A living dinosaur?
A dinosaur actually living in the world today? According to a report in Papua New
Guinea’s The Independent newspaper,1 a ‘dinosaur-like
reptile’ was seen on two occasions in the Lake Murray area, in Western Province.
On December 11, 1999, villagers travelling in a canoe reported seeing the creature
wading in shallow water near Boboa.
The following day, a Seventh Day Adventist pastor and a church elder say they saw
the animal not far from the first sighting.
The creature was described as having a body ‘as long as a dump truck’
and nearly two metres wide, with a long neck and a long slender tail. It was walking
on two hind legs ‘as thick as coconut palm tree trunks’, and had two
smaller forelegs. The head was similar in shape to a cow’s head, with large
eyes and ‘sharp teeth as long as fingers.’ The skin was likened to that
of a crocodile, and the creature had ‘largish triangular scoops on the back.’
So what did these eyewitnesses really see? The description does not seem to fit
any species known to live on the earth today. However, its large size and crocodile-like
skin certainly bring images of dinosaurs powerfully to mind.
The circumstances in which it was encountered are strikingly reminiscent of the
river-dwelling sauropod-like animal known as mokele-mbembe, whose sightings
in the vast, remote swamps of Africa’s Congo region have led even some evolutionist
scientists to speculate that dinosaurs may still be living in the world today.2
For believers in the prevailing evolutionary view that dinosaurs died out 65 million
years ago, the idea that they might be alive today is hard to accept. This is despite
the recent discovery of the living Wollemi pine tree,3 also believed,
from fossils, to have been extinct since the ‘dinosaur age’.
Christians, however, should not be surprised, as the Bible teaches that God created
the dinosaurs only thousands of years ago.
So why have dinosaurs (apparently) disappeared? Probably for the very same reasons
that wildlife protection agencies give when expressing concern over current extinction
rates of animals and plants,4 primarily the effect of man (e.g. through
hunting and land clearing).
After the Flood, many of the dinosaurs and other animals are likely to have multiplied
across the earth (Genesis
8:17) more quickly than Noah’s descendants (e.g. a rabbit’s
pregnancy lasts 31 days; the offspring mature in ten weeks). N.B. also that the
people disobediently stayed around Babel, before God judged them.
As human settlement expanded, populations of many animal species would have declined
due to over-exploitation (for meat, skins, etc.), habitat loss, or deliberate extermination
to reduce the threat of attack. Tales of dragon-slaying heroes like St George may
suggest man’s part in the dinosaurs’ demise.
Despite the popular view that such factors have the most impact on amphibians (e.g.
frogs), many scientists now recognise that reptiles are in even greater danger of
extinction.5 This may help to explain why the celebrated dinosaurs have
apparently died out before many of our so-called ‘modern’ species.
So if any dinosaur species are still living, the most likely places to find them
would be in biologically rich areas with limited or no human settlement, such as
the Congo and Lake Murray regions, as these reports suggest.
Further reading
References
- The Independent (Papua New Guinea), December 30, 1999, p. 6.
- See Mokele-mbembe: a living dinosaur? Creation
21(4):24-25, 1999.
- See Sensational Australian tree … like ‘finding
a live dinosaur', Creation 17(2):13, 1995;
Creation19(3):7,
1997.
- Estimated extinction rates vary wildly, from 1-50 species per day. Myers, N., ‘What
we must do to counter the biotic holocaust', <www.nationalwildlife.org/nwf/intlwild/1998/holocaust.html>,
September 15, 2000.
- UniSci (Daily University Science News), <www.unisci.com/stories/20003/0814004.htm>,
August 15, 2000.
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