Dinosaurs, part 2

Dinosaurs are known to be large creatures. Indeed, some were huge; in one case, as tall as a five-story building (see In The Beginning by Walt Brown, p. 170). Perhaps it was one of these that God had in mind when he described the behemoth in Job 40.

Other types of dinosaurs were not so big. Once again, according to Walt Brown, some, like the Compsognatus, were closer to the size of a domestic cat. Some were the size of chickens (see In The Beginning, pp. 152 and 170). Of course, still others were all sizes in between. FOX News reported on Saturday, for example, the recent discovery of a brand new type of dinosaur called the "Albertaceratops nesmoi", which is thought to have been 20 feet long.

So how did Noah get these huge creatures on the ark? We can understand how he managed the little chicken- and cat-sized ones; what about the big ones 5-stories tall?

In the first place, Noah's ark was a huge barge-like vessel with more capacity than can be easily imagined. The ark was approximately 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and as tall as a 4-story building. To give you some perspective our auditorium is approximately 75 feet wide, but only 75 feet long and about 3 1/2-stories tall at the peak. To match Noah's ark, we would have to raise the entire roof up to a height of 45 feet, and then we would have to extend the back of the auditorium out another 375 feet, making it approximately 6 times as long as it is now. If you're good at math, you've already calculated all this space to be approximately 1,518,750 cubic feet. As yet another way of making comparisons, that amount of cubic feet represents approximately 46 classroom wings the size of one of our classroom wings (from end to end, including the maintenance rooms) which are attached to the auditorium.

The ark had an incredible capacity for what God wanted it to do; namely, hold the animals for about a year during and after the Flood. In spite of its huge capacity, the ark probably could not have handled a 5-story tall dinosaur, or even very many 3-story ones. So what did Noah do?

The likelihood is that God instructed Noah to take younger, smaller representatives of the various species. rather than the larger adults. Even the 5-story adult dinosaurs start out considerably smaller. (Some dinosaur eggs are pretty big, even a foot long. Still, even when the biggest of the eggs hatched, the young dinosaurs would be significantly smaller than those 5-story adults).

More tomorrow or Friday...