(First Tyrannosaurus rex model, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, circa 1950—click to enlarge)
Devotee: Śrīla Prabhupāda, I was once told by some devotees that you had said in some previous age of Kali, the dinosaurs, gigantic animals, were on the earth.
Prabhupāda: I said?
Devotee: They say that you said. (laughs)
Prabhupāda: (laughs) I never said. I never bother with these nonsense things.
Devotee: They have got so many bones in the museums showing these gigantic animals.
Prabhupāda: Not gigantic. There are bones. But that animal is still there, whalefish.
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. Very big body.
Devotee: Some have become extinct.
Prabhupāda: Why they should be extinct?
Devotee (2): No longer on the earth.
Devotee: No longer on this planet.
Prabhupāda: Not necessarily. They are within the ocean.
Devotee (3): No, other animals.
Prabhupāda: What other animals?
Devotee: Those gigantic, they called them...
Devotee (2): Brontasaurus.
Devotee: Tyrannasaurus. Gigantic animals, they say are meat-eaters.
Devotee (2): Dinosaurus.
Devotee (3): Tetrasaurus.
Prabhupāda: Another imagination. These are actual facts…
Devotee (3): They just made up different compositions of bones and then drew some outlines on them.
Prabhupāda: Yes. They are imagination.
Devotee (3): But you said in Hawaii though that there are some animals that are as big as skyscrapers?
Prabhupāda: Yes, these are birds. It is far from this earth though. They travel from one planet to another.
Devotee: So these bones that they have found of these gigantic animals, they were all living underneath the water.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Devotee: Not on the land.
Prabhupāda: Maybe. But the list is there: jalajā nava-lakṣāṇi. There are 900,000 different forms, and how many we have seen? There is information in the śāstra. Paśavas triṁśal-lakṣāṇi. Three million different types of animals.
Devotee (3): We've seen a few hundred at most.
Prabhupāda: That's all. (laughs) That is also doubtful.
Devotee: Kṛṣṇa incarnates into every species of life. He can appear in any form.
Prabhupāda: Yes. Otherwise, why the form came? Janmādy asya yataḥ (SB 1.1.1). If we have to accept this sūtra, that everything emanates from Him, so unless Kṛṣṇa has got such similar form...?
Devotee (3): That's one argument that always defeats the impersonalists. They can't explain how forms have come from something without form.
Prabhupāda: Impersonalists are neophytes. My Guru Mahārāja used to say, "With poor fund of knowledge." Their knowledge is imperfect.
(Srila Prabhupada Morning Walk, Los Angeles, June 8, 1976)
Devotee: Scientists are very excited about the comet because they think that it's made of the primordial substance of the universe, and they think they'll be able to find out some clue how the solar system was created by examining the comet with their telescopes. (laughter)
Prabhupāda: Let them talk all nonsense. We say in Bengali, pāgale ki nā bole, chāgale ki nā khāya. The goat can eat everything, and a madman can speak anything. (laughter) Pāgale ki nā khāya... pāgale ki nā bole, chāgale ki nā khāya.
Devotee (2): Are the living entities on the comet, are they very demoniac or intelligent or...?
Prabhupāda: Not necessarily demoniac. Two classes of men are always there: intelligent and demon. (break)
Devotee (3): ...comet. They just discovered it one or two years ago. They said that if it ever passed by the earth before, it was the time of the dinosaurs.
Prabhupāda: Dinosaur?
Devotee (3): Yes. Over fifty thousand years ago.
Prabhupāda: (laughs) He cannot say what happened yesterday, and he's speaking fifty thousand years ago.
(Srila Prabhupada Morning Walk, Los Angeles, January 3, 1974)
Devotee: At that point, they are going to come up with the point that "How about dinosaurs?" They are going to ask like that.
Prabhupāda: That is imagination, where is dinosaur finding.
Devotee: They say they have all the bones.
Prabhupāda: No, they are describing maybe another animal. That is existing. That is Timiṅgila, they can swallow up big, big whale fishes. That big, bones, they are living still. Nothing is extinct. They are already there.
Devotee (2): Did these dinosaurs exist, or is it just their imagination?
Prabhupāda: The big animal exists. I call it dinosaur or finosaur, that is your choice. Big animals existing. Timiṅgila, I said the name, Timiṅgila, still exist.
Devotee (2): Still exist.
Prabhupāda: Oh, yes. They are always existing. Water elephants. There are elephants in water. Everything.
Devotee (2): So there is no such thing as extinction.
Prabhupāda: No extinction, there is no question of extinction.
Devotee (2): If these animals were on this planet some millions of years ago, they are still here, is that correct?
Prabhupāda: Yes. What do you know what are there within the water? You can take information from the śāstras. It is not possible for you to see and go into the water, how big, big animals are there.
Devotee (3): But it's possible that an animal may disappear from one planet, but still be on another planet, though, like that.
Prabhupāda: No.
Devotee (3): Because they claim that even within recorded history...
Prabhupāda: They claim everything. That is... There is no question.
Devotee: (indistinct) fossil, they are called fossil record.
Prabhupāda: That is another thing. You can get a dead animal's body, but what is that?
Devotee: They claim that many species are extinct.
Prabhupāda: How they are extinct?
Devotee (2): Well, like, they say that within modern history,
Prabhupāda: First thing is they are all imperfect speculators. So what is the value of their sport? We don't take any value of it.
Devotee (3): They don't know where these animals are, that's all.
Prabhupāda: They, simply like child, they are speculating. If he's imperfect, then what is the value of his speculation? There is no value.
(Srila Prabhupada Discussion, Washington, D.C., July 3, 1976)
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