Hi, Mr. Nature here–with another animal that I wish I could have seen in the flesh.
Deinotherium was a kind of elephant, but very different from the elephants we’re used to. Well, maybe you’re not used to elephants at all, but you get my point. Its tusks grew out of the lower jaw instead of the upper, and nobody’s quite sure how the animal used them.
But one thing we are sure about was that Deinotherium was big–bigger than today’s elephants, almost as big as a Baluchitherium. Unfortunately for those of us who are interested (like me), no one ever painted or carved or drew a Deinotherium from life: at least, no pictures were made in any kind of artistic medium that has survived. So we’ve got the skeletons, but that’s all: the rest can only be guesswork.
God created a lot of cool animals, many of which aren’t with us anymore. We don’t know why. Then again, He could always bring them back someday. He has the whole universe at His disposal.
Just my opinion, but I do t believe that anything was truly lost forever. If God chooses to repopulate some of these extinct species he can do so in the snap of a finger. It may be that all “kinds” are with us today, in forms that work well in the current circumstances of the earth. I haven’t seen any dinosaurs in my yard, but the horned lizards that proliferate here look like a small triceratops, yet are much less likely to ham me in any way.
One thing is certain, our Creator has an abundance of ideas different ways to create living creatures, and His work leaves us with a balance of the things we need. And that’s the beautiful thing; these various creatures work together to make the earth livable. There was a deer killed by a car about a block from here, but the buzzards made quick work of disposing the remains. The coyotes and javelina took care of the rest and voila! No more dead deer.
When I see some of these huge animals from the ancient past, I wonder if their job was to facilitate the distribution of plant life, and even animal life, in the form of parasites that they carry with them. Animals with huge tusks which could be used for digging up roots and tubers might have been very useful in spreading plant life. Likewise for dinosaurs, which ate voraciously of plant life and undoubtedly helped to spread seeds far and wide.
Yes–I like to think God has taken these animals to some other place in His creation.