There was a group of students, including a Muslim student who was proselytized against their will by a schoolteacher, who gives out scores of young earth extremism crap to his students at a public school in Kearny, New Jersey. One of the statements he spewed out to his victims is that there were dinosaurs on board the ark. Although what he did was wrong in imposing Christianity on the students against their will, in one way, he's right. Birds, which are modern dinosaurs, are in fact the only dinosaurs that were on board the ark Noah built to save himself, his family, and the animals from the Flood. No other dinosaur did all this. However creationists would like to make you think that dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Stegosaurus were on board the ark despite finding no traces of human and dinosaur remains in both the fossil and historical records.
YE Extremist, Jonathan Sarfati, in this article would rather have his hapless victims believe this stupid lie he and other creationists made up while writing the article, How did dinosaurs grow so big and how did Noah fit them on the ark? (The real answer is: 1. No one knows for sure why did they, in many cases, grow so big. And 2. There no way Noah can fit dinosaurs like T.rex, Velociraptor, and Apatosaurus into the ark along with all other types of living and extinct animals even if they were all baby size and only less than 50 different kinds.) where he totally ignores the art of pack-hunting among many predators and claims that dinosaurs like Stegosaurus and Triceratops were on board along with bears, tigers, koalas, kangaroos, snakes, mammoths, lions, squirrels, and all other living and extinct animals. Hands down, what he claims about "growth spurts" is entirely imagined up simply for poops and giggles.
He begins this article by saying that only a few dinosaurs were very large and the most famous while most were a lot smaller. He claims that on the average, all known dinosaurs were about the size of a sheep, which is all a blatant lie entirely made up out of ignorance of the fact that dinosaurs came in all sorts of shapes and sizes, ranging from a size of a cat, a turkey, a dump truck, a garbage truck, and a two story building, to about a whopping size of a 6 story building. No dinosaur were in fact only about the size of sheep or ponies on average. This concept is entirely made up by creationists as an attempt to try to fit them all along with all other living and extinct animals into a 450x75x45 ark, which it cannot be done.
Then Sarfati claims that until recently, it is thought that dinosaurs have growth rates of similar to that of reptiles who continuously grow all their lives while mammals only grow until they reach adulthood. He show 2 examples taken from the Walking With Dinosaurs series of how dinosaurs like Diplodocus (Diplodocus hallorum) grew to the length of 150ft and pliosaurs like Liopleurodon grew to live to be about 100 years old. However, he says rhetorically that it couldn't explain everything since there's no way can a gecko and a skink, for example, will grow to be as big as a Brachiosaurus. Of course not! No lizard is related to dinosaurs and vice versa.
Next, Sarfati gave some examples of research done by Paleontologist, Gregory Erickson of the Florida State University, who, along other researchers, studied the growth rate in various dinosaur bones and find that dinosaurs had an s-shaped sigmoidal pattern, showing that they went through “growth spurts” during their sub-adult years. Thus, instead of reptiles, the growth rate in dinosaurs are very similar to that of bird and mammals.
But what does it have to do with the myth about non-avian dinosaurs being on the ark? Here, Sarfati, while being ignorantly blind to the fact that some giant dinosaurs actually grew from hatchling to an adult only in a matter of months, tries to prove his case by asserting that since dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus can grow from hatchling to adult in a matter of 10-20 years, then Noah will find it not a problem of fitting “sheep size” dinosaurs into the ark with illogical, laughable results.
In Noah's Ark cargo-not a problem section, Sarfati states,
"Bibliosceptics frequently mock the account of Noah and the Ark by asking, ‘How could Noah round up all the huge dinosaurs?’ Of course, this is a leading question—Noah didn’t have to round up anything, because God sent the animals to him (Genesis 6:20)."
And yet, he still can't explain how did God brought all the Australian animals to the Middle East (Australia is a continent surrounded by water.), how did He brought them back afterwards, and above all, how come we are finding no traces of Australian animals both living and extinct outside of Australia without resorting to empty goddidit miraculous explanations.
