sincere question about dinosaurs

[daniela_r]

I have a couple of sincere, not-debate-seeking questions about dinosaurs. But first, I've read enough threads to know I need to start off with some clarifications. 1) I am fully aware that my own scientific education was *lacking*, so no need to act all horrified at me. 2) I am REALLY not trying to start a young-earth/old-earth/evolution debate. Just trying to ask my little questions about dinosaurs. So stick to my questions, pretty please:)

 

OK, so I know that young-earth creationists believe that (land) dinosuars and people were created on the same day, and that dinosaurs were on Noah's ark, so people and dinosaurs existed at the same time. And many YEC folks believe that legends of dragons actually come from old, passed-down memories of dinosaurs. So, dragons (not necessarily all the embellishments like fire-breathing) really were real; they were just the last remnants of dinosaurs that were going extinct.

 

And I know that evolutionists scoff at that idea because dinosaurs supposedly went extinct however many million years ago, so there's no way any humans ever saw any dinosaurs.

 

Question: How come most of the dinosaurs couldn't have died off (say, when a metor hit the earth) but a few (say, a few species) couldn't have survived, and kept adapting, and still been around long enough for people to have seen them? And then those people would have passed on the stories of this great monster they saw, a "dragon". After all, weren't there crocodilian species back in the time of the dinosaurs? And there are still crocodiles and alligators today. So, why couldn't dinosaurs have survived too?

 

Next question: What makes dinosaurs a different class/group of reptiles from other reptiles today? I know I've read something about hip structures, but I didn't get it. Did all of the dinosaurs, from T. Rex to Triceratops to Brachiosaurus, have hips that weren't like lizards, or turtles, or crocodiles? And why isn't a Komodo dragon a "dinosaur" (besides the obvious reason that "it isn't extinct and all dinosaurs died off millions of years ago")?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Erin]

Pulling this off the top of my head, but IIRC they're postulating that some dinosaurs were warmblooded...more like birds than reptiles.

 

Crocodiles are descended from "dinosaurs," but I'm not sure how much further we can go with this if evolution is off the table.

So far as the dragon question, fossils aren't a new phenomenon. People have been finding these things for thousands of years and wondering what this thing was that had a thigh bone that is this big!

[Mom-ninja.]

We do see descendants of dinosaurs every day. Just look out your window. Birds. :)

 

So yes, some dinosaurs did survive the mass extinctions (there was more than one) and evolved into present day species.

 

 

A great show that makes things easy to understand is "Dinosaur Train" which is a show for young kids. I'm not being snarky. It is a good show to begin with.

[Arcadia]

What I watched a long time ago with my kids on Dinosaur Train says birds are a "descendent" of dinosaurs. The lesson plan for that episode is here.

 

"Today, we can safely declare that birds evolved from a group of dinosaurs known as maniraptoran theropods-generally small meat-eating dinosaurs that include Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame." (from National History Museum)

"sk your average paleontologist who is familiar with the phylogeny of vertebrates and they will probably tell you that yes, birds (avians) are dinosaurs. Using proper terminology, birds are avian dinosaurs; other dinosaurs are non-avian dinosaurs, and (strange as it may sound) birds are technically considered reptiles." (http://www.ucmp.berk...ids/avians.html)

[Aslana]

Dinosaur--I don't think that word means what you think it means. :D

 

The term "dinosaur" ONLY refers to animals of the Jurassic (let me correct myself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur) period in time. The true dinosaurs. However, if you are using the term dinosaur to mean "Just those really old scaly things that lived during different time periods" --okay fine. But just a clarification for you.

 

If you are using the term dinosaur in the general sense ("all those old things")--well, we DO have dinosaurs still around today. The coelcanth and the 7 gilled shark, the mega mouth shark as well. The horsehoe crab also. The nautilus, squid, octopi...There are many that are still around today that were around then.

[Erin]

Today, we can safely declare that birds evolved from a group of dinosaurs known as maniraptoran theropods-generally small meat-eating dinosaurs that include Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame.

