Dinosaurs in the Torah: How Jewish Tradition Predicted Prehistoric Giants

The Torah tells us about giant creatures from the time of Creation: “And God created the great sea monsters” (Bereishit 1:21). The Sages in the Midrash described prehistoric giant animals that later became extinct. It is astounding that thousands of years ago, our Sages already learned from the Torah and the Oral Tradition about the existence of massive creatures that once roamed the earth and disappeared.

In the Midrash, the name re’em (plural: re’emim) was used to describe giant beasts from the early days of creation, whose size reached extraordinary heights.

One Midrash tells how King David climbed onto the back of one of the last re’emim, thinking it was a mountain, and nearly lost his life: “Rabbi Huna bar Idi said: When David was tending the sheep, he found a re’em sleeping in the wilderness and thought it was a mountain, so he climbed upon it and pastured his flock. The re’em awoke and stood up, and David was riding on its horns, which reached up to the heavens. At that moment David prayed: ‘Master of the Universe, if You deliver me from this re’em, I will build You a Temple one hundred cubits high, like the horns of the re’em.’ Some say they measured its length; others say they measured its circumference” (Midrash Tehillim, Psalm 22).

The Talmud discusses the size of the re’emim and asks how Noach managed to bring them into the Ark. The answer given is that he brought them in as calves, so they fit; another opinion says that Noach kept them tethered outside the Ark (Zevachim 113b).

In earlier times, such stories might have seemed like allegory or fable, but after fossils of giant animals were discovered, their reality can no longer be denied.

It is no less remarkable that the Torah identified such creatures with the word tanninim — great reptiles or lizards. For those who believe in the Torah, these discoveries are no surprise as they recognize the divine source of our historical knowledge. What was preserved in Jewish tradition has now become established scientific fact.

Why did the dinosaurs disappear from the earth?

The mystery of the sudden appearance and disappearance of dinosaurs is one of modern science’s greatest puzzles. Dinosaurs have no earlier fossil record; they appear abruptly in what scientists call the “Jurassic Period” and then vanish just as suddenly. The reason for their extinction is still unknown, since other mammals and reptiles survived until today. What catastrophe could have destroyed specifically the dinosaur family that once dominated the prehistoric world?

In Tehillim (Psalms) it says: “You broke the sea with Your strength; You smashed the heads of the sea monsters upon the waters” (Tehillim 74:13). This verse, together with Oral Tradition, teaches that the great tanninim perished in the depths of the sea. When exactly?

The Midrash associates the great tanninim with the leviathan (Bava Batra 75a), perhaps because of their immense size or aquatic habitat. Rashi explains, based on this Midrash, that the tanninim were already destroyed on the fifth day of Creation, so that Adam, who was created on the sixth day, never saw them. However, other Midrashim speak of giant animals known as re’emim that survived until Noach’s time. According to these Midrashim, all the giant beasts perished in the Flood, and only the calves of the re’emim, which Noach took into the Ark, survived (Zevachim 113b).

It is possible that tradition here describes two waves of dinosaur extinctions (dinosaurs being, in fact, a large family of reptiles of many kinds, both terrestrial and marine): one extinction during the days of Creation, and a second during the Flood.

Rabbi Meir Leibush (the Malbim), one of the classic commentators on the Torah, addressed many apparent conflicts between Torah and science. Over 150 years ago, he wrote extensively about the giant animals created at the beginning of time. In his commentary on the story of Noach, the Malbim explained that the Creator wiped out the massive beasts in the Flood because most of them were unfit to inhabit the post-Flood world, and therefore they were not brought into the Ark. After the waters subsided, God caused the earth to swallow their enormous carcasses so that they would not hinder human life in the renewed world.

Nevertheless, smaller dinosaurs certainly did survive the Flood aboard Noach’s Ark, since not all dinosaurs were giants. “Dinosaur” is the name given to a broad family of reptiles that existed in many different sizes.

Crocodiles are today the largest reptiles we know, and they are living descendants of the ancient dinosaur family. Thus, one branch of the family clearly survived the Flood, as Noach must have brought them into the Ark. (The fate of the re’em calves is not known to us.) Alongside crocodiles, giant iguanas and monitor lizards are also classified within the broader dinosaur family. From this we understand that not all dinosaurs perished in the Flood — at least not the smaller species.