Insect diversity falsifies the worldwide flood.

Parasomnium writes:hit the peek button now to see the dBCodes of this quote box

Written records denote dinosaurs being observed in Roman and other times, even a few hundred years ago.

going back to actual reports, some quite credible, the descriptions often fit dinosaurs.

The city of Nerluc was renamed in honor of the killing of a "dragon" there. This animal was bigger than an ox and had long, sharp, pointed horns on its head. There were a number of different horned dinosaurs. The Triceratops is one example.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------ITALYA scientist named Ulysses Aldrovandus carefully described a small "dragon" seen along a farm road in northern Italy. The date was May 13, 1572. The poor, rare creature was so small that a farmer killed it just by knocking it on the head with his walking stick.The animal had done nothing wrong but hiss at the farmer's oxen as they approached it on the road. The scientist got the dead body and made measurements and a drawing. He even had the animal mounted for a museum. It had a long neck, a very long tail and a fat body.The skeletons of a number of ancient reptile-like creatures match this basic description.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------CHINAThousands of dragon stories and pictures can be found in ancient Chinese books and art. One interesting legend tells about a famous Chinese man named Yu. After the great world flood, Yu surveyed the land of China and divided it into sections. He "built channels to drain the water off to the sea" and helped make the land livable again. Many snakes and "dragons" were driven from the marshlands when Yu created the new farmlands.Ancient Chinese books even tell of a family that kept "dragons" and raised babies. It is said that in those days, Chinese kings used "dragons" for pulling royal chariots on special occasions, a fact of which famous explorer Marco Polo himself attested to.

One account takes us back to the days of the early Britons, from whom the modern Welsh are descended. They provide us with our earliest surviving European accounts of reptilian monsters, one of whom killed and devoured King Morvidus in 336 B.C. We are told in the amazing account, translated for us by Geoffrey of Monmouth, that the monster "gulped down the body of Morvidus as a big fish swallows a little one." Geoffrey himself described the animal as a Belua. The Belua was described as reptilian, and when we endeavor to compare it with any other animal of today, coupled with the fact that it gulped down Morvidus "as a big fish swallows a little one," we find it difficult in doing so. No land animal of today, let alone reptilian, could devour a human by such standards. Therefore, Geoffrey was either a flat out liar, or he told the truth.In the British Isles alone there are approximately 200 locations in which dinosaur activity has been reported. Going into the future to the year 1405, we now visit Bures in Soffolk, where a chronicle reveals to us the physical reality of yet another dinosaur:"Close to the town of Bures, near Sudbury, there has lately appeared, to the great hurt of the countryside, a dragon, vast in body, with a crested head, teeth like a saw, and a tail extending to an enormous length. Having slaughtered the shepherd of a flock, it devoured many sheep."After an unsuccessful attempt by local archers to kill the beast, due to its impenetrable hide:"...in order to destroy him, all the country people around were summoned. But when the dragon saw that he was again to be assailed with arrows, he fled into a marsh or mere and there hid himself among the long reeds, and was no more seen."As you continue to read, you may perhaps think to yourself, "Why aren't these chronicles from history more well known? Why have I not heard or read about these things before?" Sadly, most historians throw aside these accounts, simply because the word "dragon" is used. As the term "dinosaur" wasn't invented until the 1800s, to do so is foolish and a detriment to history itself.In the 15th century, according to a contemporary chronicle that still survives in Canterbury Cathedral's library, the following incident was reported. On the afternoon of Friday, September 26, 1449, two giant reptiles were seen fighting on the banks of the River Stour (near the village of Little Cornard) which marked the English county borders of Suffolk and Essex. One was black, and the other "reddish and spotted". After an hour-long struggle that took place "to the admiration of many beholding them", the black monster yielded and returned to its lair, the scene of the conflict being known ever since as Sharpfight Meadow.As late as August, 1614, the following sober account was given of a strange reptile that was encountered in St. Leonard's Forest in Sussex.The sighting was near a village that was known as 'Dragon's Green' long before this report was published. Original writing has been kept for authenticity:"This serpent is reputed to be nine feete, or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the form of an axletree of a cart: a quantite of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller at both endes. The former part, which he shootes forth as a necke, is supposed to be an elle long (3 ft. 9 inch); with a white ring, as it were, of scales about it. The scales along his back seem to be blackish, and so much as is discovered under his bellie, appeareth to be red . . . it is likewise discovered to have large feete, but the eye may there be deceived, for some suppose that serpents have no feete . . . (The dragon) rids away as fast as a man can run. His food (rabbits) is thought to be, for the most part, in a conie-warren, which he much frequents . . . There are likewise upon either side of him discovered two great bunches so big as a large foote-ball, and (as some thinke) will in time grow to wings, but God, I hope, will (to defend the poor people in the neighbourhood) that he shall be destroyed before he grows to fledge."This dragon was reportedly seen in various places within a circuit of three or four miles, and the pamphlet named some of the still-living witnesses who had seen him. These included as follows: John Steele, Christopher Holder, and a certain "widow woman dwelling neare Faygate". Another witness was "the carrier of Horsham, who lieth at the White Horse (inn) in Southwark". One of the locals set his two mastiffs onto the monster, and apart from losing his dogs, he was fortunate to escape with his own life, for the dragon was already credited with the deaths of a man and woman at whom it had spat and how consequently had been killed by its venom. When approached unwittingly, our pamphleteer tells us the monster was:"...of countenance very proud and at the sight or hearing of men or cattel will raise his neck upright and seem to listen and looke about, with great arrogancy."Fascinating . . . a true eyewitness account of typically reptilian behavior.Going ahead to the year 1867, less than 200 years ago (2 years after the American Civil War), the monster that lived in the woods around Fittleworth in Sussex was last seen. It would reportedly run up to people hissing and spitting if they happened to stumble across it unawares, although it never harmed anyone. Several such cases could be cited, but suffice it to say that too many incidents like these are reported down through the centuries and from all sorts of locations for us to say that they are all fairy-tales.

