The Truth About Leviathan
From EvoWiki
Just as with Behemoth, YECs preached that another dangerous monster, known as 'Leviathan, is also a 'dinosaur'. Job 41 is a chapter in the Bible that deals entirely with this fearsome sea creature. However, just like 'Behemoth', the assertion of Leviathan being a dinosaur is wrong.
Here's what YECs like Dan Lietha imagined Kronosaurus as according to Psalms 104 and Job 41:
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b18/Crazyharp81602/leviathan.jpg
Now, here's what Kronosaurus really looks like in real life:
http://www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk/static/cs/uk/11/clipart/exp_dinosaur/img/image_exp_dino021.jpg
First, Leviathan, like Behemoth, was an aquatic creature. Secondly, Leviathan was much harder to kill than Behemoth due to his impenatrable, unbreakable, armor plating covering his entire body. No dinosaur; not even their underwater contemporaries that resembled crocodiles such as Kronosaurus, Tylosaurus, and Liopleurodon ever had such armor. Archelon, the giant Cretaceous sea turtle, had only tough skin supported by bony struts as its shell. It would have sunk like a stone and drown if it had a hard, heavy bony shell. So, Archelon does not count as Leviathan, either.
'Ankylosaurs', on the other hand, did have impenatrable armor, but only on their backs. Their underbellies completely lacked armor on them, not to mentioned the hatchling versions of these dinosaurs bearing very soft armor on their backs; making them more vulnerable to predators like Gorgosaurus, Troodon, and Velociraptor than the adults. So, they're not at all invincible like Leviathan was. Unlike Leviathan, Ankylosaurs, who were only land dwellers, were docile plant eaters that only fought back when attacked. They would either swing their bony clubs on their tails, which some of them do have, or lie down and rely on their armor back and their spiny sides, which most of them do have, to save them.
And third, the word "Leviathan" comes from the Hebrew word meaning "one who twist and coils," or "the winding one." Obviously Leviathan is described to be a snake-like sea creature. No dinosaur along with their sea going contemporaries ever had bodies that twists and coils like a snake. All dinosaurs including Ankylosaurs lived only on land. Some dinosaurs do occasionally swim, however. But none of them lived their entire lives in the water. So, Leviathan is overall neither a dinosaur, nor a Mesozoic marine reptile.
Gish's Imaginary Fire Breathing Dinosaur
Now Leviathan, in Job 41:18-21, is described to be a fire breather. Except in Mythology, no animal ever breathed fire, not even a dinosaur. Retired YEC, Duane Gish, however, claimed in his two so-called dinosaur books, Dinosaurs: Those Terrible Lizards (p.51-55) and Dinosaurs by Design (p. 82-83), that the crests of the Lambeosaurines including Parasaurolophus contained special glands inside their crests that held special hot liquids of some sort, which helped breathe out hot gasses and fiery liquids upon their enemies when threatened. Gish based this claim on the taking of metaphoric Biblical verses literally and comparing them to a special insect called the bombardier beetle. He used the similarities between the [bombardier beetle] with a fire-breathing reptile as evidence for the reasonableness of his creative idea. He has repeatedly tied the two together despite attempts by others to refute his theory of fire-breathing ancient reptiles.
According to Gish, if you mix two certain chemicals found inside the beetle, the hydrogen peroxide and the hydroquinone, together without a chemical inhibitor, they will explode. Two scientists tested the claim in an experiment. They found that combining the two chemicals together results in a brown liquid, rather than an explosion article.
Nevertheless, Gish assumes that since the bombardier beetle had special glands inside of its abdomen that stored such hot chemicals inside its body to help it spray hot liquid on its enemies, then dinosaurs like Parsaurolophus must have had the exact same thing in their crests which they used to help breathe fire and charred their enemies on the spot just as depicted on page 83 in Dinosaurs By Design and on page 51 in Dinosaurs Those Terrible Lizards.
There is in fact no evidence of fire-inducing, hot, liquid glands inside of a dinosaur's body, not even in the hollow crests of the Lambeosaurines, including Parasaurolophus.
There are no such features inside the Dinosaur's nostrils and throat that would help protect them from the flames, either. Inspite of this, Gish has not ceased repeating his claim.
