Victims of World War II (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 33. 2.H. Bieguszewski, C. Lewicki, “Protein metabolism in fur-bearing carnivorous animals. 4. Effect of different composition of the feed and different protein contents on digestibility, N balance and some blood values in Arctic foxes,” Rocznik nauk rolniczych. Seria B. Zootechnika 91 (1969): 603. 3.Henry Shapiro, “100,000 Died in Leningrad Siege,” New York Times, June 29, 1943, 6. 4.Scott Solar, “Preparing Reptiles For Winter's Sleep,” Reptiles, last modified February 7, 2014, https://www.reptilesmagazine.com/preparing-reptiles-for-winters-sleep/. 5.Liz Osborn, “Number of Species Identified on Earth,” https://www.currentresults.com/Environment-Facts/Plants-Animals/number-species.php 6.Michael L. Rosenzweig et al., “Patterns in the diversity of the world’s land vertebrate genera,” Evolutionary Ecology Research 15, no. 8 (2013): 869. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260595912_Patterns_in_the_Diversity_of_the_World's_Land_Vertebrate_Genera. 7.John Woodmorappe, “Caring for the Animals on the Ark,” Answers 2, no. 2 (2007), 36–38, https://answersingenesis.org/noahs-ark/caring-for-the-animals-on-the-ark/. 8.Doug Mayo, “Protect Beef Quality with Proper Cattle Hauling Practices,” University of Florida, March 20, 2015, https://nwdistrict.ifas.ufl.edu/phag/2015/03/20/protect-beef-quality-with-proper-cattle-hauling-practices/. 9.“Semi Trailer Length,” https://www.bigtruckguide.com/semi-trailer-length/. 10.Heather Smith Thomas, “What to know when buying a semi and trailer,” Tri-State Livestock News, August 15, 2018, https://www.tsln.com/news/buying-a-semi-and-trailer/. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Fossils Still Say No: Enigma of the Carboniferous Explosion......... Many creationists and evolutionists alike are familiar with the initial huge explosion of complex marine life buried in the Cambrian rock layers at the beginning of the fossiliferous strata,1 but few people know about the explosion of land-basedlife in the Carboniferous and Early Permian. While evolutionists have engendered a great deal of speculation about amphibians somehow morphing into reptiles as a central part of the grand evolutionary story and the early colonization of land, the supportingfossil evidence for this conjecture is lacking. Instead, we see a massive explosion of diverse amphibia and reptile-like creatures alongside a huge diversity of plant life and arthropods representing lowland coastal ecosystems.2-6 When we consider these fossils in the Carboniferous and Early Permian rock layers, we have a direct witness to the enormous destruction and burial of lowland coastal ecosystems during the first phase of global land inundation in the Genesis Flood.7 Amphibian Evolution Missing Modern ecology of amphibia and reptile-like creatures is diverse. Most types live on land, underground, in trees, or in freshwater aquatic environments such as streams, lakes, and rivers. They are categorized as ectotherms (cold-blooded) because their bodytemperature is heavily influenced by external sources such as sunlight or warm surfaces. Many amphibians will start their lives in water, but some types have specific mechanisms to bypass this. They generally have complex life cycles, undergoing metamorphosisfrom a larva with gills to an adult with lungs that breathe air. One of the most amazing features of some amphibians is the ability to use their skin with their lungs to breathe. In fact, there are even a few small terrestrial frogs and salamanders that haveno lungs and breathe completely through their skin. The three main groups or orders of living amphibians are Anura (frogs and toads), Urodela (salamanders), and Apoda (the serpentine caecilians). Among secular scientists, the origins and evolutionary relationships between the three main groups of amphibiansare hotly debated.6 About 90% of the approximately 8,000 known amphibia are frogs, including a tiny frog that is the smallest known vertebrate, having a length of only 0.30 inches. Frogs and salamanders have no evolutionary history and show up suddenlyin Jurassic strata looking similar to their living counterparts. Caecilians are a group of limbless amphibians shaped like earthworms. They are one of the least familiar amphibians because they live hidden in the ground and in stream beds. Their evolutionaryorigins are a complete mystery, with one alleged legged variant showing up in the Jurassic. As far as the big picture of biological evolution goes, the idea of an amphibian as a transitional form plays an important role. Based solely on the premise of evolution (rather than fossil evidence), it is believed that the earliest amphibians evolved inthe Devonian system (the so-called Age of Fishes) from lobe-finned fish with lungs (e.g., lungfish) and bony-limbed fins to somehow leave a watery life and live on dry land. As I showed in several previous articles, this whole claimed fish-to-tetrapod transitionis absent in the fossil record.6,8 Nevertheless, it is taught that after arriving on land, these ancient hypothetical amphibians diversified and became the dominant land creatures during the Carboniferous and Permian periods but were later displacedby reptiles and other vertebrates. Then, as the story goes, over millions of years amphibians became smaller and decreased in their diversity. The problem with this amphibian evolutionary story is that extinct amphibian-like creatures appear suddenly and already diversified in the Carboniferous layers, while the three major groups of living amphibians appear suddenly without prior ancestors inthe Jurassic. In previous articles, I showed how the Devonian strata contained only diverse types of fish and fish-like creatures, and how complex terrestrial life emerged suddenly afterward with no window for evolution.6,8,9 Temnospondyli