Here are some details from supposed dinosaur sightings.Whether or not pterosaur (“winged lizard”) is technically a dinosaur, this flying reptile is still believed by some to have died out 65 million years ago. However, there have been dozens of dinosaur sightings in recent years in the United States alone. In 1961, a business man flying his own plane over the Hudson River Valley was ”buzzed’ by what he said could only be described as a pterodactyl type creature. In 1976 there were at least three very similar sightings in Texas, including one in which three elementary teachers in San Antonio all reported seeing the same creature. One of the most fascinating sightings occurred in 1856 when a railway tunnel was being dug between St.-Dizier and Nancy, France. The Illustrated London News on February 9, 1856, reports that when a large limestone boulder was split open, a creature with a wingspan of 10’ 7” spilled out, flapped its wings, then died, leaving a precise mold of its body in the stone. Recorded sightings of thunderbirds are no stranger to in the American Southwest.1Since 1938, the coelacanth fish species, believed to have been extinct for a millennia, has turned up as dinosaur sightings in waters from South Africa to Indonesia. One of the most recent sightings of coelacanth were identified during a 2002 dive off the shores of Sodowana, South Africa. Until these live specimens were sighted and studied, they had only been known from fossils.2By far, the most fascinating dinosaur sightings come out of Africa with similar creatures spotted in Papua, New Guinea. These stories have been persistent for centuries and are too similar to be ignored. A specialized field of study, crypto zoology, has pursued these findings for many years. Consistently over the past 100 years natives talk about mokele-mbembe (blocker-of-rivers). These dinosaur sightings come from varied areas, but are startlingly similar. All of them involve a creature that spends most of its time in the water, though it climbs ashore during the day in search of food. Its size is approximately between an elephant and hippopotamus but with a long neck and small head. And the mokele-mbembe feeds off of specific vegetation and fruit growing along the water’s edge. No matter where they have been spotted in Africa, the natives all say that hippopotamus and alligators quickly leave the section of the river where this creature roams. It is very territorial and aggressively protects its area. Every time natives are shown pictures, they quickly identify a sauropod-type dinosaur, similar in shape to a small Apatosaurus. In 1983, university-trained biologist Marcellin Agnagna began his own excursions into these areas and describes his sighting in an area near Lake Tele. David Woetzel, president and CEO of CCR Data systems is another frequent researcher gathering sighting information of the mokele-mbembe in Africa.3Sightings of Ogopogo, a plesiosaur-type creature, are abundant and have been well documented in Canada for the past 130 years.

All remains date to between 13 million and 10 million years ago, likely after the common ancestor of the Asian and African ape clades.

Faith writes:
Has anybody calculated it out? Seems to me I've read that genetic experiments with insects, such as with fruit flies, produce changes quite rapidly.

You are asking if anybody has done some calculations on this. Well, it turns out the answer is yes. In this study you can see that speciation rates are of the order of less than one to a few species per million years.

Even if we assume that the small base on the Ark was as large as half of all insect species extant now, then that would still mean a speciation rate of about 125 species per year. That's a far cry from what scientific studies like the one I mentioned are telling us.

Also there would have been more potential for change back then, more genetic possibilities.

As for your ad hoc explanation and mine, the one to be chosen is the one that fits with the Bible. Yours doesn't. Mine may not either, but that's the idea anyway

...if that's your answer, then my question becomes: why should we choose the Bible as the touch stone for our theories, and not ancient Egyptian, Chinese, or Indian creation myths, for example? Or other "holy" texts of non-Christian religions still in sway?

Dragons are universally claimed to have been observed in cultures around the world. Keep in mind that despite embellishments and tales, there are consistent accounts around the world that show nothing more than seeing a dinosaur-type of creature.