G1 Conference Session 1: Brian Thomas "Dinosaurs and the Bible"

Hello and welcome to the best session at the G1 conference. It's the dinosaur session. I hope you guys are ready for this. I am a dinosaur scientist. And so obviously it's my favorite topic and I talk about dinosaurs.

They're just so interesting and fascinating and I love to put the pieces of the puzzle together about how dinosaurs Instead of refuting the Bible actually confirm the Bible in three different ways. So welcome to the Institute for creation research here in Dallas.

I'm here at the The Discovery Center for science and Earth history and boy, we've got a beautiful stage and beautiful facilities here and We want you to come visit so whenever you're in town in Dallas come and see the Discovery Center.

You can walk through a room of Noah's Ark. You could see diorama of the life of Christ. You've got dinosaurs on display 360 videos you can go into Experience the Ice Age, you know, we have a lot a lot going on here.

And we have we have dinosaurs going on today. So so I've got three questions that we're gonna answer and I'm gonna let science do the answering for us and the first question is going to be Where did they come from the way into the question?

Where did they come from? Well, I was taught that they came from evolution over millions of years and that's where they came from. But here I am at the outside the the Field Museum in Chicago leaning on this.

Brachiosaur.

Leg, ah, these things were immense just Tremendous size stature structure. How do you how do you? Build. Let's say you're gonna build a building and you want it to walk around you want to build a. You know, maybe the Star Wars ad at Walker, you know something like that where it's a giant thing and it walks around and it's heavy.

I mean, how do you do this? And if you look at the details of the construction of these animals bodies We start to come up with good answers as to where did they come from? They come from natural processes or.

Does their construction demand? Supernatural processes. I came to believe the latter especially after I saw this placard this sign on display at the Field Museum in Chicago and It says sauropods sauropods, you know, that's the dinosaurs with the four legs.

Long necks four legs that go down long necks long tails. Were sauropods were engineered they were engineered. Well last I checked anything that's engineered. Was engineered by an engineer. It's like a painting was painted by a painter.

I tell that's just it's just intuitive and it's valid. And so there's every reason to think that hey if these things were engineered then an actual engineer must have done that engineering. And not natural processes and specifically we're going to zoom in on this.

Here it says strong pillar like legs. You got to have that.

A.

Light hollowed out vertebrae. That's the neck bones. I'll show you a picture of that in a second that that Strengthens this the backbone that way sauropods were specially adapted. I would say specially crafted.

Why not say say what we're looking at to grow so large. They have to have all these specializations and features in place all at once in order to do what they did. Where do they come from? Well here I am at the Carnegie.

Sorry Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and there's there's Diplodocus behind me and you could see all those neck vertebrae and raised ridges hollowed out spaces. Super lightweight weight-saving features.

Had to have it if these were block. Shaped heavy dense bones like most other dinosaurs bones were then I mean his his neck would be too heavy. If his head was big and had a big brain. He his head would be too heavy and he you know.

He he'd lie his head on the ground and just I guess eat worms until he died or something. I mean, you've got to have all these features in place for him to do what he did or she. Walking around and it's standing in one place could eat for an hour.

It just off of one or two trees just by moving that neck not spending a lot of energy. But gaining a lot of energy from the way that it lived its life and ate well weight-saving neck features. Raised ridges at exactly the point where it needed at structural integrity.

So engineers marvel at how excellent these things were crafted and I'm looking also here. I'm taking a picture Of a few colleagues of mine working on one of the biggest Triceratops skulls. Ever found and they found it in let's see where they this is in Texas.

But they they shipped it from where they found it in Wyoming. Lance formation, so 2 ,000 pounds just the head. I mean, how do you anchor a 2 ,000 pound head to a body and have that head not just fall off?

I mean you need a solid anchor. Have you ever? Thought about what it takes to hitch a 2 ,000 pound trailer to a car. I mean you have to have a sturdy. Well, it's a trailer hitch and it's got a ball and it swivels on the ball on the trailer.

Same thing with Triceratops heads and here on display at this. At this Museum in Texas, it shows the ball, you know on the. On the that anchors the Triceratops head to its body. There's the ball called a condyle and then there's the socket you can see it.

Actually, I'm gonna see if I can point to it here here's the socket here and it fits it fits right on the surface of this ball and so this connects to the vertebrae this connects to the head and They connect together and that way these creatures could actually Spar with one another.

I mean they could actually take their horns and ram them into one another. We know because.

Of.

Holes in the frill the big frill the big head crest. And the hole is just the shape of a. One of these horns anyways, so that's a lot of mass and it's it needs a it needs a tight junction. Can you imagine this 2 ,000 pound head connected to the body with a sauropod vertebrae, you know, those lightweight vertebrae.

