Untold secrets of Planet Earth: Dire Dragons, by Vance Nelson

Did dinosaurs and people live together? According to creationist researcher Vance Nelson, this was indeed the case. Dire Dragons presents much never-before-published evidence.

Selections from Andrew V. Ste. Marie's book review of Untold Secrets of Planet Earth: Dire Dragons, by Vance Nelson.

(These selections by Marko Malyj are of the book review published in Creation Research Society Quarterly Journal, Volume 49 Number 1, Summer 2012)

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Carbon-14 dating of dinosaur bones and soft tissue finds both indicate that dinosaurs lived recently. Nelson critiques the idea that ancient men could have excavated or observed fossils and accurately reconstructed dinosaurs from them. He shows photographs of ancient depictions of dinosaurs and pterosaurs from five different continents. He also shows similarities between ancient and modern depictions of what appear to be the same animal. A wide array of creatures are shown in ancient art, including pterosaurs, mastodons, hadrosaurs, ceratopsians, sauropodomorphs, theropods, nothosaurs, and pachycephalosaurs.

The Kachina Bridge sauropod petroglyph, for example, is already known among creationists. But Nelson shows new evidence never before published in creationist literature. Examples include a Peruvian vessel with an apparent Protoceratopslike animal, a “salamander” emblem similar to a prosauropod, an apparent young hadrosaur on a sixteenth-century tapestry, and some very compelling ceratopsian depictions from China. Several depictions of the story of St. George and the dragon are also included, showing creatures similar to theropods and nothosaurs (pp. 71, 101, 121).

Many representations, although quite convincing, show slight inaccuracies, such as a wrong number of toes or fingers. However, modern artists have only bones to work with, and thus we do not know the details of soft tissue that the ancients may have had knowledge of, accounting for more differences. an ancient eyewitness to a living dinosaur may have only seen one a few times, perhaps while it was moving, obstructed, or at a distance.

Dire Dragons is an excellent book with much new, verified information that should be of great usefulness to creationists. In addition to being scientific, it is a beautiful work of art, a coffee-table type book with excellent graphics and beautiful dinosaur reconstructions. The book concludes with a gospel presentation.

Untold Secrets of Planet Earth, by Vance Wilson
Untold Secrets of Planet Earth Publishing Company
Red Deer, Alberta, Canada, 2011, 137 pages, $30.00.