Dinosaurs In The Ark?

By Joseph Kezele, M.D.

In the last issue we discussed fossils and the worldwide nature of Noah’s flood. Let’s turn to the Ark and the often-asked question: How could dinosaurs fit into the ark?

First, it is important to understand just how large and stable the ark was. In modern units of measurement, it was 450 feet long, which is one-and-a-half football field lengths from goal line to goal line.


The width of 75 feet is just under half the width of a football field. The height of 45 feet is equivalent to a modern four-story building. This ratio of 6:1 of length to width is the ideal ratio for maximum stability according to modern ship building engineers. After all, the purpose of the ark was to remain floating during a violent worldwide event with tsunamis and hypercanes — hurricanes 100 times the size of modern hurricanes. The need was for stability, not speed nor direction.

These dimensions yield a capacity of 522 railroad stock cars, each of which can hold 240 sheep, which is the calculated average size of all the animals on the ark including dinosaurs. So the total capacity would have been 125,280 animals.

Scripture records in Genesis Chapter 7 that the animals went into the ark by pairs according to their kind. This reinforces the Biblical concept of kind given to us in Genesis Chapter 1, with each kind multiplying according to its kind. Kind does not correspond to species or genus, but many times may correspond to family, such as the dog, cat, or bear families. It is estimated that the number of kinds before the flood was 8,000. Thus the number of animals on the ark would have been 16,000, which is only one eighth of capacity. This leaves more than enough space for food, water and many more people than the eight who chose to take refuge in the ark.

Regarding dinosaurs, even though some 688 species are listed, this number is greatly decreased when duplications of the same fossil uncovered in different countries and given different names are eliminated. The number of different dinosaur kinds is much closer to 30. A second factor to take into account is the size and age of dinosaurs. It is well known that most reptiles grow until they die. If this holds for dinosaurs as well, then it would make sense that God would have sent teenaged dinosaurs onto the ark, occupying less space and eating less food than their older and larger relatives.

When did the dinosaurs become extinct, if they survived the flood on the ark? There are three lines of evidence that strongly suggest that dinosaurs died recently.

The first is Scripture itself. Job Chapter 40 describes in detail Behemoth, an Apatosaurus (brontosaur) type dinosaur. Job Chapter 41 describes Leviathan, a marine fire-breathing dinosaur. Job is considered to be the first book of the Bible to be written, and references to significant cold climate may indicate the Ice Age after the Flood.

The second results from the many works of art, such as Mochi pottery in Peru, temple sculpture in Burma, Roman mosaics, American Indian rock and cave paintings and brass relief in a cathedral floor in England, all of which very accurately depict different dinosaur kinds. How could these peoples accomplish this without direct visual contact with the various dinosaur kinds?

The third and most concrete line of evidence is the unearthing of non-fossilized dinosaur soft tissue in multiple locations. Two examples are T-Rex intact red blood cells and stretchy flexible arteries from a thigh bone from Montana and non-fossilized Hadrosaur muscle tissue from Spain. It simply is not possible for these tissues to survive 65 million years or more. The death of those animals had to be only some hundreds or a very few thousand years ago.

I mentioned that God selected the animals. Noah did not go out and round them up. I am convinced that God selected animals that had the widest range of genes in their DNA, so that their offspring would be equipped to deal with the dramatically changed environmental conditions that developed after the flood. We will take up those changes in the next issue.