And really, anyone who has ever seen a flock of chickens running across the yard chasing grasshoppers could have told you this one! They creep me out when they do that. :bored:

[LucyStoner]

Because when the last dinosaurs died out, not all life on earth (including some life that evolved from some dinosaurs) died out.

 

Fossil fuels? They took time to become such. Not a handful of thousand of years. Think about that the next time your fill up the car. Kinda of amazing to ponder the magnitude of it all.

 

There are some good programs on dinosaurs and evolution on Netflix.

[jar7709]

Yes, most paleontologists conclude that birds were descended from a certain class of dinos. :) As to early legends of dragons and monsters, many modern historians and scientists think they likely emerged at least in part from early civilizations spinning yarns about these weird bones they found. Google "geomythology" and look up books by Adrienne Mayor on Amazon. It is really fascinating stuff.

[MercyA]

If you are a Christian, you and your kids might enjoy this dinosaur book:

 

http://www.amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Exploring-Michael-Caroline-Carroll/dp/0781433665/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=FKVQ55ZPV40Z&coliid=I1L0T6PYY3L5G6

 

It leans towards an old-earth creationist view, but also mentions the young earth perspective. I'm a theologically conservative Christian, but I'm not a die-hard young-earther. I've found it difficult to find many well-balanced books like this.

[swellmomma]

What I watched a long time ago with my kids on Dinosaur Train says birds are a "descendent" of dinosaurs. The lesson plan for that episode is here.

 

"Today, we can safely declare that birds evolved from a group of dinosaurs known as maniraptoran theropods-generally small meat-eating dinosaurs that include Velociraptor of Jurassic Park fame." (from National History Museum)

"sk your average paleontologist who is familiar with the phylogeny of vertebrates and they will probably tell you that yes, birds (avians) are dinosaurs. Using proper terminology, birds are avian dinosaurs; other dinosaurs are non-avian dinosaurs, and (strange as it may sound) birds are technically considered reptiles." (http://www.ucmp.berk...ids/avians.html)

 

 

I have nothing to add to this discussion other than the movie Jurassic Park didn't have velociraptors, what they called velociraptors in the movie were actually deinonychus from the early to mid cretaceous period, velociraptors are actually quite small compared to what was in the movie. The velociraptor does in fact look like a large chicken complete with feathers but was not one to hunt in packs and is speculated to be warm blooded. SO I can see why fit can be postulated that birds have evolved from a dinosaur such as the velociraptor. That does not match my own beliefs, although I am not young earth but there yeah go, my 2 cents.

[Mergath]

As everyone else has said, some species of dinosaurs didn't die, depending on your definition of "dinosaur." If we're talking about the kind that could be mistaken for a dragon (large, scary, toothy) there's nothing to say they couldn't have survived, but we know they didn't. Not in the people riding around on dinosaurs sort of way some Christians talk about. If every culture that has a rich history of dragon mythology had actually co-existed with dinosaurs, we'd have found some kind of archaeological evidence. We'd find dinosaur bones with knife and scraper marks on them, and bones turned into new tools. We'd find remnants of items with dinosaur skin leather. We'd find humans with dinosaur tooth marks in their bones. And we'd find human bones and dinosaur bones together. We've never, not once, found a single instance of any of these things. And you can be sure that if dinosaurs and humans had lived at the same time, they would have killed each other for food.

[poppy]

That dragon thing is WILD I never heard that before. Learn something new every day!

[Shahrazad]

My son was watching this documentary a little while ago and I was surprised to learn that the people of the past thought crocodiles were dragons...just the intro here gives a preview of it:

 

National Geographic's Here Be Dragons:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_wT61kViI

[Butter]

I have nothing to add to this discussion other than the movie Jurassic Park didn't have velociraptors, what they called velociraptors in the movie were actually deinonychus from the early to mid cretaceous period, velociraptors are actually quite small compared to what was in the movie. The velociraptor does in fact look like a large chicken complete with feathers but was not one to hunt in packs and is speculated to be warm blooded. SO I can see why fit can be postulated that birds have evolved from a dinosaur such as the velociraptor. That does not match my own beliefs, although I am not young earth but there yeah go, my 2 cents.

