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air-breathing creatures and should
therefore have been on the ark,
if
they were alive at !hat time. There–
fore, they would
not
have been
killed by the Flood and would sti ll
be alive today!
The same holds true for the ftying
reptiles, which would have been in
the ark and should have survived.
The marine reptiles also should
have survived-even though they
would not have been on the ark. But
the rocks tell us tha t when the land
dinosaurs died, so did the marine
reptiles-the ichthyosaurs, the ple–
siosaurs. and the mosasaurs. This
despite the fact they were doubtless
excellent swimmers and should have
su rvived just as other fish and sea
creatures did !
So there's rea lly no way to fit the
dinosaurs in with Noah's Flood. Re–
member. the fossil record shows that
the dinosaurs, flying reptiles and
marine reptiles lived at a different
time. They are not found intermixed
with the fossils of modero birds,
mammals or man. lf a ll these life
fo rms had lived at the same time.
they should be mixed in the fossil
record.
Sorne try to rationalize the clear
separation between dinosaurs and
man by saying tha t when Noah's
Flood carne, dinosaurs were "swept
away" first, but that men and other
mammals swam. or were "bloated."
or by sorne means "survived" so
their remains are found on top of
the earth's sedimentary strata. But
man and many other mammals are
vast ly inferior swimmers compared
to fish and ma rine reptiles. When
you really analyze that argument. it
just doesn't hold water!
For these four reasons, we must
reject the traditional fundamentalist
idea that the earth and a lllife forms
that have ever appeared were crc–
ated a mere 6,000 years ago.
Yet the Bible does supply the an–
swer!
lt
recognizes an inhabited
earth- a prehuman
world- prior
to
the creation week of Genesis l.
Gencsis 1: 1 spcaks of the or iginal
creation: " lo the beginning God
crcated the heaven and the earth."
But between the first two verses of
Genesis. a time gap of unknown
length exists. Surprising as it may
eem. the Bible nowhcre specifies
(Continued on page 41)
The
PLAIN TRUTH May 1977
The
Enigmaofthe
Dinosaur
Why did
the
once proud
dino$aurs
perish?
Aa:ording
to
paleontologtsiS.
dano–
saurs
domiDated
the earth
for nearly
140
million
years.
Tben.
abruptly. the
m8Ul rcptilian groups disappeared for–
ever. At the cnd of thc Cretac:eous
period,
the last of
thc
dinosaurs. the
marine plesiosaurs.
the
mosasaurs.
and tbe ftying pterosaurs suc:c:umbed
to somc untnown c:ause or fon:e. ln–
deed. the sudden
cxtinc:tion
of
tbe di–
nosaurs is truly one of the towering
enigmas ofearth's history.
But it was not just tbe dinosaurs that
disappeared. The end of the Cre–
taceous also saw
the
extinc:tion of the
ammonites (shelled, tentacled mol–
lusks). muc:h of the woody terrcstrial
vegetabon of the earth. and many
groups of plankton and foraminifera.
Yet the devastating cataclysm that
was responsible for such widespread
extinction did
not
extinguish many
other spec:ies. Strangely enough, most
life on earth was not destroyed. Nu–
merous c:reatures. along with many
plants. apparently survived! In fact.
paleontologists conclude that tbe up–
per-Cretaceous extinction alfected
only about 25 percent of tbe animal
families
on
earth. Nor was tbis ex–
lineboo
the only sucb event in earth
history; the Pennian period and tbe
Pleistocene epoch werc also times of
srcat extinction.
Many theories have been pro–
pounded as to why the dinosaurs and
other life fonns suddenly became ex–
tinc:t. c:limatic c:hanges. radiation or
shock
waves from a stellar explosion.
a cbange in vegetatJOn, disease epi–
demics, or any number of other
causes. But considenng the diverse list
of c:reatures that werc devastated. and
the dift'ering environments in which
they existed-and equally, the many
organisms which were
not
destroyed–
no one has yet been able to provide a
satisfactory explanation.
"11 isdifficult
to
ac:count for thesimul–
taneous extinc:tionofgreat tribesofani–
mals so diverse in relationships and in
habits of life," asserts geologist Carl O.
Dunbar. "lts cause is a complete mys–
tery," observes Arch1e Carr. researc:h
professorofzoology at the University of
Florida. Thus the perplexing puzzle of
the demise of the dmosaurs remains an
intriguing but unsolved riddle.
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