The National Geographic Society over the decades has consistently held closely to the secular perspective in its treatments of history and science. This is seen in all articles in National Geographic publications by its devotion to deep time and macroevolution. Articles on dinosaurs in particular rely heavily on the telling of stories that appeal to our human appetites for mystery and adventure. Great effort is placed on splendid (fictional) paintings with imaginative details of things discussed in the dinosaur stories. These starting points in the Nat Geo articles mean that truth can be, and often is, sacrificed. In my opinion, most National Geographic stories about dinosaurs are aimed at the readership level of the fourteen-year-old child. Unfortunately, most children of that age have not yet learned the importance of critical thinking and tend to believe everything they read. Nat Geo knows this fact, and so fantastic dinosaur stories of this type are the usual result.
In 2024 Nat Geo published a book with the title, Dinosaurs—A New Look at the Prehistoric Icons.* I am writing this article as number three in a series on various parts of this Nat Geo book. My article #3 will cover the chapter in the book called “Ode on Velociraptor a Most Misunderstood Species.” This particular article is the one article in the book written by Amy McKeever, and one that she originally published on NationalGeographic.com several years prior to the book being published.
In all secular dinosaur stories, the assumption of deep time is foremost. What is not ever explained is that the deep time is a foundational assumption and not a historical or scientific fact. The geological timeline was developed based on assumed jumps of one kind of life to the next evolved kind. Various guesses about how long these jumps might have taken are then added up to get the millions of years. Of course, no one has ever witnessed any of these assumed evolutionary jumps either in the present or in the fossils in the rock record. The ages of sedimentary rocks are then determined by the artificial predesigned order of the fossils in the geological timeline. This timeline and the principle of uniformitarianism are taken totally on faith by evolutionists. It is not science!
In the Nat Geo article “Ode on Velociraptor a Most Misunderstood Species,” the same evolutionary and deep time assumptions are seen everywhere. The article authoritatively states (page 50) that “Velociraptor roamed central and eastern Asia between about 74 and 70 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.” And “There’s strong consensus among scientists that today’s birds are actually dinosaurs, and that they evolved from theropods, a family of three-toed predators that included Velociraptor mongoliensis and Tyrannosaurs rex.” These statements are perfect examples of what I am calling “Nat Geo dinosaur stories.” There are some respected secular and creationist scientists who do not hold to this “strong consensus.” And history is filled with examples of consensus science leading down the wrong path. In addition, the biblical creationist believes in God’s Word which says that birds were created on Day 5 ahead of the land animals (that we call dinosaurs) that were created on Day 6. This fact precludes the possibility that birds evolved from dinosaurs.
Photo of a full-size replica of a Velociraptor mongoliensis skeleton in the Dinosaur & Fossil Museum at the Mount St. Helens Creation Center in Castle Rock, WA
Next, I want to look at the article’s position that Velociraptor had some sort of plumage. For most of the 20th century Velociraptor was depicted as a dinosaur that was reptile-like and with scales covering its skin. The Nat Geo article reads: “Researchers have long suspected that Velociraptors were feathered rather than covered with reptilian scales. In 2007, a study published in the journal Science found that a Velociraptor mongoliensis fossil had quill knobs—bumps along its forearm that anchor feather quills to the bone and are common in modern birds.”
From this one-page 2007 article in Science pretty much the entire secular community has concluded that Velociraptors, and any other fossil animal anything like them, had feathers. It is pretty clear that the driving force behind this is less due to the evidence and more due to the presupposition that birds and dinosaurs are the same kind. First, please understand that I have no problem with dinosaurs having feathers. God could have created some of them to have feathers. The problem is that I do not agree that dinosaurs and birds are the same created kind. I also dispute the tendency for secular paleontologists to expand the concept of feathers in some dinosaurs to the idea that they must have all evolved them at one time or another for various purposes.
The image below shows Figure 1 of the subject Science article “Feather Quill Knobs in the Dinosaur Velociraptor,” 21 Sep 2007, Vol 317, Issue 5845, p. 1721. Please read through the caption below the images in the figure and notice the scale of each section where 1-inch equals 25.4 mm or 2.54 cm.
Figure 1 from Science Article on Quill Knobs.