 

Jurassic Park fame includes the books, not just the movies :) But, yeah, what they said were velociraptors in the movie weren't, but what they used looked much more scary than a velociraptor would look. In the book it is very clear that they are velociraptors.

 

I was just talking to my daughter a couple days ago about young earth vs. old earth creation and that led to a conversation about evolution which led to a conversation about dinosaurs. And then we sat a bit marveling over the whole fossil fuels thing and why dinosaurs were necessary for us *today* and we were both kind of overwhelmed by how incredibly amazing it all is. It was a really neat conversation.

[nmoira]

Question: How come most of the dinosaurs couldn't have died off (say, when a metor hit the earth) but a few (say, a few species) couldn't have survived, and kept adapting, and still been around long enough for people to have seen them?

 

Just to add to what's already been said, I heard a great interview a couple weeks back about what the earth would have been like right after being struck by a asteroid the size of the one that struck in the Yucatan 66 million years ago: The Firestorm that Killed the Dinosaurs.

 

Here's an excerpt from the press release for the paper referenced:

 

“Our data show the conditions back then are consistent with widespread fires across the planet,†said Robertson, a research scientist at CIRES, which is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Those conditions resulted in 100 percent extinction rates for about 80 percent of all life on Earth.â€

 

A paper on the subject was published online this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Biogeosciences, a publication of the American Geophysical Union. Co-authors on the study include CIRES Interim Director William Lewis, CU Professor Brian Toon of the atmospheric and oceanic sciences department and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics and Peter Sheehan of the Milwaukee Public Museum in Wisconsin.

 

Geological evidence indicates the asteroid collided with Earth about 66 million years ago and carved the Chicxulub crater in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula that is more than 110 miles in diameter. In 2010, experts from 33 institutions worldwide issued a report that concluded the impact at Chicxulub triggered mass extinctions, including dinosaurs, at the K-Pg boundary. [Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, the event formerly known as the K-T boundary/event.]

 

The conditions leading to the global firestorm were set up by the vaporization of rock following the impact, which condensed into sand-grain-sized spheres as they rose above the atmosphere. As the ejected material re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, it dumped enough heat in the upper atmosphere to trigger an infrared “heat pulse†so hot it caused the sky to glow red for several hours, even though part of the radiation was blocked from Earth by the falling material, he said.

 

But there was enough infrared radiation from the upper atmosphere that reached Earth’s surface to create searing conditions that likely ignited tinder, including dead leaves and pine needles. If a person was on Earth back then, it would have been like sitting in a broiler oven for two or three hours, said Robertson.

 

The amount of energy created by the infrared radiation the day of the asteroid-Earth collision is mind-boggling, said Robertson. “It’s likely that the total amount of infrared heat was equal to a 1 megaton bomb exploding every four miles over the entire Earth.â€

 

A 1-megaton hydrogen bomb has about the same explosive power as 80 Hiroshima-type nuclear bombs, he said. The asteroid-Earth collision is thought to have generated about 100 million megatons of energy, said Robertson.

[nmoira]

So far as the dragon question, fossils aren't a new phenomenon. People have been finding these things for thousands of years and wondering what this thing was that had a thigh bone that is this big!

 

 

Perhaps whale bones/fossils too. There are a good number of inland deposits.

[OrganicAnn]

Nova is has lots of interesting shows on Dinosaurs. Right now they have a 4 part series on Australia that covers different time periods. You can watch it on-line at PBS.org.

 

FYI - my sister has parrots and nothing looks more like a baby dinosaur than a baby parrot.

 

I saw or read something that they think the dragon legends came from people traveling along the silk routes between China and the west. There have been dinosaur fossils found in those areas and that is how they thing the legend began. Just like rhino skeltons were the basis of unicorn myths. Whales or dolphins the basis of mermaid myths.

[hsmom2011]

n/m

[swellmomma]

Nova is has lots of interesting shows on Dinosaurs. Right now they have a 4 part series on Australia that covers different time periods. You can watch it on-line at PBS.org.

