Miller and Roper argue that animal references should be evaluated alongside cross-cultural naming practices, preservation conditions, and the difficulty of establishing final extinction dates. They propose that some species could have survived later than their youngest known remains, and that some familiar names may designate different American animals; they present these as possible explanations for the text’s animal references.
- Wade E. Miller and Matthew Roper, “Animals in the Book of Mormon: Challenges and Perspectives,” BYU Studies Quarterly 56, no. 4 (2017): 133–175.
Populations of animals (or plants) could have lived for prolonged periods and yet provide little or no evidence of their existence.