Brass Behemoths!

by Philip BellIn June 2002, my family and I visited Carlisle Cathedral (UK) specifically to look under a rug! Underneath a protective carpet along a main aisle of the Cathedral (actually the main ‘gangway’ between the choir stalls) lies a rather large tomb, inlaid with brass. The tomb belongs to my namesake (although not related, as far as I know!), Richard Bell, bishop at Carlisle until shortly before his death in 1496. Different storiesBishop Bell’s tomb shows the clear signs of heavy wear and tear after several centuries of shuffling feet. Skeletons of dinosaurs have been accurately reconstructed only in the last 100 years or so. Prior to this, scientists classifying these reptiles incorrectly pieced together their bones making the first artistic representations wildly inaccurate. It seems highly improbable that an artist in the 15th century accurately portrayed a creature which he had never seen. Rather, it is more likely that these renditions were all creatures which had been observed. Clearly, the only reason modern researchers would fail to identify them as dinosaurs is their antibiblical bias that humans and dinosaurs did not co-exist. To the casual visitor, a look at this large brass, set in stone, would reveal nothing out of the ordinary (see Figures 1) and 3)1 [due to copyright restrictions, Figure 3 is only available in Creation magazine]). But, on closer inspection, one can see engravings of creatures that any 21st century child would instantly recognize as dinosaurs! With the permission of the Canon Warden of the Cathedral,2 the carpet was removed so that I could take photographs. Due to the fact that the brass is very worn, I was not allowed to take a brass rubbing,3 but the Warden very kindly supplied me with reproductions.4 Born in 1410, Richard Bell entered monastic life at Durham at 16 years of age. He remained a monk for the next 50 years, during which he was ordained a priest and earned a degree at Oxford University. Following a period as Prior of Durham (1464–1478), he was promoted to the office of bishop at Carlisle in 1478. As a monk he was unable to make a will, but historians accept that he died in 1496, hence the date assigned to his tomb.5 The brass shows Bishop Richard Bell (1.44 m or 4 ft 8½ inches long) under a Gothic canopy (2.9 m or 9 ft 5 in long), dressed in his full vestments, with his mitre (bishop’s cap) and crosier (hooked staff). But it is the narrow brass fillet (2.9 m or 9½ ft long), running around the edge of the tomb, that contains the items of particular interest. Owing to the passage of time (and countless thousands of tramping feet!) parts of the fillet have long since been lost, including the entire bottom section. However, in between the words of the Latin inscription, there are depictions of various animals. Most of these are unremarkable—various fish, an eel, a dog, a pig, a bird, a weasel/stoat—but a few of the engravings depict unusual creatures. On one engraving the creatures have an unmistakable resemblance to certain dinosaurs (Figure 2). Yet how could that be, since the bishop’s tomb was sealed and decorated over three centuries before the fossil bones of such creatures were systematically dug up, described and named? 15th century dinosaurs?Until Richard Owen coined the name ‘dinosaur’ (meaning terrible lizard) in 1841,6 only an elite few scientists knew of their existence. Unusually large bones had been found before the 19th century—a book by Robert Plot, published in 1676, contains the earliest mention.7 But people puzzled over what creatures these early bones were from, some even entertaining the notion of giant people.8 Scientists have now described hundreds of ‘species’ of dinosaurs and have catalogued these into a number of distinct taxonomic groups.Accepting the Bible’s account of creation and earth history, these major groups descended from the original ‘kinds’ that God created on Day 6 (Genesis 1)—the same day that God created people. Noah later took pairs of each kind of land-dwelling, nostril-breathing creature onto the Ark, and this would have included representatives of each dinosaur kind (see Genesis 7:2, 8–9, 14–16).9 All people and land-based animals outside the Ark perished worldwide in the Great Flood (Genesis 7:19–23). In the years following, descendants of the survivors on the Ark spread out across the globe, just as God had planned (Genesis 8:15–17). Although dinosaurs appear to be extinct today,10 it would not be very surprising if some kinds had survived until quite recently.11 If so, people would have witnessed them down through the centuries since the Flood and recorded their existence in literature and art. Actually, several Old Testament writers were inspired to mention dragons12 and the book of Job (chapters 40 and 41) describes two impressive creatures—behemoth and leviathan—which are unlike any living creatures today, but sound very like dinosaurs. What is more, stories of large and/or frightening reptilian creatures (often referred to as dragons) abound from cultures all over the world.13Today, due to the modern evolutionary belief that no dinosaurs survived beyond the so-called Cretaceous (an alleged 65 million years ago), most people disregard all of this evidence as mere myths and legends, while ignoring the clear teaching of the Bible. To the unprejudiced mind, however, Bishop Bell’s ‘brass behemoths’ suggest that at least some such creatures were alive and well in the Middle Ages. Although, sadly, some of the details have worn away, Figure 4 shows two dinosaurs engaged in a struggle (or perhaps courtship!). The one on the right is very like recent reconstructions of sauropod dinosaurs, e.g. Apatosaurus; see Figure 2. It is portrayed with its neck positioned horizontally, instead of raised aloft as palaeontologists (scientists who study fossils) believed until quite recently.14 Similarly, its tail is suspended, rather than lying on the ground as all but the most recent sauropod reconstructions incorrectly show.15 The left-hand creature sports appendages near the end of its tail that remind any dinosaur enthusiast of the spiked tail of Stegosaurus or perhaps the bony, clubbed tail of certain ankylosaurid dinosaurs such as Euoplocephalus. It is possible that both creatures had these tail appendages; the kink at the end of the tail of the right-hand animal might be all that remains, the details having long since worn away. More... pichttp://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v25/i4/bishop.asp