Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee;
Job 40:15
"The parallels between the extinction of the dangerous dinosaurs and the localized ‘extinction’ of elephants and tigers in various areas today are many. Unquestionably, many of the dinosaurs were dangerous to humans. In 1405 in Suffolk, England:
A reptilian monster gulped down the body of King Morvidus as a big fish swallows a little one.
“Close to the town of Bures, near Sudbury, there has lately appeared, to the great hurt of the countryside, a dragon, vast in body, with a crested head, teeth like a saw, and a tail extending to an enormous length. Having slaughtered the shepherd of a flock, it devoured many sheep.”The menace posed by large rampaging reptiles had been known by the early Britons—one account documents the killing of King Morvidus (Morydd) in circa 336 BC by a reptilian monster which “gulped down the body of Morvidus as a big fish swallows a little one”.
There were plenty of opportunities for ‘St George’ types to display their courage against these fearsome creatures. One such was the Scandinavian hero Beowulf, famed by the Danes for his prowess at killing terrifying reptilian creatures that made their life a misery, including the ‘Grendel’, a bipedal marsh-dweller that exacted a terrible human toll:“The Danes employed an eotanweard (lit. a giantward, a watcher for monsters), to warn of Grendel’s approach, but often in vain. For so silent was Grendel’s approach when he was hunting in the darkness of the night that sometimes the eotanweard himself was surprised and eaten. On one particular and long-remembered night, no less than thirty Danish warriors were killed by Grendel. Little wonder then that Beowulf was rewarded so richly and was so famed for having slain him.”
And little wonder also that such bipedal dinosaurs aren’t such a menace today. But if they were still around, perhaps hanging on to existence in a remote jungle somewhere, they would surely be granted ‘endangered’ status, just as have the tiger and elephant.
In contrast to evolutionary claims, the sedimentary rock layers containing fossils are not a ‘record’ of evolution and extinction over a millions-of-years timeframe, but rather a legacy of burial in the global Flood (around 4,500 years ago) and its aftermath. All the kinds of land animals (including dinosaurs) and birds survived aboard the Ark, repopulating the Earth afterwards. Since then, many creatures have gone extinct, not just dinosaurs, in an ongoing display of the Curse on Creation. Just as can be seen happening in various localities with elephants and tigers today, it’s likely that some dinosaurs perished through human influence, being a direct threat to man’s safety or because of loss of habitat (to agriculture or urban encroachment). The Bible is key to ‘understanding the dinosaurs’.
Some might wonder how people could kill some of the larger dinosaurs without modern weapons. But people killed whales that were larger than any dinosaur, from sailing boats, using teamwork and handlaunched harpoons. And this on the whales’ ‘home turf’. Hunters have used such things as fire, traps and curare (poison) to capture/kill large animals. The drying out of the continents after the Flood—all continents once had extensive inland seas—could also have been a factor in the demise of the dinosaurs. It seems that dinosaurs were like hippos, inhabiting areas with plenty of water, and the drying out of the land resulted in a contraction of areas suitable for them. The wax and wane of the post-Flood Ice Age would have also impacted dinosaur survival." CMI