The Real Functions of The Crests
The crests of the dinosaurs were not used to breathe fire, but to make music. Scientists have studied the crests and found that the crests must have operated like a brass instrument such as a trumpet and a trombone for instance. The crest of Parasaurolophus is shaped very much like a trombone. When air from the lungs traveled through the resonating chamber, it vibrated the walls to create a low pitched sound as the air exits through the dinosaur's nostrils.
http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b18/Crazyharp81602/TheTrumpeter.jpg
The Dinosaur Trumpeter in Real Life
David Weishampel of Johns Hopkins University, to test the idea out, created a large model version of the crest and blew right through it. The model created a very low-pitched sound as the air traveled through the tubes (while vibrating the chamber walls along the way) and out of the model. Just like what you do when you blow through a trumpet, a tuba, or even a vacuum cleaner pipe. With this experiment he is able to show to the people that parasaurolophus' crest may have been most likely used as a natural-made musical instrument. A much better explaination than Gish's imaginary fire glands.
The Lambeosaurine crests must have been a vital tool used for communication, for these dinosaurs lived in herds for protection against the likes of Gorgosaurus, Tyrannosaurus, and Daspletosaurus, since they have no weapons on them at all to fight against their enemies when attacked. As the herd browsed, some of the members would be on the look out for danger. When danger is near, and one of the herd's member senses it, a loud bellow would rang out from its hollow crest and the herd would run away to escape from danger.
Then, two scientists from The New Mexico Museum of Natural History made a computer program to help them study the hollow crests and came up with a computer image of a sound they think Parasaurolophus has made when it was alive and well 75 million years ago as it was calling to one of the members of his own kind. Download the .wav file from their webpage and hear what the dinosaur's voice may have sounded like 75 million years ago.
Another explaination for the crests is that they also were probably used to help the dinosaurs to recognize each other as well as to increase their sense of smell. No two crests were exactly alike. Some have solid crests while other have hollow crests on their heads. The males have much bigger, more elaborate crests while the females have much smaller crests and the juvenilles have either a tiny crests or no crests at all. But, as they grow older, their crests will developed into normal adult size crests, however.
The Real Explaination Behind Leviathan
This passage involving Leviathan breathing fire may have been metaphoric for either bad breath or a watermist being sprayed out of the creature's snout while swimming at the water's surface instead of what Gish assumed.
Although it is most likely that the passage of Job 41 is describing a crocodile by itself, when we find other supplemental verses coming from other books of the Bible to the passage, we find that Leviathan is not a creature of reality, but a creature of myth. According to the verses of the book of Psalms, we find that Leviathan, as a pseudonymn of the Devil, is mentioned to have seven heads (Psalms 74:13-14). No dinosaur or sea contemporaries of theirs ever had multiple heads. In the passage, we find that God destroyed the creature by smashing Leviathan's heads and throwing his body into the desert for the animals living there to eat. In fact, some biblical scholars aren't sure if the Leviathan of Psalms is the same creature as the Leviathan of the Book of Job. It could have been that the author of Psalms confused the sea beast mentioned in Job with Satan, (one of Satan's nicknames being "the old serpent"), and borrowed from the description of either the Greek Hydra, or the dragon form of the Babylonian progenitor goddess Tiamat (both of whom were said to have at least seven heads).
In other passages we find Leviathan frolicing among the ships as they sail close by (Psalms 104:26). This verse is what YECs used as they try to make a worthless case for Leviathan being either a Kronosaur or a Liopleurodon being witness by the sailors as they sail nearby as they frolic. Case in point: Ham's idiot Book, The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved! where on pages 38-41, we find Ham falsely asserting Leviathan to be Kronosaurus, a pliosaur that lived 112 million years ago, while being ignorant of the fact that Kronosaurus didn't have armor, 7 heads, a fiery breath, nor did he saw people and ships sail by since no post-Mesozoic fossils of this pliosaur has been found, not even mixed with man. The verse may have been referring to a frolicing, playful whale, like the dolphin (since dolphins have known to be seen near ships) or the humpback whale for instance, not the imaginary fabricated Kronosaur as seen in the llustration above made by Dan Lietha.
Despite efforts made by YECs to regard Leviathan to be a dinosaur or a sea reptile like Kronosaurus, careful examination reveals to us that the assertion of Leviathan being a dinosaur is false. Neither dinosaur, nor their contemporaries ever breathed fire, None of them ever had multiple heads, nor do they have inpenatrable armor. Even if it does describe a dinosaur, it still does not explain how come we find no traces of any remains of human, dinosaur, plesiosaur, pliosaur, ichthyosaur, and mosasaur found mixed together in the fossil record. To know more about the real Leviathan, the snake-like sea monster, visit these sites.
