extinction – Lee Duigon

The Biggest Bear

leeduigon(patty)November 18, 2018

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Jambo, Mr. Nature here, with a brief safari into the past.

Today we’re looking for the largest bear ever, which is not the Alaskan brown bear or even the polar bear. They’re big: but the short-faced bear of North America, ranging from California to New Jersey, was bigger. Based on fossils, an adult short-faced bear weighed around a ton and stood 12 feet high when it stood on its hind legs. On all fours, it could look a six-foot man right in the eye.

Scientists estimate that these bruisers went extinct ten or eleven thousand years ago, along with a lot of other awesome mammal megafauna in North America. No one knows why. All we can say for certain is that they were here once, but not any more. Maybe the bears ran out of big stuff to eat–although we really don’t know why any of those beasts died out. Theories abound.

I try to imagine what it would be like to see one of these. Okay–but it might be the last thing you ever see.

God created these animals and pronounced them good. We don’t know why He removed them from the scene, although it might have been a good thing for us that He did.

We can only wonder.

The American Zebra

leeduigon(patty)April 2, 2017

Image result for hagerman horse

Hi, Mr. Nature here, with a prehistoric critter that I never heard of until this day–when I saw its picture on the side of a U-Haul truck. It’s amazing, what you can learn from unexpected sources.

Hagerman’s horse, aka the American zebra, was discovered in Idaho almost a hundred years ago and is Idaho’s state fossil. (Our New Jersey state fossil is Hadrosaurus, whose remains first taught us that some dinosaurs were bipeds.) It belongs to the genus Equus, which includes all modern horses, and its skeleton most closely resembles that of a zebra–hence the nickname.

How do we know it had stripes like a zebra? Simple–we don’t! All we have is bones, so the picture (above) is just a good guess. Won’t we look like dopes if it turns out Hagerman’s horse had purple polka dots?

I like to think of zebras roaming wild on America’s plains, and it would delight me to see one. But the American zebra is extinct–and it can’t be due to Climbit Change because nobody had refrigerators, air conditioners, or toilet paper back then.

But don’t be surprised if God brings it back when He restores His whole creation.

A Most Unusual Dinosaur

leeduigon(patty)July 17, 2016

Check this out–and this is only the hands and forearms of a very odd dinosaur.

It’s called Deinocheirus, meaning “horrible hand,” and for a long time this set of hands and forearms was all that was known of it, other than the facts that it once lived in Mongolia and doesn’t live there anymore. Over the years, a few more bits and pieces were discovered, upon the basis of which, scientists have reconstructed this beast as an overgrown “bird mimic” dinosaur. If more bits turn up, they may have to change their view. By “overgrown” I mean, by comparison with others in the group, amazingly colossal. The others were about our size or a little bigger. You can see by the photo that this was way, way bigger.

God created dinosaurs, as He did everything else, and this is a dramatic example of the boundlessness of His imagination and the boldness of His handiwork.

God also removed the dinosaurs. We don’t know why. Maybe someday we’ll get to ask Him; but so far, He has not told us.

Where has He put them? Well, He has the entire universe at His disposal. So who knows?

God and Dinosaurs

leeduigon(patty)June 7, 2015

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that God created dinosaurs. No one that we know of has ever seen one, and our interpretations of the fossils are subject to never-ending revision–but still, those great big bones had to fit together some way. Maybe someday we’ll figure out what any dinosaur was really like.

The difficulty is that dinosaurs are nowhere specifically mentioned in the Bible. Oh, and another difficulty–they don’t exist anymore.

We are, however, assured that God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, so that would include dinosaurs. We are also taught that God pronounced His creation good: therefor dinosaurs, at least in His eyes, are good.

I think you will agree that T. rex and his playmates would be a little much for us to handle. So God removed dinosaurs before the human race multiplied and spread throughout the earth. Again, the Bible doesn’t get into this. That doesn’t mean we can’t prayerfully consider the matter and use our brains for something more than cooking up mischief.

It’s my personal belief that God has put the dinosaurs somewhere else, where they can’t eat people, and where numbskulls can’t try to put them into an amusement park and charge money to see them. God has the entire universe at His disposal. Anything we imagine that limits His use of it is almost certainly wrong.

I look at the re-assembled bones, the paintings, the videos, the vast outpouring of human creativity and human reason and emotion evoked by these creatures, and can only marvel at the work of God’s hands. Dinosaurs also make me reflect on how much fun it must be to be God, and able to do things like this–makes it easy to imagine the pleasure our Lord must take in His creation.

What a blast He must have had with dinosaurs!