 

FYI - my sister has parrots and nothing looks more like a baby dinosaur than a baby parrot.

 

I saw or read something that they think the dragon legends came from people traveling along the silk routes between China and the west. There have been dinosaur fossils found in those areas and that is how they thing the legend began. Just like rhino skeltons were the basis of unicorn myths. Whales or dolphins the basis of mermaid myths.

 

 

I had always heard that the narwhal tusk was the basis of unicorn myths. I had not heard of rhino skeletons being so. That's interesting, something new to look into for fun :)

[Melissa in Australia]

One of my children , at around age 8 told me that the last remnants of dinosaurs were made extinct by the Romans fighting them in arenas. He came up with this idea when he learned that lions became extended in North Africa because they were all sent to the arenas. Another son told me that the last ones were wiped out by over zealous knights during the early middle ages. I was told when I was a child that the dinosaurs never made it into the ark, and that was why there were wiped out, and also why there are large deposits of their bones in some areas.

[Melissa in Australia]

Regarding dragons, there are still dragon lizards around. Some of them can grow huge. A komodo dragon can grow up to 3 meters long, and have been known to eat children.

[daniela_r]

As everyone else has said, some species of dinosaurs didn't die, depending on your definition of "dinosaur." If we're talking about the kind that could be mistaken for a dragon (large, scary, toothy) there's nothing to say they couldn't have survived, but we know they didn't. Not in the people riding around on dinosaurs sort of way some Christians talk about. If every culture that has a rich history of dragon mythology had actually co-existed with dinosaurs, we'd have found some kind of archaeological evidence. We'd find dinosaur bones with knife and scraper marks on them, and bones turned into new tools. We'd find remnants of items with dinosaur skin leather. We'd find humans with dinosaur tooth marks in their bones. And we'd find human bones and dinosaur bones together. We've never, not once, found a single instance of any of these things. And you can be sure that if dinosaurs and humans had lived at the same time, they would have killed each other for food.

 

Mergath, thanks so much for your response. I think you may be the only person who actually answered my question;) Yes, I was talking about "things that looked like a large lizard and could start a legend of dragons". And, so now I'm wondering if I'm convinced by your explanation. I'm wondering if other species of animals alive today that are largish, and intimidating, had instead gone extinct only a few thousand years ago, would we have archeological evidence that they existed at the same time as humans? Have archeologists found rhino bones with knife marks on them, or turned into tools? Have they found humans fossils with crocodile teeth marks on their bones? Have they found hippo and human bones buried together? Anyway, thanks for giving me some new questions to wonder about:)

[NotSoObvious]

 

 

Mergath, thanks so much for your response. I think you may be the only person who actually answered my question;) Yes, I was talking about "things that looked like a large lizard and could start a legend of dragons". And, so now I'm wondering if I'm convinced by your explanation. I'm wondering if other species of animals alive today that are largish, and intimidating, had instead gone extinct only a few thousand years ago, would we have archeological evidence that they existed at the same time as humans? Have archeologists found rhino bones with knife marks on them, or turned into tools? Have they found humans fossils with crocodile teeth marks on their bones? Have they found hippo and human bones buried together? Anyway, thanks for giving me some new questions to wonder about:)

 

Like a mammoth?

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/woolly-mammoth-siberia-preserved-apparently-butchered-humans/t/story?id=16079905

 

 

[nmoira]

 

 

Like a mammoth?

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/woolly-mammoth-siberia-preserved-apparently-butchered-humans/t/story?id=16079905

 

There were still living mammoths in Siberia until about the time of Hammurabi. That blows my mind a bit.

[beaners]

 

Mergath, thanks so much for your response. I think you may be the only person who actually answered my question;) Yes, I was talking about "things that looked like a large lizard and could start a legend of dragons". And, so now I'm wondering if I'm convinced by your explanation. I'm wondering if other species of animals alive today that are largish, and intimidating, had instead gone extinct only a few thousand years ago, would we have archeological evidence that they existed at the same time as humans? Have archeologists found rhino bones with knife marks on them, or turned into tools? Have they found humans fossils with crocodile teeth marks on their bones? Have they found hippo and human bones buried together? Anyway, thanks for giving me some new questions to wonder about:)

 

Ivory. :) Here is the first site that popped up in a search, but there are still a lot of ivory artifacts out there today.