and Reptiliomorphs Temnospondyli are a diverse group of small to giant amphibian-like creatures whose fossils have been found in the Carboniferous, Permian, and in the layers above on every continent. Their systems enable them to fill a wide range of habitats, including freshwater, terrestrial, and possibly coastal marine environments. They are considered amphibian-like based on a range of fossils representing a complex amphibian lifestyle (larval stage, metamorphosis, and maturity). Their bodily traits indicated they were semi-aquatic,although some were thought to be almost fully terrestrial�possibly returning to water to breed. In fact, it�s possible that some temnospondyls were not amphibians at all since they had scales, claws, and armor-like bony plates. Reptiliomorphs (or Anthracosauria) are a group of reptile-like tetrapods that appear suddenly and unexpectantly in the fossil record alongside the Temnospondyli, leaving virtually no room for amphibian-to-reptile evolution to occur. For example, Westlothiana (nicknamed �Lizzie�) was discovered in early Carboniferous rocks, and although it clearly looked like a terrestrial lizard, it was not considered a true lizard largely because it was out of place in the tetrapod evolution story. In addition,many other lizard-like reptile creatures have been found in Carboniferous rock layers, such as Gephyrostegus and Limnoscelis. The main evolutionary problem is that terrestrial amphibian-like and reptile-like creatures appear in the same strata with no room for evolution to take place from one to the other. Arthropods Galore In my previous article I mentioned the sudden appearance of land life in the early Carboniferous, which also included arthropods such as giant scorpions.6 The appearance of monster arthropods throughout the Carboniferous included huge dragonflies(Meganeura) with two-foot wingspans and a type of millipede called Arthropleura that was up to six feet long. While most believe that Meganeura preyed upon smaller arthropods and freshwater creatures, Arthropleura was actually a plant eater. We know this because the remnants of a lowland coastal tree called a lycopod have been found in its gut and coprolites (fossil feces). The presence of extremely sophisticated creatures like a dragonfly earlyin the rock record of land creatures does little to help the evolutionary story. Adult dragonflies have a complex life cycle. Their larvae live underwater as a vicious predator and then eventually metamorphosize into an adult dragonfly, one of the most complexlyengineered insects Carboniferous Coals Another interesting aspect of the Carboniferous and Early Permian rock layers is the sudden appearance of true ferns and seed plants representing coastal lowland forests. Some of these plants like the Lepidodendron grew as tall as 100 feet. Not only does this sudden appearance of diverse plant life without any evolutionary ancestors to indicate a transition from growing in water to living on land present a problem, but so does the nature of theextensive mass burial of this plant matter. This huge mass of ripped-up plant debris had to have been buried rapidly to form the massive coal seams that are observed in various parts of the world. In fact, this is where we get the name Carboniferous, whichmeans �coal bearing.� Even more interesting is that these Carboniferous coal layers are buried with marine sediments. Marine limestone layers are common right above and below many of these coal beds. This has completely perplexed evolutionists who have for decades erroneouslyclaimed that coals form slowly over deep time in freshwater environments. The late paleontologist Jennifer Clack noted that these massive Carboniferous coal seams indicate an �extensive, large-scale event� and �the coal forest sediments are covered by marinedeposits.� When trying to surmise the sort of ecosystem that they might have represented, she said, �The lowlands and marshy regions can support such extensive plant growth.�4 Putting It All Together with the Global Flood How is it that we find entire coastal lowland ecosystems catastrophically buried and preserved as fossils and coal�a fossil fuel�along with sediments of marine origin in these Carboniferous rock layers? The answer is simple. If one abandons the false paradigmof evolution, which has little to offer in explaining the trends and complexities found in the fossil record, one finds a loving Creator specializing His creatures for their environments. As noted in this article, immediately above the Devonian strata (whichis full of fish and other marine life) comes the Carboniferous layer where land arthropods, lizard and amphibian-like creatures, and coastal forest plants all suddenly appear together. In the global Flood model, we can easily explain this as the progressivedestruction caused by the tsunami-like global floodwaters. A sweep of massive waves violently inundated the major landmasses in their lowland coastal regions. Because these coastal low-lying areas had very tropical climates and likely contained a lot of marsh-likeforest habitats, we see in these layers both plants and animals that were specially adapted to these conditions. According to the global mapping of Flood layers known as megasequences, the deposition of the Late and Early Carboniferous (and Permian) corresponds to the end of the Kaskaskia Megasequence and the beginning of the Absaroka. These two megasequences werepart of the continual advance of the floodwaters across higher and higher elevations described in Genesis 7. These rock layers perfectly represent the global destruction of lowland ecological systems and reinforce a creationist model of paleontology based on global Flood burial by ecological zonation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ VISIT: PROPHECY WATCHER WEEKLY NEWS: HTTP://PROPHECY-WATCHER-WEEKLY-NEWS.BLOGSPOT.COM