Personally, I am not able to discern the “bumps” on the 4.3-inch-long Velociraptor ulna in view A, however I can see what could be bumps in enlarged view B. They do not look much like the turkey vulture bumps in View C. So, assuming that the ulna fossil bone is from a Velociraptor (a fact which according to the latest science may need to be reevaluated) then I am able to consider the conclusion by the authors of the article which reads: “Quill knobs in Velociraptor could reflect retention of feathers from smaller possibly volant ancestors, but such feathers may have had other functions. Although thermoregulatory effects of secondaries on the ulna would be negligible, such feathers could have been used for display, in shielding nests for thermal control, or for creating negative lift during incline running. Whether this feature represents retention of ancestral function or the cooption for other purposes, the presence of quilled feathers on the posterior of the arms in a medium-sized derived, clearly nonvolant dromaeosaur can now be established.”
From this conclusion it can be seen that the “feathers on the arms” story does indeed come from the referenced research in the Science paper. Before I evaluate the actual research, let us take a look at how some of the paleontological artists have evaluated the paper’s conclusion.
Velociraptor with Feathers on Arms from Nat Geo Dinosaurs Book.
Velociraptor with Feathers on Arms from Paul.
Velociraptor with Feathers on Arms from Dixon.
Here are my biblical creationist comments regarding feathers on Velociraptor:
1. Presently the morphological characteristics of Velociraptor are determined primarily from skeletal fossils. The skeleton of Velociraptor comprises a small amount of the complete animal and there is little known directly about its internal organs.
2. Evolutionists assume that one kind of animal can evolve into another kind due to the assumption of deep time. There is no real science that shows this can happen given any amount of time.
3. Neither Velociraptor nor Archaeopteryx have a skeletal structure that would indicate they could have flown in the air. Since Archaeopteryx fossils are found in rock layers assumed to be millions of years older (Jurassic period) than Velociraptor fossils (Cretaceous period), this causes problems for evolutionists to imagine a logical evolutionary path for feather evolution. Thus, the assumption in the Science article that the (later) Velociraptor must have “retention of feathers from smaller possibly volant ancestors.” A look at the two renditions below illustrates the great similarity between the Archaeopteryx and Velociraptor skeletal designs.
Archaeopteryx Skeletal Design per Paul.
Velociraptor Skeletal Design per Paul.
4. Since neither Archaeopteryx nor Velociraptor could have flown and their external makeup was mostly not birdlike, I think that they were not birds—they were dinosaurs (or for Archaeopteryx perhaps a fraud or a mosaic). The attempts to portray them to be birdlike are just stories.
5. Some dinosaur-like fossils (e.g. Archaeopteryx) look to have associated feather imprints along with their bones. No such feather imprints have yet been found with Velociraptor
6. I do not understand how evolutionists can be satisfied with the supposed extinction of all dinosaurs 65 million years ago and yet are fine with the current existence of thousands of species of birds, mammals and other lifeforms. If the dinosaurs had so much in common with today’s birds, why couldn’t they survive a little asteroid impact in the area of current day Mexico? The global Flood at the time of Noah explains all of this so much better!
7. Finally, for the authors of the Science paper to state that the presence of what may be quill feather knobs on what is thought to be a 4-inch-long Velociraptor fossil ulna bone; may prove to be premature or even incorrect as evidence for feathers in Velociraptor. That is, a lot of conclusions have been made with very little evidence.
Velociraptor’s Killer Claw:
Although scientists once theorized the [killer] claws may have been used for slashing, most now believe that the dinosaur used them to pierce and pin down prey as hawks do (page 51).
Either of the proposed uses of the claw protruding from the second toe of each foot is okay with me. It did seem a bit unusual to assume an animal would jump through the air to slash a victim with a claw on its foot. The replicas of the claw that I have seen and handled do not seem to be sharp enough to slash anything. However, I think the main reason for the change of opinion regarding the claw is that with the new assumption that is now in vogue that Velociraptor must have behaved like today’s eagles and hawks. And today’s bird raptors are observed to use their claws to pierce and pin down their prey.
Whichever story is chosen we must remember they are just that, stories.
J.D. Mitchell
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7 NIV)
Then Job replied to the LORD: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely, I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” (Job 42:1-3 NIV)
*Dinosaurs—A New Look at the Prehistoric Icons, National Geographic Partners, LLC, Meredith Operations Corporation, New York, NY publisher, 2024.
Related CEC articles that you can find on this website:
- “Archaeopteryx.”
- “Archaeopteryx Fact Sheet.”
- “The Power of Presuppositions.”
- “Transitioning a Dinosaur into a Bird.”
- “Historical Certainty & Millions of Years.”
Please plan to stop and take a look at the Velociraptor replica skeleton and the Archaeopteryx fossil casts at the Dinosaur & Fossil Museum at the Mount St. Helens Creation Center in Castle Rock, WA, if you are ever in the area.
