"Dinosaurs have always lived with man. They were on the ark with Noah. Some of them are probably still alive today in the remote jungles."
What the evidence says
Non-avian dinosaurs went extinct approximately 66 million years ago, confirmed by radiometric dating, the iridium layer at the K-Pg boundary, and the complete absence of dinosaur fossils above this boundary. Modern humans appeared roughly 300,000 years ago. No credible evidence supports dinosaur-human coexistence.
This claim requires ignoring virtually the entire geological and paleontological record:
The K-Pg extinction event (~66 Mya): The Chicxulub asteroid impact is supported by a global iridium anomaly layer, shocked quartz, tsunami deposits, and the 180-km impact crater in the Yucatán Peninsula. Above this layer, no non-avian dinosaur fossils have ever been found — anywhere on Earth.
The gap between dinosaurs and humans: Non-avian dinosaurs disappeared 66 million years before the earliest Homo sapiens fossils (~300,000 years ago). The gap is approximately 65.7 million years.
“Living dinosaurs” claims: Hovind references legends like Mokele-mbembe (a supposed sauropod in the Congo) as evidence. No expedition has produced physical evidence — no bones, no tissue, no verified photographs. Cryptozoological claims do not constitute scientific evidence.
The “physical evidence” Hovind cites has been debunked: The Ica Stones of Peru — carved stones depicting humans with dinosaurs — were exposed as forgeries. The farmer who supplied them, Basilio Uschuya, admitted in a 1977 BBC documentary to carving them himself using a dentist’s drill, baking them in cow dung to fake a patina, and drawing the designs from comic books and textbooks.
The Paluxy River “human tracks” in Texas — long cited alongside dinosaur prints as proof of coexistence — were investigated thoroughly by researcher Glen Kuban in the 1980s. The supposed human prints were elongated metatarsal dinosaur tracks, erosion features, or carvings. Even Answers in Genesis, a leading creationist organization, now advises against using the Paluxy tracks as evidence.
Birds are dinosaurs: Modern birds are the living descendants of theropod dinosaurs. In a sense, dinosaurs do live among us — but as sparrows and eagles, not as the creatures Hovind imagines on Noah’s ark.
Sources
- Schulte et al. (2010) — 'The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary,' Science ↗
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History — Deep Time (Dinosaur Extinction) ↗
- Hublin et al. (2017) — 'New fossils from Jebel Irhoud and the pan-African origin of Homo sapiens,' Nature ↗
- Glen Kuban — The Paluxy Man Track Controversy (TalkOrigins) ↗
- Answers in Genesis — Paluxy River Tracks (AiG cautions against using them) ↗
- Wikipedia — Ica Stones (forgery documentation) ↗