Oh, it just wouldn't work at all. So we have exactly the right construction. For what each of these creatures bodies needed and Triceratops was like a walking tank. And everything about it was was just what an engineer would have done.

And so I think this fits what we see here in Genesis 125 and God made the beasts of the earth. Triceratops included. Brachiosaurus included Diplodocus included God made not nature made. Well, so some people say, you know maybe.

Maybe God made it through natural processes. Okay, maybe I mean he could right he could use evolution I guess in theory. But the problem with that is he said that he didn't. So are you gonna go with what he said?

Are you gonna believe his word and I've come around to thinking? Yeah, I want to believe his word just like the Lord Jesus did the Lord Jesus took. I mean he referred to Adam. He referred to Enoch. He referred to Noah.

And to Moses as though these were real people who experienced the things that Genesis says they lived through. Jesus thought that way. Also, and so who am I to know more than the Lord Jesus the creator and sustainer of the universe?

So I'm gonna take his word for it. And the more science I see the the construction the design. Where do they come from? Clever design says they came from creation not from evolution if evolution explains it.

Then why don't we see you know? Transitioning fossils that go from one form of dinosaur into another form or for that matter. Transitioning fossils that show reptile morphing into a dinosaur. It's either a dinosaur or it's the other reptile.

It's a Triceratops or it's not a Triceratops or Ceratopsian anyways lots of varieties of Ceratopsians some of them had lots of little horns on their frill some had no horns on their frill but all of them have the basic tank-shaped body body plan and Some kind of frill and so they're all Ceratopsians and God created them as their topians to multiply and fill the earth the pre flood earth.

So I think these fossils Came from. Well the creatures came from clever design, but how did the fossils get here? So that's kind of our next our next question when did they live and We've got two paradigms.

The one I grew up believing the paradigm. I grew up believing says that these these lived. Something like 200 and plus million years ago, and they all died out 66 or so million years ago. Millions of years and I believe that because that's all I had been taught but.

Then I started studying a particular feature about dinosaur bones and that is carbon -14. So carbon -14 as I explained in the fossil session that we had a bit ago. It has a maximum shelf life of a hundred thousand carbon years.

Those are theoretical years. That's in theory the longest you can get carbon -14 to last before all of it turns into Nitrogen, so if we find any carbon -14 in a dinosaur bone.

And.

It can't it's in the dinosaur bone. Not not stuck to the surface of it later on or anything like that. But actually in part of the bone itself if we find that then it's got to be fewer than a hundred thousand years and so.

We got two paradigms one is the millions of years paradigm and the other is the flood paradigm. And in this flood model We have creation In Genesis 1 and then we've got the flood Genesis 6, 7, 8, 9 and that flood occurred according to Genesis 1656 years after creation.

And.

The whole world was flooded and. That's thousands of years ago.

So.

Thousands of years ago would fit the thousands of years limit that radiocarbon would bring were we to find it in Dinosaurs so several years ago back before I had all this gray I was working here at the Institute and there I am trying to get at the interior of a hadrosaur vertebra so I could scrape away some of the The bone material and send it off to a radiocarbon dating laboratory.

Which we did and guess what they found. Radiocarbon we didn't tell them, you know necessarily. That this was a dinosaur bone because they would just send it back and say well, this is ridiculous. We're not gonna Do this this is obviously millions of years old.

But you see that's circular reasoning dinosaurs are millions of years old because we think they're million years of years old. Why not actually look at the data and so we collect data here. It's part of what we do as scientists and we found radiocarbon as though this is fewer than a hundred thousand Thousand years old.

So the flood is fewer than a hundred thousand years old. I think that fits what we found there here is on the right a Triceratops skull on display at the Bozeman. What's that Museum in Bozeman? The Museum of the Rockies I think mor.

And then on the left you see a Triceratops horn core Fossil that we acquired here at the Institute. And so I broke the thing super hard to break. I mean this The bone and the structure of this bone is super tough even so many thousands of years after the flood.

When this was deposited I have now become convinced but why why did I break up this beautiful fossil? Well I want to get I want to get at the bone that's in the middle of it. You know, I don't want the the contaminated parts on the outside of the bone.

Although the process of carbon dating already removes contaminants by dissolving it all in acid but Nevertheless, I want to give it the best shot I can and so I reached into the interior of this bone sent it off to Carbon dating lab and we got radiocarbon measurable amounts of radiocarbon as though it's thousands not millions of years old.

We we just kept doing this. We're like really What about some of the now this this bone here is it's got it's not very mineralized at all came from the Hell Creek Formation so there the minerals didn't replace the bone.

