PARIS – A speaker Monday challenged the view of dinosaurs dying millions of years before men ever knew of them, arguing that the two species once lived together.

James Gardner, a retired electronics businessman and founder of Canopy Ministries, completed a lecture tour Monday evening with a discussion at the Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School auditorium.

The lecture was a scheduled event of Answers in Genesis, a ministry “dedicated to enabling Christians to defend their faith and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively.” In particular, the ministry looks to interpret the book of Genesis and challenges the ideas of evolution and a planet billions of years old.

“There is not any subject I know of that elicits more interest and excitement, especially among younger generations, than this subject we call ‘Dinosaurs and Dragons,'” Gardner said.

According to Gardner, dinosaurs were created by God in the Garden of Eden, and were originally all vegetarians. He said dinosaurs were affected, along with man, by the original sin of Adam and Eve.

Gardner theorized that dinosaurs would have been included on Noah’s Ark prior to the great flood, with larger species represented by juveniles. He said passages in the Bible and ancient literature mentioning “dragons” may be referring to the thunder lizards.

“They are one and the same thing,” Gardner said. “The word dinosaur wasn’t created until after the King James version was translated,” he said, referring to the Bible.

Gardner said the discovery of soft tissue found within dinosaur bones as well as a mummified duck-billed hadrosaur support the idea that dinosaurs walked on the Earth within the past thousands of years, saying mummies only last thousands of years. He said Native American petroglyphs also appear to depict long-necked dinosaurs.

Gardner said scientists’ depictions of dinosaurs from skeletal structures could be incorrect, noting how the large front teeth of a camel could be mistaken for those of a carnivore.

“They make guesses,” he said. “They are educated guesses, but they are guesses nonetheless.”

As to the fate of the dinosaurs, Gardner said they may have been hunted to extinction by humans following the great flood.

On Sunday, Gardner spoke at the Oxford Advent Christian Church, South Paris Baptist Church, and Grace Baptist Church in Paris. The topics included discussions of evolution, humanism, ancient man and public education.

The lecture series was sponsored by Concerned Women for America, an organization that aims to promote biblical values through prayer, education and public policy.

Gardner speaks for Canopy Ministries, but also lectures for Answers in Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research, according to his Answers in Genesis profile.