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Scientific classification
Kingdom Information
Domain Eukaryota
Kingdom Animalia
Subkingdom Bilateria
Branch Deuterostomia
Phylum Information
Phylum Chordata
Sub-phylum Vertebrata
Infraphylum Gnathostomata
Class Information
Superclass Tetrapoda
Class Reptilia
Sub-class Diapsida
Infra-class Archosauromorpha
Order Information
Superorder Dinosauria
Population statistics

Dinosaurs (Greek: δεινός, deinos + σαῦρος, sauros) are an extinct superorder of the class Reptilia, and known from recovered remains and tracks found in sedimentary rock worldwide.



The superorder Dinosauria has been divided into two main orders, the division based exclusively on the structure of the pelvic bones.

Order Saurischia

Saurischian dinosaurs are characterized by "lizard hips", i.e. the pubic bone of the pelvis juts forward towards the rib cage. Herbivorous species were almost all quadrupedal. They carried peg-like teeth which cut, rather than chewed, plant material, with the actual grinding of this food aided by gastroliths. Carnivorous species were exclusively bipedal.

  • Infraorder Sauropoda
Species of this infraorder are characterized by long necks and tails, barrel-shaped bodies, and column-like legs. In three families (notably Diplodocidae, Brachiosauridae, and Titanosauroidea) several species were determined to be of extreme size, estimated in excess of 125 feet in length and 100 tons, making them the largest animals to have walked the earth.
  • Infraorder Theropoda

Order Ornithischia

Ornithischian dinosaurs are characterized by "bird hips", i.e. the pubic bone of the pelvis juts towards the rear of the animal. All species were herbivorous; most were quadrupedal. Front teeth were lacking, while a predentary bone was present in the front of the lower jaw. Several species (mainly within Ceratopsia) had a distinctive parrot-like beak.

  • Infraorder Ceratopsia
  • Infraorder Stegosauria
  • Infraorder Ankylosauria
  • Infraorder Ornithopoda


The first published description of a dinosaur occurred years before the word was created. In his Natural History of Oxford-shire Robert Plot, a professor of chemistry at the University of Oxford in 1676, described the lower end of a petrified femur which was too large to be from any known animal in Europe;[2] the femur itself was lost, but the description as well as an accompanying engraving would lead others to determine later that it belonged to the theropod Megalosaurus. In 1824, the British scientist William Buckland published a paper titled "Notice on the Megalosaurus or great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield", the first scientifically-described dinosaur; a second dinosaur (Iguanodon) would be similarly-described the following year by Gideon Mantell, with a third dinosaur (Hylaeosaurus) discovered in Brighton in 1832.

Despite having reptilian characteristics, the size and structure of the remains justified the creation of a new biological category, and in 1842 Richard Owen coined the name "dinosaur" from two Greek words meaning "terrible lizard".[3] The three dinosaurs were reconstructed and displayed at the Crystal Palace in London as part of the Exhibition of 1851. In 1878, several dozen Iguanodon fossils were discovered in the course of mining operations at a coal mine in Bernissart, Belgium. This find suggested that dinosaurs could travel in herds.

U.S. finds

Henry Fairfield Osborn was president of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City from 1908 to 1935.

In July, 1806 Meriwether Lewis and William Clark unsuccessfully tried to retrieve "...the rib of a fish which was Semented within the face of the rock" at the Hell Creek formation, in what is now Yellowstone County, Montana; the ribs were later determined to have come from a terrestrial dinosaur.[4]

In 1858, Hadrosaurus, the so-called "duck-billed dinosaur", was found in a mineral pit in New Jersey. It was put on display at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences in 1868. In 1869, Edward Drinker Cope (1847-1897) had reconstructed a plesiosaur. Othniel Charles Marsh (1831-1899) was able to establish that Cope had put the skull on the wrong end of the skeleton, humiliating Cope, and beginning a long and bitter rivalry derisively-called the "Bone War". While previous skeletons had been discovered by accident, Cope and Marsh went on expeditions to arid parts of the American West. The two found numerous fossils in Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico as they competed to find and name as many species as they could. Their museums worked out the techniques for mounting and displaying them. The feud between Cope and Marsh reached a climax in 1890 when letters containing bitter recriminations were published in The New York Herald. Congress responded by dismissing Marsh and revoking funds for his entire department.

In 1877, Marsh began digging at Como Bluff, Wyoming. This site proved to be the greatest of all paleontological finds. Many Late Jurassic dinosaurs, including Stegosaurus and Brontosaurus (later renamed Apatosaurus) were discovered here. J.B. Hatcher collected dozens of Late Cretaceous horned dinosaurs at Lance Creek in northeastern Wyoming in 1889–1894, including Triceratops.

In 1905, Henry Fairfield Osborn applied the name Tyrannosaurus rex, meaning "“king of the tyrant lizards" to a fossil recently discovered at Hell Creek. This fearsome predator, perhaps 21 feet tall, would capture public imagination. In 1909–1923, 350 tons of dinosaur bones were removed from what is now Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado under the direction of paleontologist Earl Douglass of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

History of dinosaurs

Creation science asserts that the biblical account, that dinosaurs were created on day six of creation[5] approximately 6,000 years ago, along with other land animals, and therefore co-existed with humans, thus debunking the Theory of Evolution and the beliefs of evolutionary scientists about the age and creation of the earth.

Creation science posits that dinosaurs lived in harmony with other animals, (probably including in the Garden of Eden) eating only plants;[6] that pairs of each dinosaur kind were taken onto Noah's Ark during the Great Flood and were preserved from drowning;[7] that many of the fossilized dinosaur bones originated during the mass killing of the Flood;[8] and that possibly some descendants of those dinosaurs taken aboard the Ark are still around today.[9] At least 300 distinct genera of dinosaur have been identified.[10]




Creation science rejects the great impact theory, and find a number of faults in that theory.[13] Despite these critiques, the great impact theory is widely considered by the scientific community to be fact. However, those scientists cannot prove the great impact theory definitively.