This is actual Bone, it looks like it's sort of been baked or something, but it's got the little tiny port. It's got the structure of bone these however, this is stegosaurus. This is Jurassic.

So.

It's in layers that are below the Cretaceous layers. So they were deposited earlier than the Cretaceous layers. But these are highly Mineralized so when you pick up one of these bones, it's it's it is rock in the shape of a bone or Mostly rock or maybe it's just partly rock in the shape of bone so we got a sample from from the Carnegie Museum and we sent it off for radiocarbon dating and we got radiocarbon in a Stegosaurus bone.

What's it doing there it I thought it was completely mineralized. I thought that the minerals replaced the original bone turns out there's some original bone left. There's some original carbon left and there's some very young looking Radiocarbon still left in there and we've collected I'd say 50 samples from fossils might me and my colleagues.

Around the nation and we found radiocarbon in all of these so. This is actually consistent with what secular geologists have. Geologists and geoscientists have found they found radiocarbon in coal. Some of this coal has got you know ages of like 300 300 million years or diamonds you see the picture of diamonds there diamonds are supposed to be a billion years old with a B and.

And yet there's radiocarbon in coal and there's radiocarbon in diamonds and they publish these results in the scientific Technical literature, but somehow they never make it into the classroom. They never make it into the textbooks.

But I think they should because radiocarbon is too young to be a billion years old. It's too young to be 300 million years old. It's too young to be 65 million years old. It's too young to be 100 ,000 years old these things all.

Fossils.

Earth materials they all look young according to their radiocarbon content. So when did they die when so first the first question was, you know, how'd they get here? Well God made them I'll tell you that's how you get such excellent construction.

Well, when were they around? Well, the Bible gives us a chronology or a series of time stamps you go from a from Adam to Abraham. That's about 2 ,000 years from the first Adam to the last Adam. Sorry from Abraham to the last Adam, that's the Lord Jesus another 2 ,000 and from the Lord Jesus to today a third 2 ,000 year so it's about 6 ,000 years old the whole world.

Flood about 4 ,400 years ago. That's the Bible's chronology. If you add up all the dates and ages that's the chronology that you get so 4 ,400 years ago. That's how old these fossils are 4 ,400 years.

Well the thousands of years picture that the Bible gives matches what we see in the radiocarbon content of Dinosaur fossils and you know this fits also with what the Lord Jesus himself said for example in Mark 10 6 saying.

But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. Jesus talking to the Pharisees about the origin of marriage and he's saying He's quoting Made them male and female that's a quote from Genesis chapter 1 as though it's literal and historical and that God gets the credit.

For.

Speaking them into existence. When did he do that? Well Billions of years after the Big Bang beginning, right? No, not at all from the very beginning of creation at the creation week. God made Adam and Eve male and female in marriage right there in the beginning.

Not billions of years after the beginning. So the Lord Jesus treated Genesis straightforwardly and I used to not but the more I looked at how much the science supports this recent creation and Recent flood view the more I became convinced that you know, I think Jesus was on to something here.

I think I think the Bible deserves a little bit more of my respect and That started to change my life and that's why I do what I do today here at the Institute. So when did they live. Thousands of years ago not millions and that means they would have gone on board Noah's Ark.

Unless they survived, you know like fishes did outside the Ark. You know smaller versions of the dinosaurs might have gone on Noah's Ark. How much how much of that space would have been taken up? Probably about a third no more than 45 of the space on the Ark would have been taken up by all the animals.

Now he wouldn't have put fishes on the Ark we're talking about land animals and sky animals, so.

Birds.

Pterosaurs.

A lot of them have gone extinct since the flood but they were on board the Ark and they survived through the flood on board this this Ark according to what scripture teaches and. So this leads us to our next question when did they die.

When did they die. They're no longer around. I mean They're not in my backyard. And so when did they die?

Well.

A bunch of them would have died in Noah's flood and that's where we get the fossils of Dinosaurs to prove to us that they really did exist, you know but I got to make that point because I talked to my bike mechanic at the bike shop the other day and I was like He was like what do you do for a living?

Oh, I'm a dinosaur scientist, but I believe the Bible and so he's like. Well, that's weird. You know, I talked to some Christians just the other day. He said and they were like they were trying to convince me that dinosaurs weren't real and that was their way of dealing with Dinosaurs was to just pretend like they're all a fabrication and I just think that's so irresponsible.

Of course, they were real but they weren't really Deposited Millions of years ago. They didn't really evolve they were created and they were deposited thousands of years ago in Noah's flood. That's why you get fossils at all and fossils of dinosaurs are found on every continent of the globe including Antarctica.

