Dragons are myth, and legend, and lore, yes? Part of tapestries, and tales, folklore and children stories. Certainly mankind has never hunted and defeated dragons to protect the villagers?
Dinosaurs, society knows, are very real, and of course we look to evidence within the fossil records. We see the erected bones in museums, and their animatronic representations in parks and movies. No intelligent present day person, regardless of belief, would deny that dinosaurs roamed the Earth. And regardless of the time of extinction, we concur that most of these large reptilian beasts are in fact extinct.
But with minimal research, it does not take an advanced degree to discern that dragons were very real, and in fact are the self same dinosaurs that intrigue us today. This is known in Biblical Creationist circles of course, but perhaps not so obvious to certain churches, public schools, and within homes and families that haven’t considered it. What if we use common-sense logic, and history, to identify the connection between dragons and dinosaurs?
One of our first considerations is Sir Richard Owen, a founding father of paleontology, who actually coined the term ‘dinosaur’, in the year 1841. This, as we learn in school, means ‘terrible lizard’. He was a creationist, and had built a natural history museum, within which was displayed creatures’ bones and fossils in 1838 (before the term dinosaur), called ichthyosaurs. Beneath these were the stamped words, “Sea-Dragon”.
Early paleontologists, as they discovered buried creatures, often referred to these large sea, land, and air reptiles as dragons, before and even after the term dinosaur was used. Often the two were used interchangeably.
Thomas Hawkins, and early paleontologist, wrote a research book on “Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri” called Book of the Great Sea Dragons.
This was in 1840, and in it, we can see the common name known to these scientists being used as they logged their discoveries of each fossil specimen. “Dragon”.
Aside from this, it is common knowledge that the Chinese called dinosaur fossils dragons, and is still a colloquial term used today. We certainly do not need to point out how important dragon legend is to the cultures of the Far East. But it is interesting to note that ancient emperor logs have indicated having dragons pull chariots, as well as employing royal dragon feeders, which would seem a strange position to hold with no dragons.
Another consideration would be to deduce whether or not mankind had knowledge of dinosaurs before paleontology, and natural history museums. Of course, the answer to that question is a resounding yes. How do we know this?
Perhaps we can consider the multitude of depictions within the artwork of cultures around the world?
Mayan petroglyphs depict common shapes such as humans, and birds, but also dinosaurs.
Murals and tapestries have dinosaurs depicted in them along with the subject matter of daily life. Some are full of head dresses, leopards, tribesman, and also dinosaurs!
One of my favorites are the engravings of two sauropods on the tomb of Bishop Richard Bell, in the Carlisle Cathedral, built in 1122 A.D. The rest of the tomb is decorated with the commonly observed creatures of today, such as bats, fish, even a dog with what appears to be a collar. Would be tough to explain why an artist/engraver, would suddenly take an aside, and concoct a large long-necked dinosaur that disappeared 65 million years ago.
Another interesting example comes from 
John Calvin’s commentary on the book of Genesis, the artwork for which was done in 1578 A.D. It is beautifully done, and is full of many animals, some of which appear to be dragons, again, long before paleontology, and before the term dinosaurs was ever coined. It is clear from the cacophony of history, that man has had knowledge of many creatures we would call dinosaurs today.
There are hundreds of examples, from ocean stories, to cave paintings, to carvings in buildings, and these examples span the globe, as well as span a great length of time. Dinosaurs were being depicted for thousands of years, in every culture, long before modern science had reconstructed the shapes of the different species.
As the tension between Biblical creationists and Evolutionists continue, there are always rebuttals. We see this in lunar regression, in the decaying magnetic core, and we see it in the horizon problem of the Big Bang, etc. There is no difference here, as the prevailing theory is that ancient peoples uncovered fossils and depicted the animals they discovered.
Like many of the problems with evolution, the mental gymnastics of the ivy tower elite is handed off to academia for consumption. The dynamo theory, the inflation theory. Evolution asks the layperson to set aside common sense and trust the the non-observable ‘faith’ of scientists in chance and deep time to produce information against insurmountable odds, the hope being that people will believe if given enough time anything can happen.
In this case, we have a world of artistic history and discovery, and the very people who created paleontology in the first place confirming dragons as part of reality, rather than legend. Common sense would dictate that many of these creatures had been observed long before we assembled the bones in museums. Art, after all, imitates life.
I would ask that Biblical creationists not allow their common sense to be compromised through intimidation. Laypeople have every right to engage in healthy debate on the topic of origins, age of the Earth, and fun things like dragons. It is easy sometimes to defer to ‘experts’ such as the modern paleontologists who tout evolution as a fact and view all data through this presupposition.
This can lead to bad science and gross errors. Example?
Consider Carbon 14. Most evolutionary paleontologists would never consider testing dinosaur bones for Carbon 14, since it only lasts thousands of years. Why waste the money on testing, when they already “know” that they won’t find anything. Good observation by the elite, yes?
Except, when it is done, they detect Carbon 14. They get dates magnitudes closer to a biblical timeline than to the accepted 65,000,000 year old dates. Often, the secular labs doing the testing, such as The University of Georgia center for applied isotope studies is not told that the bone they are testing was from a hadrosaur so that they would indeed test it.
Typically what follows are cries of contaminated specimens (despite applied decontamination processes), but the reality is, the results are what we wold expect if dragons had walked the Earth with man. Again, observable, demonstrable, repeatable science is a help, not a hindrance, to true Biblical History.
J.R. Cooper - Author 