Dinosaur-like creatures in history and modern sightings


    • Locals in the Congo have reported a creature they name Mokele-mbembe,[9][15] and from its description it appears to be a small plant-eating dinosaur. The reports have been taken seriously enough that a biologist from the University of Chicago has made several expeditions to find the creature. Another biologist has reported seeing the creature.[9]
  • There are drawings of creatures resembling dinosaurs.
    • The World Book Encyclopedia states that: "The dragons of legend are strangely like actual creatures that have lived in the past. They are much like the great reptiles [dinosaurs] which inhabited the earth long before man is supposed to have appeared on earth." [21] Dragons exist in the folklore of many European and Asian cultures.[22] World Book Encyclopedia says, "In Europe, dragons are traditionally portrayed as ferocious beasts that represent the evils fought by human beings. But in Asia, especially in China and Japan, the animals are generally considered friendly creatures that ensure good luck and wealth."[22]
    • Dragons appear in the flag of Wales, in traditional Chinese New Year's Day celebrations, and in the Chinese calendar. Every other creature on the calendar is a real creature.
    • Living specimens of orders of animals that were believed to have been extinct for millions of years have been found before, such as the Diatomyidae Squirrel,[23] the Wollemi Pine [24] and the Coelacanth.[25][26]

Dinosaurs and birds

Creation science shows that the idea that birds are descendants of dinosaurs is not demonstrated by the evidence,[28][29] and that the dinosaur-bird connection is even disputed by some evolutionists.



Creation science also cites the evolutionist and atheist Ernst Mayr[31] who stated the following:





Evolutionary/Old Earth Perspective




An explosion of new species


Dinosaurs and birds


Dinosaur fossils, human fossils and geological strata

Some evolutionary scientists assert that if human bones aren’t found with dinosaur bones, then dinosaurs and man didn’t live together.[44][45] Creation scientists point out that this is a false assumption; if human bones aren’t found buried with dinosaur bones, it simply means they weren't buried together.[44]


Creation science points out that the fossil record contains mainly marine organisms and that a small sliver of the fossil record contains vertebrates and thus shows that we shouldn't expect to find many human fossils at all.[44] Moreover, as the biblical Flood would be a marine catastrophe, it would be expected that marine fossils would dominate the fossil record. This is in fact what we find.[47]

Approximately 70% of the Earth is covered in salt water which would also explain the dominance of marine fossils. In addition, creation scientists show there may have been a small pre-flood human population and that massive amounts of flood sediment are why we haven’t found human fossils in pre-biblical flood sediments.[47] Also, creation scientists point out that we don't find human bones buried with coelacanths yet humans and coelacanths coexist today.[44]

In Popular Culture




See also


  1. Vast Majority of Dinosaurs Still to Be Found, Scientists Say, National Geographic
  2. http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/23488#/summary
  3. http://books.google.com/books?id=dy5LAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA60&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false
  4. http://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/read/?_xmlsrc=1806-07-25&_xslsrc=LCstyles.xsl
  5. Genesis 1:25
  6. Genesis 1:29-30
  7. Were dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark?, Creation Ministries International
  9. 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Robert Doolan, Are dinosaurs alive today?, Creation, vol. 15 No. 4 p. 12.
  10. USGS
  12. [1], Answers in Creation
  13. Jonathan Sarfati, Did a meteor wipe out the dinosaurs?.
  14. Michael Matthews, Dinosaur demise theory, version #451, Answers in Genesis
  15. Mokele-mbembe The Living Dinosaur!
  17. Doheny Scientific Expedition, Hava Supai Canyon, Arizona, Creationism.org
  18. The Hava Supai Dinosaur Carving, ChristianCourier.com
  19. Dinosaurs in Literature, Art & History-- Page 2, s8int.com
  21. Quoted in What about the Dinosaurs?, CreationScience.com
  22. 22.0 22.1 Dragon entry in World Book Millennium 2000 CD ROM
  23. Diatomyidae Squirrel
  24. Wollemi Pine Biotechnology Australia
  25. Sulawesi Coelacanth. University Of California, Berkeley
  26. More on the Coelacanth marinebio.org
  27. Carl Wieland, Still soft and stretchy, Creation Ministries International
  28. Bird evolution?, Creation Ministries International
  30. Jonathan Sarfati, 15 ways to refute materialistic bigotry, Creation Ministries International
  33. Find the full quote on [2], starting from line 6.
  34. Michael Matthews, Scientific American admits creationists hit a sore spot, Answers in Genesis
  35. Which Came First, the Feather or the Bird?, Scientific American
  38. Prehistoric Asteroid "Killed Everything", National Geographic
  39. Ibid
  40. "Dinosaur-Killer" Asteroid Crater Imaged for First Time, National Geographic
  41. http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen1b.html
  42. Bennet, Shostak, Jakotsky, "Life in the Universe," viewable at
  43. New Dinosaur Discovered: T. Rex Cousin Had Feathers, National Geographic
  44. 44.0 44.1 44.2 44.3 Hodge, Bodie, If humans and dinosaurs lived together, why don’t we find human fossils with dinosaur fossils? Answers 1(1):52, May 2006.
  45. Claim CH710 (The TalkOrigins Archive)
  46. http://creation.com/radiometric-dating-questions-and-answers
  47. 47.0 47.1 Hodge, Bodie, Why Don’t We Find Human & Dinosaur Fossils Together? (chapter 13 of the New Answers Book), 2006.