It's a global phenomenon this fossilization and these dinosaur fossils are global. So it takes a global cause to produce a global effect. Hey. The Bible says that there was a global flood maybe that's the cause.

When did they die. Some of them died in that flood 4 ,400 or so years ago. But some survived on the ark maybe and lived for some time after the flood. What what would we expect to find if the dinosaurs and other extinct? reptiles.

Survived for a while after the flood. Well, we wouldn't find fossils because the fossils were formed during the flood and shortly after the flood. So you can't look in fossils. That's that's flood time.

You know, that's the flood year and maybe some fossils a little bit after the flood year. But if if these creatures persisted into our past you wouldn't find them because creatures don't form fossils today.

They just they just don't so but you might find them in human artifacts. So we have on display here at the Discovery Center replicas of some of these artifacts that our ancestors left for us to inspect in here we have an replica of a Column at top Rome in Cambodia.

It's a medieval in a European age system. It's medieval. But anyway, it's really old. Thousands of years old this this this stone carved column and looking closely. We've got this weird guy with a with a lion face and we've got Real live creep above it.

You've got you know, like a Parrot and then there's a bull and then there's this one right here. So let me let's just zoom into that one. And here's the real one in there's a photo of the real one in Cambodia and it's got these plates on its back and boy it looks suspiciously like dinosaurs that we might know from fossils only and so how did these ancients know what this creature looked like and we're able to carve it with a reasonable amount of Fidelity to the original form.

I mean no artist is perfect. So you've got to expect these guys to To get some of the anatomy a little bit off just like you do when you draw things. And I do it I do. Anyway, maybe maybe you're like an expert illustrator, but these guys were.

Maybe not that anyway, so there's that that's Cambodia. What about Egypt so we've got these long-necked creatures and On this really ancient Narmer palette the Narmer palette that shows Long-necked creatures actually those look like these long-necked creatures on a little tiny cylinder seal the from Uruk which is in modern-day Iraq and this.

This this is also thousands. Let's say 3 ,000 BC something like that. That's the secular age. At least at least several millennia old and and those I mean long tail even long neck necks intertwined looks like what I saw when I went to Carlisle Cathedral, in fact these sauropod look-alikes in a brass grave.

Decoration with tails long tails legs go straight down long necks intertwined. It's been worn off by foot traffic. But but these have like tail spikes and it wasn't until the 1990s when scientists discovered Shunosaurus a sauropod with four tail spikes and this guy has of course four tail spikes.

But but this was carved in the early 1400s whereas this was discovered in the 1900s and so how did they know the exact anatomy unless they saw the thing alive there? At first or second hand at least and then in Europe we have other places in Europe like here in Chateau du Chambord in France, we've got a Platyosaurus look-alike carved in a Castle and then in Barcelona Spain we've got a depiction of st. George slaying the dragon.

Well, where did they get this particular dragon? It's not a dinosaur at least. Yeah, we wouldn't call it a dinosaur. But it exactly resembles a nothosaurus, which is a Triassic marine Semi semi aquatic reptile.

So the the teeth go outside of its mouth. It's got the right size the right body proportions head proportion to I mean it fits exactly what we know from the nothosaurus Fossils and there it is. You can see it today.

On display. Well, it's it's in a government building. So it's not like it's on display, but it's there. And then just a few more examples to help us to answer this question, when did they die they died off, you know after the flood in many places in many cases, so here is a Nile of mosaic and it's in Palestrina.

And it's it's like a little temple. This this was Constructed with little pieces of tile. So it's a mosaic and the artists who did this were alive and constructing it. Just before the Lord Jesus. So we're talking about 100 BC something like that.

Anyway, so they're depicting a scene on the Nile and They're they're looking at this. So there's the natives are restless. And what does this thing? The Greek lettering says crocodylomorph crocodylolepordalis something like it's a crocodile like and it's leopard like so it's mammal like it's reptile.

Like well, we've got fossils of mammal like reptiles including gorgonopsid with these giant Big teeth and you could see the giant big teeth on the on the depiction there. So anyway, the answer is the flood explains these fossils explains but most of them died in the flood so you get this whole stack of pancake layers of rock formed in just one year and.

So this is answers our question and it points to behemoth behemoth. Being like it's got a tail like a cedar. It's a sauropod dinosaur alive and described by Job and so the science fits the scripture. When did they die.

Clashes with dragons from our ancestors says they died thousands not millions of years ago. Clever design supports Genesis one creation carbon decay supports Genesis flood and clashes with dragon supports animals.

Dinosaurs alive after the flood. Just like Job indicates for us. Have a great rest of your session and be encouraged and equipped to know that scripture is Defensible and the God who wrote it is trustworthy himself.

Thanks.