Tag Archives: dinosaurs

Creation Evidence Museum, Glen Rose, Texas

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A few years back I found the Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose State Park and I was enchanted at the chance to stand in an actual dinosaur footprint. On the way there I noticed the Creation Evidence Museum, 3102 FM 205, Glen Rose, Texas 76043. Well this Texas trip I went back to check out the museum because I think it is good for me to explore different view points and a fair number of folks must believe in creation because there are two US museums devoted to this topic. This one in Glen Rose is the smaller of the two. The 27 million dollar Creation Museum in Kentucky has a full size replica of Noah’s Ark! In fact this article, based on a Gallop poll, states 46% of the US adult population believes in Creationism (God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so).

General impressions:

  • The 45 minute introductory video by the museum director, Carl Baugh, walked the audience through many of the museum’s exhibits. If I wasn’t such a skeptic (thanks dad) I would have found it very convincing. Wikipedia suggests that there is controversy around Mr. Baugh’s theories.
  • I’m learning that I didn’t really understand the theory of creationism. The video suggested that the earth, animals, dinosaurs, people and all was put into place in seven actual earth days. Charts were presented. The science was explained. Biblical passages were quoted.
  • I really enjoyed many of the exhibits. I like dinosaurs and there were a few to see. I like the Noah’s ark story and there was a really large model of the ark. I like models.
  • The people that worked there were sincerely nice.
  • The museum was well maintained and the bathrooms were clean.
  • Nobody preached at me.
  • Per the museum’s information dinosaurs and humans existed at the same time and the earth is about 6,000 years old.
  • I had trouble getting my head around dinosaurs being on Noah’s ark (let’s just assume that there really was a Noah’s ark). So I read up on it. The logic is that some of the larger dinosaurs were taken as babies, so not so big at the time. And many of the dinosaurs actually were little. And the water dinosaurs didn’t need the ark. You can see the dinosaurs on the ark in the model (go ahead, look)
  • But what happened to the dinosaurs under that scenario?! One article suggested that they tasted like chicken and were a food source. Well ok then.
  • I liked the holiday decorations on the t-rex head.
  • There was a Pulsed Magnetic Field (PMF) unit which looked like a long tube. The sign on it stated in bold, all cap, underlined, red letters “Our magnetic field unit is not turned on at any time during public visits to the museum. You are not under the field’s influence at this moment!” Well, I hadn’t really been worried about it. There was a glass pane missing and I’d think it would have to be a sealed unit to work. I’d kind of like to know the last time it actually was turned on.
  • The full size replica of the Guttenberg was fascinating.
  • I had no idea that Tom Landry was so very involved with Creationism. He was the coach of the Dallas Cowboys when I lived in the Dallas area. There is a larger than life size statue of him at the museum. It is next to a statue of a native American. Mr. Landry was also featured on the video.

So there you have it. I’m glad I went. It certainly didn’t convince me of creationism, but I came away with a better understanding of what it is and why people believe it. There were a bunch of children there and this information is being presented as fact.

The museum costs $6 a person (5 and under are free). Their website is here. Personally I think that no matter what you believe, it is worthwhile to visit. I gained interesting insights.

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Standing in dinosaur footprints at Dinosaur Valley State Park

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imageWhen I was a kid my parents took me to the World’s Fair in New York and there was a dinosaur exhibit. I was startled to realize that two of those dinosaurs, the Apatosaurus and the T-Rex, had been relocated to the Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, Texas. The Atlantic Richfield Company donated the fiberglass replicas to the park in 1970. The park did not get its name from the two replicas however, it is the site of real dinosaur footprints!

The 1,587-acre Dinosaur Valley State Park opened in 1972. Its mission:  to preserve these valuable dinosaur track sites and to allow people to learn from and enjoy them. It is situated on the Paluxy River and many of the tracks on near or in the river. About 113 million years ago, this area had been ocean front and the ground was the perfect place for creating fossils. Both Herbivores and Carnivores would come to this area to eat plants and in the case of the Carnivores each other. There was an enormous river flood in 1908 and in 1909 a young boy, George Adams, found three-toed tracks of theropods. Sometime later, in 1937, R.T. Bird, who collected fossils for the American Museum of Natural History came to the area and found tracks of the much larger sauropod (70′ long, 13′ high, 40+ tons).

Some of the park’s visitors were very interested in the tracks. One can go right up to many of them and touch them and even stand in them to get a sense of scale. Other park visitors were more interested in cooling off in the Paluxy River. I visited the two main track sites and also drove around the camping area. There were plenty of spaces available, no doubt the heat was keeping folks away.

I would have stopped at the Creation Evidence Museum, but sadly it was closed. I heard that DInosaur World was something to see, but it was too hot to do any more outside exploring. So they will have to wait until next year.

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