Virtually every culture on earth has an oral tradition of human encounters with large, strange beasts that are unknown to us today. The commonly accepted theory is that the dinosaurs disappeared long before humans appeared. So, what were these creatures our forebears spoke of, and what happened to them?
From the fossil record, we have considerable knowledge about huge creatures that are no longer present in the animal kingdom. Though they varied greatly in terms of size, shape, diet, habitat, and mode of motility, we collectively call all such long-extinct species "dinosaurs." Why they disappeared, we can only speculate. Standard evolutionary theory holds that some catastrophe, such as a devastating meteorite, struck the earth about 65 million years ago, rendering it uninhabitable for many species.
The creationist perspective favors a much more recent time frame for the dinosaurs' demise, with "old-earth" creationists occupying somewhat of a middle ground between the evolutionists and the "new-earth" creationists, who date the earth at somewhere around 10,000 years. Creationists pretty much agree that the disappearance of the dinosaurs was caused by the Genesis Flood and/or the global geological and climatic changes that transpired thereafter.
The critical difference between the theories is whether or not dinosaurs co-existed with humans.
The Bible talks about monsters, naming Leviathan and Behemoth. Dragons appear in the Babylonian creation story; Nebuchadnezzar built the city of Babylon with depictions of dragons all over the walls and on his seal. Ancient Egyptians used images of dragons to protect their palaces. Both ancient Greeks and Romans had dragon mythologies, as do China, Japan, India, and Mesopotamia.
Europe has an especially rich tradition of dragons. The Vikings carved dragons on their ships. Britain alone has nearly 200 sites identified with dragon lore; Celtic kings were called "dragons"; Wales has the dragon as its national symbol. All over England are places named for dragon slayings, and several local festivals have continued to re-enact the killing of the resident dragon since ancient times.
The gargoyle