http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=1442
Another “Dragon” Discovered
| by | Eric Lyons, M.Min. |
Some people just don’t get the connection—between dinosaurs and dragons, that is. So much of the world, and sadly many Christians, have become so entranced with the vast ages of evolutionary time, that few consider the clear connection between human history and the fossil record.
For millennia, people have told stories of seeing and interacting with large reptilian creatures with elongated bodies, serpentine necks, horned or crested heads, sharp teeth, lengthy tails, and stout bodies, with or without membranous wings. These stories, called dragon legends, “have been with humanity since the dawn of recorded history” (“The Spread...,” 1981, 89:103), and are, as famed 20th-century evolutionist Carl Sagan admitted, “a worldwide phenomenon” (1977, p. 150, emp. added).
Thousands of years prior to the 19th century A.D. (when humans began locating, excavating, and reassembling dinosaur fossils, and when the term “dinosaur” was actually coined), humans had been describing dinosaurs; only they referred to them as “dragons” (see Lyons, 2007). Interestingly, when a nearly complete dinosaur skull was excavated in South Dakota in 2003, the long, knobby skull appeared so similar to ancient descriptions and paintings of certain “legendary” dragons, the dinosaur actually was named Dracorex, meaning “dragon king” (see Bakker, et al., 2006).
The news agency Reuters has now reported that paleontologists in Poland have unearthed the fossilized remains of another dinosaur. The animal is believed to have been over 16 feet long with two-inch teeth. Dr. Tomasz Sulej of the Polish Science Academy stated: “This is a completely new type of dinosaur” (Baczynska, 2008). It is so new to science, in fact, that a scientific name has yet to be given to the animal. In the meantime, however, scientists have given the animal a working name: “Dragon” (Baczynska, 2008).
In the past five years, fossils from two different dinosaurs have been excavated. Researchers so readily recognize the similarities between these two dinosaurs and dragons that they have given one the scientific name Dracorex (“dragon king”), and the other the working name Dragon. When will evolutionary scientists take the next logical step and ask from whence came descriptions of dragons? If humans never lived with dinosaurs, historical descriptions of dragons, many of which sound just like dinosaurs, should not exist (cf. Job 41). But they do exist, and have for millennia. In truth, dragon legends, or should we call them “dinosaur descriptions,” are exactly what one would expect to find if humans and dinosaurs once cohabited the Earth, just as Scripture teaches (Genesis 1:24-28; Exodus 20:11).
REFERENCES
Baczynska, Gabriela (2008), “Ancestor of T-Rex Dinosaur Unearthed in Poland,” Reuters, [On-line], URL: http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL148207720080802?sp=true.
Lyons, Eric (2007), “Historical Support for the Coexistence of Dinosaurs and Humans—Parts I & II,” Reason & Revelation, 27:65-71,73-79, September-October.
Sagan, Carl (1977), The Dragons of Eden (New York: Random House).
“The Spread of Dragon Myths” (1981), Science Digest, 89:103, May.