This is a bit of a diversion from Missed the Ark Monday. As you can probably tell from last week, I’m getting a bit bored. I’m not running out of discrepancies in the Ark Encounter list, but posts about obscure extinct animals not being on a long list of animals just aren’t all that interesting. And there was a recent article from the Institute of Creation Research (ICR) which touches on the next phase of the project – the size of the enclosures. It made this statement:

“Although the two dinosaurs studied were buried by the Flood sediments prior to reaching adulthood, they were likely about the size God chose for their kind to be on the ark.”

This interested me, because a 1996 book published by ICR, Noah’s Ark: A Feasibility Study, by John Woodmorappe, estimated the size of the animals on the Ark. He assumed that any animal with an adult size over 10kg (22lbs) was represented by a juvenile. He does not give any references or reasons for the sizes he selected for the juveniles, it seems to be completely arbitrary. Furthermore, I am yet to find a single extant species who wouldn’t be much larger than his estimate after a year on the Ark, even if they went onto the Ark at birth. But I haven’t looked into many extinct species. So let’s see how these T-Rex compare to the size allotted for them.

The Science Advances article which ICR based their post on notes that adult T-Rex are estimated to be about 9502kg. That would put them in Woodmorappe’s body mass category of “6-7 Log G.[1]” which means that the log of the adult body mass in grams is between 6 and 7. This is just a complicated way of saying that the adults weighed between 1,000kg and 10,000kg, or 1.1 to 11 US tons. He estimates (again, without any justification) that these animals would be represented on the Ark by a juvenile of 50kg (110lbs). That’s right, he estimated that the T-Rex on the Ark would weigh less than I do! The actual size of the 12-year-old specimen, which ICR said is about the size of the animals on the Ark, is 954kg! That’s 19X bigger! Woodmorappe also estimated quantities of water, food and poop varied based on animal mass, so all of those estimates would also be 19X too low.

But who cares that some obscure 24-year-old YEC book had an incorrect estimate? Well, this book is a major part of YEC literature. Whenever you hear any numbers or statistics regarding Noah’s Ark, you can bet the original source was this book. And it was the major source for the Ark Encounter.

That is why when the Ark Encounter made their Tyrannosaurs, they made them sheep-sized. As far as I can tell they just uncritically took Woodmorappe’s numbers and told their art team to make a 50kg T-Rex. They also gave them very strange heads and put them in bizarre positions, but I think that was “artistic license”.

Ark Encounter T-Rex
Yes, that’s supposed to be a T-Rex. There is a sign on the enclosure.
T-Rex at Ark Encounter
Seriously, what is going on in that enclosure? Do they think juvenile T-Rex were quadrupeds and stood on their tiny arms?
T-Rex enclosure at Ark Encounter
Is he trying to poop in the water dish? Is this a dinosaur yoga class?

Anyway, Woodmorappe allowed 1.11 square meters per 50kg juvenille, so 2.2 square meters for the pair. Ark Encounter doubled Woodmorappe’s numbers. They claim they did this to be conservative, but I think they realized that Woodmorappe’s numbers must be off when they couldn’t physically fit the model animals in the cages. Seriously, look at the image above and imagine trying to fit both of those sculptures into a cage half that size. Do you think that cage is twice the size it needs to be to house those animals for a year?

Of course, it’s actually much smaller than it needs to be, because those models are much smaller than they should be. Although the real T-Rex juveniles were only 10% of the weight of adults, they were already more than half the length! Each of those T-Rexes should be over 6m long, and weigh nearly a metric tonne! The Ark Encounter doesn’t even have enclosures that big! There is no way they could fit real juvenile T-Rexes on the Ark Encounter!

[1] Yes, he uses metric units in allcaps, which is confusing. ICR’s editing process is pretty bad.