The Story Behind the Story—the Fighting Dinosaurs Photo

What do you do when your publication needs to secure the rights to an important photograph and your request gets denied—not just once, but by everyone who owns a copy? What do you do when that deadline is fast approaching and the story just won’t be complete without that image?

In the case of the well-known “fighting dinosaurs” photo, you pray—and you pray hard. That’s what the team of photo researchers for Answers magazine did when several prestigious museums, all owning copies of this amazing photo, refused to grant permission to publish the photograph.

“Since it was obvious that we were coming across difficult obstacles, we lifted it up in prayer continually,” a photo researcher for Answers magazine commented. “We knew the Lord would need to provide a small miracle to get the image.”

The fact that this remarkable fossil find was no longer in the United States, but took residence in a Mongolian museum, made the need for God’s provision even stronger.

While many prayed for that small miracle, the research team conducted a search on Google that turned up an image of the two “fighting dinosaurs” posted on the website of a Mongolian travel agency.

Over the course of three weeks, emails were exchanged with an individual from the travel agency. Not knowing if the agency owned a high-resolution copy of the image since the photo on the website was small, the team asked about obtaining permission to publish the picture in Answers magazine.

To everyone’s delight, not only was the photo a good resolution, it was perhaps the best photo the staff had ever seen of the dinosaur fossils.

Ultimately, the Lord provided a back door to be able to get this image. We are very grateful to the Lord first, and to the travel agency for providing the image. What an awesome God we serve!