How Did the Woolly Rhino Die?

Genesis 6:19

“And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female.”

It has long been assumed that the Siberian woolly rhinoceros died out because of hunting by people. Evolutionists have, in the past, assumed that the extinction of the woolly rhino coincided with the migration of humans to Siberia. Now a new theory has emerged, which was headlined on the Science Daily website as “Ancient genomes suggest woolly rhinos went extinct due to climate change”. Analyses of the genetic make-up of woolly rhinos have been compared with alleged evolutionary dates. As creationists, we do not accept such dates because the Bible makes it clear that the world was created about 6,000 years ago, while the Flood occurred about 4,400 years ago.

However, we do agree with the article that woolly rhinos had a common ancestor with the extant five species of rhinoceros. This is not evolution; as we have frequently explained, God made animals according to their kind [baramin] so that, after the Flood, they could cope with changing environmental conditions, adapting by a process called speciation. Scientists now suggest that the end of the Ice Age could have created conditions with which the highly cold-adapted woolly rhino would not have been able to cope. The world would have gone through the Ice Age in the centuries immediately following the Flood as water vapor from warm oceans condensed in a cold atmosphere.

As is always the case, good modern scientific research on issues, like the extinction of the woolly rhino, is consistent with the biblical account of the world.

Prayer: We pray, Lord, that scientists and non-scientists alike will turn to You for truth. Keep us always faithful, Lord, to Your word. Amen.

Author: Paul F. Taylor

Ref: Cell Press. “Ancient genomes suggest woolly rhinos went extinct due to climate change, not overhunting.” ScienceDaily, 13 August 2020. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200813113157.htm>. Image: Woolly rhino and mammoths, CC BY-SA 2.5 Generic.