Here’s something that I suspect most people don’t know: Charles Spurgeon had no issues with the earth being very old and countless generations of beasts living and dying before mankind appeared. From a sermon on unconditional election, preached on September 2, 1855:

Can any man tell me when the beginning was? Years ago we thought the beginning of this world was when Adam came upon it. But we have discovered that thousands of years before that God was preparing chaotic matter to make it a fit abode for man, putting races of creatures upon it who might die and leave behind the marks of His handiwork and marvelous skill before He tried His hand on man.

Now Spurgeon was no friend of biological evolution. From a sermon preached on August 31, 1890:

If any of you shall live fifty years, you will see that the philosophy to today will be a football of contempt for the philosophy of that period. They will speak, amidst roars of laughter, of evolution; and the day will come, when there will not be a child but will look upon it as being the most foolish notion that ever crossed the human mind. I am not a prophet, nor the son of a prophet; but I know what has befallen many of the grand discoveries of the great philosophers of the past; and I expect that the same thing will happen again.

(See also this or this or this or this.) Even though he strongly opposed evolution, he evidently did not think that “death before the fall” is a problem for a correct understanding of the Bible and redemptive history.