 

http://archaeology.about.com/od/upperpaleolithic/ss/Yana-RHS-Carved-Bone-and-Ivory.htm

[Mergath]

 

Mergath, thanks so much for your response. I think you may be the only person who actually answered my question;) Yes, I was talking about "things that looked like a large lizard and could start a legend of dragons". And, so now I'm wondering if I'm convinced by your explanation. I'm wondering if other species of animals alive today that are largish, and intimidating, had instead gone extinct only a few thousand years ago, would we have archeological evidence that they existed at the same time as humans? Have archeologists found rhino bones with knife marks on them, or turned into tools? Have they found humans fossils with crocodile teeth marks on their bones? Have they found hippo and human bones buried together? Anyway, thanks for giving me some new questions to wonder about:)

 

 

In a word, yes. Archaeologists have found extensive artifacts that clearly show the relationships between human cultures and the animals with which they coexisted. If you google "animal bone artifacts" you'll get far more information than you could ever read.

 

In fact, there's even an entire field that studies these kinds of things:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooarchaeology

[Erin]

There were still living mammoths in Siberia until about the time of Hammurabi. That blows my mind a bit.

Mine too! That was pretty recent!

[Jennifer3141]

There were still living mammoths in Siberia until about the time of Hammurabi. That blows my mind a bit.

 

Me too! I find the field of zooarchaelogy fascinating. And so do my kids so we end up going back to it every 6 months or so when something new is discovered.

[Mrs Mungo]

You might find this link helpful:

 

http://www.oldearth.org/

[Parrothead]

And don't forget the cockroach. It survived the chicxulub asteroid too.

 

The big dinosaurs didn't survive because of the lack of food. Those that did not die at impact died of starvation. You've probably heard of nuclear winter, yes? Imagine a nuclear winter caused by 100 million megaton force. Then came the acid rain. Only the toughest of the tough survived.

[Laura Corin]

A side-note: some people think that mammoth skulls discovered by early peoples might be the origin of cyclops myths.

Laura

[Wildcat]

A side-note: some people think that mammoth skulls discovered by early peoples might be the origin of cyclops myths.

 

Laura

 

I am enjoying this thread and now have a list of things to go off and read/watch. I had read about the narwhal/unicorn link, but this is the first I have heard of mammoth/cyclops. That is really neat!

[ravinlunachick]

A side-note: some people think that mammoth skulls discovered by early peoples might be the origin of cyclops myths.

 

Laura

 

 

I've also heard that those myths were strengthened by the fact that a common remedy for nausea and vomiting during pregnancy was hellebore. False hellebore can cause Cyclopia (warning: disturbing image at the wiki site!). :( For those who don't want to click,

 

Cyclopia (also cyclocephaly or synophthalmia) is a rare form of holoprosencephaly and is a congenital disorder (birth defect) characterized by the failure of the embryonic prosencephalonto properly divide the orbits of the eye into two cavities. Its incidence is 1 in 16,000 in born animals, and 1 in 250 in embryos, one in 2,500 that end in miscarriage.^[1]

Presentation

Typically, the face is either missing or replaced with a non-functioning nose in the form of a proboscis. Such a proboscis generally appears above the central eye, or on the back, and is characteristic of a form of cyclopia called rhinencephaly or rhinocephaly.^[2] Most such embryos are either naturally aborted or are stillborn upon delivery.

Although cyclopia is rare, several cyclopic human babies are preserved in medical museums (e.g. The Vrolik Museum, Amsterdam).^[3]

Some extreme cases of cyclopia have been documented in inbred farm animals (horses, sheep, pigs, and sometimes chickens). In such cases, the nose and mouth fail to form, or the nose grows from the roof of the mouth obstructing airflow, resulting in suffocation shortly after birth