California: Dinosaurs were created, in Cabazon

(For the record... man and dinosaurs did not co-exist. As for God...the proof of "creation" is that, if you find a pocket watch, you know something that complex could not have just appeared, it had to be created.

Which is very true. But a pocket watch is a mechanical device. Life isn't. Life is organic.)

From Record Gazette: Dinosaurs were created, in Cabazon
Not all dinosaur museums are “created” equally.

The giant concrete T-rex and apatosaurus that watch over visitors to the Cabazon Dinosaurs Museum just a mile from the Cabazon outlet malls may be replications of dinosaurs that were rescued aboard Noah’s Ark, according to the museum’s employees and supporters.

The concept is one that 26-year-old Jeff Brock, of Redlands, a sales clerk who started working at the private museum a few months ago, can appreciate.

“I was brought up Christian. Our view — the creationist’s view — wasn’t something I thought about when it came to dinosaurs,” says Brock, who is one of about 10 seasonal employees who works there. “It was a refreshing view on dinosaurs: all creatures were created on the sixth day.” He seemed to support the idea that man and dinosaurs once coexisted, as portrayed in the Flintstones.

Last year, more than 35,000 people paid admission to the museum, also referred to as “The World’s Biggest Dinosaurs” museum.

As recently as 20 years ago, visitors were drawn to the museum from the freeway, as “Dinny” the apatosaurus, and “Mr. Rex” lured passers-by with their dominating presence, rising above the desert.

Within the past decade or so, a couple of restaurants emerged, obscuring their view.

The Cabazon dinosaurs are famous, since nearly 12 million people pass by them annually — and they were featured in movies “The Wizard,” starring Fred Savage, and “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” starring Paul Reubens.

“We’ve been driving by this place for 25 years and finally stopped in,” said Kip Schlum, of Peoria, Ariz., who was exploring the nearly 40-foot tall Mr. Rex with his 4-year-old daughter, Genevieve, last week. Genevieve seemed skittish going up inside Mr. Rex for the first time, but after stepping out of the dinosaur and back into the desert heat, opted to go back up the steep stairs that end in a spiral to peer out of the dinosaur’s mouth. The temperature was cooler and drafty inside Mr. Rex’s open mouth, compared to its base.

Motion sensored animatronic dinosaurs come to life as visitors pass by to pose among them, or to examine samples of real fossils and petrified dinosaur poop.

There aren’t any dinosaur skeletons recreated from archaeological digs or tar pits — all of the creatures on display were created by design.

Dinny and Mr. Rex were constructed from leftover concrete and rebar, left behind after the Interstate 10 freeway was built, and took several years to complete.

Their creator, former Knott’s Berry Farm sculptor Claude Bell, also built a giant concrete turtle that now sits within the museum’s exhibit area.

All of the exhibits are designed to show “both sides: the creationist and the scientific view,” according to sales clerk Angela Crayne, who has worked at the museum for nearly four years, and works as a massage therapist in Yucaipa, where she’s from. “There are two different views, one from evolution and one from religion.”

For example, one sign asks visitors, “Are scales similar to feathers? Nope!” Its explanation suggests that, while evolutionists believe scales from dinosaurs evolved into bird feathers, the Cabazon Dinosaur Museum curators claim that such evolution was not possible.

“Bird feathers and reptile scales are made from the protein keratin, but they are formed differently,” the sign continues. “Battleships and forks are made of iron, but this doesn’t prove they are related, just cousins! It is evidence of the same creator.”

The creationist’s view in what she expected to be a scientific display shocked Taydee Martinez of Valley Center, who drove up from her home near San Diego earlier this week with her husband, David, and children: Aaron, 7, Alexandra, 6, and Sophia, 3.

“The debunking of evolution caught me off guard,” she said. “It’s a little … it’s not what I’ve been reading and exposed to. It’s not that I didn’t like it, I’m just not used to it.”

Kathleen Springer, a senior curator of geological sciences for the San Bernardino County Museum, which is integrating a paleontology exhibit into its Hall of Geological Wonders, says that, since they are a natural history museum, all of their exhibits are science-based.

“We will show multiple lines of evidence based on the scientific method that shows how birds are related to the dinosaurs,” Springer said. “We show the public that science is a process, and let people decide for themselves” how to interpret their displays.

Springer said that she had not visited the Cabazon Dinosaurs Museum.

Raelyn Auge, of Stephenson Ranch in Orange County was visiting for a fourth time on her way to Palm Springs with her husband, Dave, and sons, Rhys, 2 and Donovan, 4.

According to Auge, Donovan is “an avid dinosaur lover.”

“I grew up Christian, and it doesn’t bother me” that the museum’s exhibits offer a creationist and evolutionist perspective, she said. “I think it’s interesting. It’s neat. My husband and I were like, ‘I didn’t know that,’” and pointed to an exhibit that showed pictures of Acambaro, Guanajuato, Mexico dinosaur figurines. The figurines, said to have been discovered in 1944, resemble dinosaurs. A merchant who came upon them paid a local farmer for each one he could find — nearly 32,000 were said to have been unearthed.

An anthropological organization claimed that the figures were fakes; creationists argued that it was impossible for a single farmer and his assistants to have made 32,000 faux figurines.

“How could ancient man have made such accurate models of dinosaurs unless they had seen them?” the exhibit asks.

“It’s interesting,” Auge said.

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Cabazon Dinosaurs, a.k.a. “World’s Biggest Dinosaurs,” 50770 Seminole Dr., Cabazon;