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For much of the nineteenth century, the majority of respected stratigraphers were serial creationists who read the rocks as recording successive extinctions followed by new creations, a process that generated progress in vertebrate structure. Beginning after World War I, Leviathan and Behemoth were cited by Young Earth Creationists—a minority among anti-Darwinians—as Mesozoic species observed by humans. This view spread rapidly after World War II. However, the anatomy and behavior of these beings, as portrayed in Ugaritic and Hebrew literature, leads to a firmer identification. The Leviathan of Job has powerful jaws armed with great teeth; skull armor renders hooks impotent; body armor of scales set so close together that they repel spears; water is thrashed into foam by twisting death rolls; this is altogether an accurate rendition of the Nile Crocodile. The Behemoth is a young, adult male African Elephant distinguished by grass-eating habits and an enormous, uncontrolled male organ: “tail like a cedar tree.”

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