How Could People and Dinosaurs Live Together?

Short answer: they didn't, not any more than people and lions live together today (Elsa is an exception*).

Longer answer. I'll start with the objection.

"This doesn't work. For millions of years, dinosaurs roamed all of the earth. There were millions and billions of dinosaurs all over the continents, even on modern Antarctica, back then there would have been no place in the world where you could live without bumping into a dinosaur!"

OK, do you have evidence for that claim?

First, I'd like to note, not all of the dinos were dangerous, and technically, some dangerous creatures featured in dinosaur books weren't dinosaurs (Dimetrodon, Pterodactylus, Mososaurus ...). Have a look at these guys whom I salvaged from a google site now down, onto a blog of mine:

• Bradysaurus 2.5 to 3 m, a pretty big thing, but given the angle of the legs, probably moved somewhat slowly. Think of it like meeting a giant turtle in a fantasy novel.
• Hipposaurus boonstrai Skull length: 21 cm, Length: 1.2 m ... bigger than a dog (except a Great Dane), would reach you to the knees. Not the best guy to make angry, if you can avoid it, but probably not the worst threat to your life either.
• Pareiasaurus serridens 2.5 m. A plant eater.

Now, the other thing is, Young Earth Creationism means, most dinosaurs we find, perhaps all of them (outside cryptozoology), were buried in the Flood. A pretty recent Flood. We have a fair sample of things that lived on land back then, the three fellers I linked to being from South Africa and probably all from some part of Karroo. Border Cave is post-Flood, but pre-Flood caves like Sibudu Cave, Klasies River Caves, some layers of Wonderwerk Cave are all a fair distance from Karroo. And seem to have no dinos associated with them.

"But come on, there are millions of fossils we've found!"

According to Slate**, no:

There are currently about 3,000 so-called “full” dinosaur specimens—complete or near-complete skeletons or just a complete or near-complete skull—in museums around the United States

...

The United States, China, and Argentina have especially numerous fossil deposits, followed by Canada, England, and Mongolia. (China and Argentina have proved especially fertile as of late. Since 1990, there has been a 132 percent and 165 percent increase in genera discovery in these two countries, respectively.) These six countries account for 75 percent of the world’s dinosaur finds. Australia, Europe, and Africa are less fertile.

So, if the US has only 3000 full skeleta of dinos, and if this is matched by very few other countries, which cover a restricted area of our earth where God put us, and put our pre-Flood ancestors and their neighbours, I think there was actually a good chance of living in the pre-Flood world without bumping into a dangerous dinosaur, or even an uncomfortable one, like possibly the Pareiosaurus was.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Alfonsus Maria Liguori
2.VIII.2025

* The generic of that song has maybe something to say about a bad idea of Mr. Trump's, hope he changes his mind ...
** Here is the link:

Will we ever run out of dinosaur bones?
By Kim Gittleson | Aug 28, 20095:31 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2009/08/will-we-ever-run-out-of-dinosaur-bones.html