He went on and explain that God told Noah to bring up 7 pairs of animals that are fit for sacrifices and one pair of animals unfit for sacrifices and claims that dinosaurs must have been alive then, because so many of them were fossilized in the flood, which the actual fossil record clearly debunks.
Sarfati went on and claim stupidly that God must have put baby dinosaurs on board because *waving two fingers* He knew *waving two fingers* that they will undergo growth spurts as soon as they left the ark, thus it is rash to claim that the so-called “irrefutable” Bible is wrong based on current data. Sorry, Sarfati! You are in fact defying the irrefutable Bible itself when it clearly states that Noah, at God's command, was to take up only adult size animals of all types, species in all, on board and Sarfati, here, is using his imagination and pretends that Noah took only basic baby and teenage dinosaurs on board since that would solved many problems involving care, feeding, and space, which it won't. Not if the ark also has countless thousands of other animals living and extinct it doesn't. This is just another example of creationists distorting the Bible for their own ends.
Then, after the year long fabled global Flood, the dinosaurs, according to Sarfati, with the snap of God's fingers, will leave the ark and start their growth spurts at once. That way, they could quickly outgrow predators that will eventually eat them all after they either starve to death due to lack of plants or be poisoned to death by drinking the acidic water filled with rotting bodies of fresh and saltwater animals that were all killed by the Flood that destroyed their watery homes by mixing freshwater with saltwater together. Then the predators would inevitably face starvation themselves. In all, a total joke worth a billion laughs!
Even if they outgrow predators, predators would still attack them anyway - pack hunting style! Animals like wolves and lions would engage in pack hunting to bring down elephants and deer that are twice their own sizes. Doesn't Sarfati ever know about this? Especially when he and his cronies talk about and describe such modern animals to their followers? Apparently not. Otherwise they'll bring up pack-hunting among predators only when it suits them. One must wonder where do creationists get those idiotic nonsenses from? The answer: It's all in their empty little heads! One look at the scientific papers and their imaginations kick in. Anything to inspire them to make up fantasy tales and fit them into their truthless dogma.
This next falsehood Sarfati proposes greatly contradicts the commandments God make to Noah to take up with him into the ark all animal life, not just certain kinds,
"And the tyrannosaurid study suggests that a T. rex pair was not required. Rather, another pair, not affected by gigantism, could have represented this created kind. This applies to all the dinosaurs. Diplodocus and Apatosaurus have virtually identical skulls (see photos, above right), so it’s possible that the former was a very long and slender variant and the latter, a shorter, but much more massive, variety. And this diplodocid kind included the huge Seismosaurus, as mentioned above."
If that's the case, it means Noah only took up Appalachiosaurus and Magyarosaurus and leave out Tyrannosaurus Rex and Seismosaurus to shriek helplessly as the Floodwaters rush in to overcome them. All entirely made up by Sarfati while being in complete denial of the fact that when God says for Noah to take up “every kind of bird, and every kind of animal, and every kind of small animal that scurries along the ground” into the ark, He means it! Noah is to take up with him into the ark “every kind of bird, and every kind of animal, and every kind of small animal that scurries along the ground” in to ark! Not just some, but all fully adult animal life God brings to Noah to be kept alive – all nine million of them!
"In all, although there are an estimated 668 dinosaur ‘species’, it’s more likely that there were only about 55 created kinds with lots of varieties within these kinds."
This is evident that creationists like Sarfati made up this concept entirely of only 55 main “created kinds” of sheep size baby and teenage dinosaurs in an effort to fit them all along with all other basic animals living and extinct into Noah's ark without over crowding them (which it cannot be done, even with only just 50 or less main dinosaur kinds), while all of their varieties within perished in the Flood, leaving the main 55 inside the ark to live in the Post-Flood world (If they are lucky enough to survive the smelly, disease infested conditions inside the ark.) and rapidly evolve into many varieties (Rapid evolution, young earth style!) just like they've done in the Pre-Flood era since Creation – if they are ever lucky to survive the Post-Flood extremes at all!
