How can fossils be millions of years old when the earth was created only 6000 years ago?

Dear Gramps,
I am having trouble with the concept of dinosaurs. The earth was created only 6,000 years ago according to the bible, yet scientists have determined by carbon dating and other methods that fossils are millions of years old. My understanding of the bible tells me that God created the earth from the matter of other planets, to create Earth. Isn’t THAT where they came from? And that all the Jurassic, Triassic, etc type periods happened on those planets, not on Earth? Science has claimed that all of those events have happened on this planet, but that is impossible since it is only 6,000 years old. Any insight would be appreciated
Mindy, from Las Vegas, Nevada

Dear Mindy,
There is no place in the Bible that says that the earth was created only six thousand years ago. That’s when the bible narrative begins, but it says nothing about the creation of the earth. Further, to speak about time, or to try to measure time before about 4000bc actually has no meaning. We learn from the scriptures that the earth exists IN TIME for only seven thousand years—
Q. What are we to understand by the book which John saw, which was sealed on the back with seven seals?
A. We are to understand that it contains the revealed will, mysteries, and the works of God; the hidden things of his economy concerning this earth during the seven thousand years of its continuance, or its temporal existence D&C 77:6.
Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden at some indeterminate time before that—
But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it; for in the time that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Now I, Abraham, saw that it was after the Lord’s time, which was after the time of Kolob; for as yet the Gods had not appointed unto Adam his reckoning Abraham 5:13.
Please notice that in the above scripture is says  for in the time that thou eatest thereof, not  for in the day that thou eatest thereof. The words, time and day, are both translated from the same word in Hebrew, so they could be translated either way. So the word, day, in the Genesis account of the seven days of creation should really be interpreted as the seven times or periods of creation.
Our geologists, paleontologists and anthropologists, working with only telestial knowledge, naturally assume that time as we know it has extended forever into the past. Well, not forever, only for the last 13.7 billion years, when science concludes that the universe started. Don’t believe that either, since the universe, the creation of God, is infinite both in extension and duration.
Gramps