The Beginning
Of course I could just go about like any textbook and start with the first signs of life on earth 4.6 million years ago, explaining what science is, or how animals are classified. But outside of learning straight out of a textbook, very rarely does anyone actually learn in that order. So I am going to begin where I first began learning…dinosaurs. To me there is no better thing for a kids’ imagination then dinosaurs. I mean they can be anywhere from the size of a chicken to the size of a large building, sluggish or swift, caring for young or stealing others’, armored for defense or equipped with weapons for offense. Most people are familiar with dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus Rex or Velociraptor but there are others that less likely to be known that caught my attention like (pictures on attached file)…
Ankylosaurus – imagine a 15-20 foot long tank; sluggish, back covered with armor, large spikes coming out the sides, and a bony club at the end of its tail
Pachycephalosaurus – what I like to call the prehistoric mountain goat; around 8 feet long; rounded dome on the top of its head that could have been used for ramming each other for competition.
Troodon – 2 foot long carnivore; large brain, excellent eyesight to the point where possibly had depth perception unlike other dinosaurs
Oviraptor – 6 feet long; crest, beak; omnivore most likely stealing eggs from other dinosaurs; ugliest animal I have ever seen
After learning the names of dinosaurs I became interested in knowing which dinosaurs lived together at the same time in the same place. For example all six dinosaurs I named all lived around the same time at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Oviraptor and Velociraptor lived together in China while the others lived together in North America right before the Cretaceous extinction. While most of the dinosaurs we know lived toward the end of the Cretaceous, they lived anywhere from the mid-Triassic Period 230 million years ago to the end of the Cretaceous 65 million years ago. They lived in every corner of the world. I could go on for weeks about what I have learned from other time periods before and after the dinosaurs and some I will get to later but none ever held the fascination as dinosaurs had.
All this is basic interest but one thing really started getting my attention…climate. It started with finding fossils found in Antarctica. To my knowledge there are two dinosaurs (others are not recognizable) called Cryolophosaurus (Jurassic; moderate-sized carnivore with a crest) and Antarctopelta (late Cretaceous; related to Ankylosaurus). Beyond that there are numerous invertebrates from any time periods and other fossils such as trilobites (arthropod…like a crab), which are the longest-living group of animals ever (294 million years). But what caught my attention were the fossils of ferns, conifers and beech trees being found in Antarctica. Obviously Antarctica was not only had a warmer climate, but had to be much closer to the equator at one time. Actually every continent showed signs of this but Antarctica is the one that stood out the most to me. As a whole the world at the beginning of the Triassic were mostly arid, dry deserts. The same processes took place as they do over our western deserts like Death Valley or Nevada today – any moisture in the clouds is quickly absorbed by the mountains leaving a dry, hot air. In the Triassic, all the continents were joined together into one super-continent Pangea so all the moisture would’ve easily been absorbed along the coasts leaving most of the inland areas as one huge desert-like continent. Pangea broke up during the Triassic allowing much more rainfall in the mid-latitudes but still a much warmer climate than we have today. Even the poles weren’t as cold since there were no icecaps at all. This remained so through the Jurassic and into the Cretaceous. By then the climate was similar to what we know today, especially around the equator but varied little leaving the polar caps much warmer. However a cooling climate caused the polar caps to form by the end of the Cretaceous.
So how do we know what the climate was at whatever period? Fastovsky’s Evolution and Extinction of Dinosaurs gives good examples of indicators. One is the amount of iron, since rocks have more iron when the climate is warmer. Conversely calcium carbonate nodules form when the climate is more arid. Isotopes are a huge indicator of past climates. Stable isotopes are present when the climate is warm and dry. An increase in volcanic activity during the Cretaceous Period, while leaving volcanic ash, increased the overall temperature and leaving less that more uniform climate than we have now. The presence of ice caps could be deduced when the ocean recedes worldwide.
All that I’ve learned about dinosaurs and the climate confused me compared to what I knew of the Bible. I mean on one hand you have our interpretation of the past based on what we see through ancient remains and modern processes with an earth that must be very old in order to have gone through massive changes in climate, much older than several thousand years. Knowing that I didn’t know what to think especially when I saw the Bible saying that everything we see and know is wrong. I couldn’t turn from the Bible either because I did believe in it and it instinctively then I knew that it couldn’t have been wrong. What confused me even further is that the Bible never made a definite mention of dinosaurs. The closest is a mention of a behemoth and a leviathan but calling either one a dinosaur is a stretch. Job 40:15-24 describes a behemoth as having powerful muscles in its stomach, a tail that sways like a cedar, and very strong bones like bronze. The interpretation I’ve seen by many is that this is a large, four-foot, long-necked dinosaur such as Diplodocus or Brachiosaurus. Both dinosaurs are at least 90 feet long and can reach up to heights of more than 40 feet above the ground. But I find these and other similar dinosaurs unlikely because of the mentions in Job that the behemoth feeds on grass and that marsh reeds and lotus plants can hide it. The leviathan is definitely a fierce animal of the sea that has strong limbs, and gives me the impression on have a very thick hide like a lizard. But even with that, it gives no indication to me that it must be a dinosaur and not a modern lizard, like a crocodile. The concern I had was how many dinosaurs there were: almost 1100 species, and not one direct mention.
What I learned about dinosaurs made no sense to me compared to what I learned about the Bible at the same time. I didn’t know what to think. It seemed so different that I thought one side had to be right and one had to be wrong. No matter which side was wrong, even then I knew it meant that thousands of people for hundreds or thousands of years were extremely mistaken. But as I will show in my next entries, things will slowly come together in ways that I could have never known.
As with any entry any comments or questions are welcome.
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