Later Sarfati made a feedback article entitled, Dinosaur growth rates: Problem or solution for creationists? in which Sarfati tries to respond to a writer by the abbreviated name of DF coming from USA who wrote this following question:
"I was recently reading through the PBS site the Shape of Life series, under Bones, Brawn and Brian, and found a section on it that was talking about the dinosaurs. It said that dinosaurs, unlike other reptiles, they had a fairly rapid rate of growth, for example the Apatasurus could grow to full size in 10 to 12 years. I was wondering if this was something that is contrary to normal Creationist belief. I found nothing about it on your site, if there is I would like to be directed to it."
(note his misspelling of Apatosaurus)
To respond to this, Sarfati in his stupid dinosaur talk refers to recent studies made by various Paleontologists which reveals that dinosaurs experienced “growth spurts” by the time they reach their sub-adult years. He says that this concept of fast growing dinosaurs doesn't contradict creation beliefs (or does it?) or for that matter their worship of Genesis as their god (I would like to believe that creationists worship the Book of Genesis chapters 1-11 as their god the same way the Pharisees worshiped the Law as their God during Jesus' day.). He says,
"We should be careful to distinguish between teachings to hold firm (God’s Word) and those which we should ‘hold loosely’ (i.e. scientific theories that seem to support a Biblical framework)-…."
In other words, "we must not let any scientific truth based on valid evidence destroy our blissful ignorance." That is what creationists like Sarfati really meant when he said that.
He claims the concept of dinosaurs growing continuously until they died was not a creationist invention but it was also the view of the Walking With Dinosaurs series where Sarfati says that the show claims that Liopleurodon's (a pliosaur, not a dinosaur) 150 ton size indicates that the pliosaur must have been over 100 years old. Sorry, Sarfati! That's not the actual length, size and weight of the pliosaur. The actual length of the Pliosaur is about 23-33 feet long and weighed as much as 20 tons (Citations here.). Even WWD got it wrong on the size and weight of the pliosaur, not just Sarfati.
Next, Sarfati claims the show says that Seismosaurus is believed by many scientists to be an elderly Diplodocus, which is perhaps so since Diplodocus shared the same features Seismosaurus has. At a meeting in 2004, a case was made for Seismosaurus to be renamed D. hallorum, arguing that many of the distinctive features of Seismosaurus are either pathological or as a result of misplacement of the vertebrae.
He then gave out some information taken from the Encyclopedia Britannica CD (What year is the version of the CD is not revealed.) about the differences between the growth rates of reptiles and the growth rates of mammals and then says that the new kind of information about the growth spurts, which has in fact been around even before the WWD series, is a help to creation, because in Sarfati's words,
“…the original paper shows that dinosaurs had a type of adolescent growth spurt—the pattern is called sigmoidal or s–shaped (Nature 412 (6845):405–408, 429–433, 26 July 2001).”
Dinosaurs do have such a thing. However, and this is where Sarfati gets stupid, Sarfati claims stupidly that it means God brought the baby dinosaurs into the ark because *waving two fingers again* He knew *waving two fingers again* that they will experience growth spurt as soon as they left the ark after the Flood is over. To Sarfati, It would solve problems concerning care, space, and feeding (it won't really) and the growth spurt could also mean they could quickly outgrow predators – A joke worth a billion laughs!
As mentioned before Even if they did outgrow predators, predators would still attack them anyway - pack hunting style! Plus the Bible says that God commanded Noah to take up into the ark 2 and 7 of every kind of adult size animals, not inexperience babies. Even if there were babies on board the ark, there will still be problems involving wastes, space, ventilation, disease, and other problems associated with animal care.
Both articles never answered the question of how did dinosaurs in many cases get to be so big, while others maintain their small sizes. What they really do is show to the reader just how stupid and comical Sarfati's dinosaur claim truly is.
