Alleged Dinosaurs in Ancient Art

Part of Kuban's Paluxy web site

Many strict or "young-earth" creationists (YECs) have claimed that dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts are depicted on ancient art, supposedly proving that the creatures existed in modern times, and overthrowing the conventional geologic timetable. These claims involve several problems.

First, even if ancient humans saw dinosaurs, pterosaurs, or other "prehistoric" creatures and depicted them on artwork, it would not disprove evolution or conventional geology. There is no reason why a plant or animal group could not have survived longer than previously thought, and paleontologists have always celebrated such finds. Examples include the discovery of a living population of coelacanths (lobed finned fishes), and the Ginkgo, and the Dawn Redwood.*

Paul Taylor Edmontosaurus intepretation
Fig. 1. Supposed "Edmontosaurus" petroglyph
Unnecessary outline (left) and contrived reconstruction (right)

Alleged dinosaur petroglyph Eagle petroglyph
Fig. 2. The acutal petroglyph
in Havai Supai Canyon (Grand Canyon) Fig.21b. Eagle petroglyph similar to
many others in the western U.S.
in Havai Supai Canyon (Grand Canyon)
Modern Edmontosaurus Depiction
Fig. 3b. Edmontosaurus reconstruction (Credit: Wikipedia)

Edmontosaurus skeleton
Fig. 3. Edmontosaurus skeleton.
Credit: Palaeontologia Electronica.
Second, in some cases the objects appear to be hoaxes. This appears to be the case for alleged human and dinosaur depictions on stones or statures from other areas, such as the so-called "Ica Stones" from Peru (which supposedly even show humans riding pterodactyls), and figurines from Acámbaro, Mexico. Although strongly promoted by a handful of YECs (Baugh, 2010; Patton, 2008; Swift, 2006) both collections are considered hoaxes by virtually all serious archaeologists (Blanton, 1999; Ross, 2007; Kuban 2008), and are rejected or questioned even by many creationists.

Third, certain animals that are often considered "prehistoric," such as mammoths, mastodons, and saber-cats, are known to have lived alongside humans, in some cases only 15 thousand years ago or less. So the depiction of these particular creatures in ancient art is not even a geologic anomaly, even if the artists saw the living animals.

Even though no pterosaurs (flying reptiles), or giant marine reptiles like plesiosaurs or ichthyosaurs, or massive dinosaurs like carnosaurs, sauropods ("brontosaurs"), stegosaurs, or ceratopsians have been found alive today, technically another group of dinosaurs is not even extinct. They are called birds. Virtually all modern paleontologists regard birds as not only the descendents of bipedal dinosaurs, but proper members of a dinosaur clad (feathered theropods, to be more precise).

Collard Lizard
Fig. 4. Collared Lizard
Copyright Š 2005, Jerry Shue
Canyonlands Natural History Association

Forth, even if some ancient art depicts real prehistoric creatures, it need not mean the artist saw the living creature. The artwork could have been based instead on fossil remains. Although the point is often ignored or minimized by YECs, it is entirely possible that ancient people sometimes came across fossilized remains of ancient creatures, and drew more or less plausible deductions about their appearance, or combined them with what they knew of contemporaneous animals. This consideration alone largely discounts any anti-evolutionary value in most of the artifacts and petroglyphs in question.

Fifth, many of the alleged depictions of prehistoric beasts are rather ambiguous or have more than one reasonable interpretation--often being at least as compatible with a modern animal or stylized depiction of it than any prehistoric creature. In many cases YEC promoters of human-dinosaur cohabitation seem to ignore or dismiss viable alternative candidate animals, or make contrived or manipulated comparisons to foster their view. For example, in his creationism-promoting book The Great Dinosaur Mystery, which is aimed at young readers, Paul Taylor shows a petroglyph from Arizona (which he highlights with a white outline), alongside a painting labeled "Edmontosaurus" (a type of two-legged Hadrosaur dinosaur). As depicted by Taylor, the two profiles look virtually identical. To an unsuspecting reader (especially a child) this might be impressive, and foster the conclusion artist must have seen such a dinosaur.

However, Taylor's comparison is misleading at best. The Edmontosaurus painting he shows did not come from any scientific book or article; rather, he evidently created it himself to match the petroglyph.** It presents a pose and features not even close to what modern paleontologists consider reasonable for this dinosaur (Fig. 3). Taylor's rendition shows the head and forelimbs positioned very unnaturally. He also shows the tail draped on the ground, with the end pointed up. In contrast, anatomic study of hadrosaur skeletons and footprint evidence indicates that they like most dinosaurs held their tails well off the ground. They also could evidently walk in a quadrupedal or semi-bipedal manner, but even in the later case, would have their forelimbs held in front of their chest, and be in a more forward leaning posture. Even the white outline of the petroglyph is problematic. Any clear photo of the image already shows strong contrast, and needs no outline. Taylor's bold outline makes the tail appear very pointed at the end, and thus more reptilian than the actual petroglyph.

Taylor also fails to reveal that numerous Native American petroglyphs of eagles and other birds closely resemble the petroglyph in question. Nor does he seem to consider the possibility that the petroglyph could represent a lizard standing on its hind legs, as they sometimes do. Indeed, the petroglyph resembles both known eagle petroglyphs and standing lizard profiles more closely than any realistic reconstruction of an Edmontosaurus.

One may question why the image in question seems to show some ambiguity in regards to one of the legs and tail, but sometimes petroglyphs show one or more extremities deformed or combined, for poorly understood reasons. Perhaps the carver was just a bit sloppy (after all, most such images are crude and highly stylized). Perhaps the feature represents a broken tail. Who knows. What is apparent is that Taylor's painting and comparison is contrived at best, and that at least two kinds of modern animals (bird and lizard) are at least as plausible as a hadrosaur dinosaur.

Chinese Dragon
Chinese dragon

Flying Lizard
Flying lizard - native to Southeast Asia

Komodo-Dragon
"Komodo Dragon"

Taylor and a few other strict creationists have also promoted the idea that dragon legends and images that resemble dinosaurs prove that dinosaurs lived in historic times. On a website, Taylor (2010) declares, "The ancient, original "dragon" legends must have come from memories of dinosaurs." However, logic and research point to more prosaic and plausible explanations. First, many dragon depictions, especially Asian ones, appear to largely involve just fanciful renditions and combinations of modern animals--such as snakes, monitors and Dracos ("flying lizards"), fish, and crocodilians. To the extent they contain any uniquely "dinosaurian" features or forms, they could have been based on fossil finds rather live dinosaurs. To this day one can find shops in China selling dinosaur teeth and claws as "dragon bones." Moreover, some of the richest areas for dinosaur fossils occur in China and Mongolia, where dragon legends and images are common. Incredibly, Taylor does not discuss or even mention any of this. While Taylor's motive for his incomplete and misleading treatment is evidently his desire to promote young-earth creationism, even if a live dinosaur were discovered, it would not refute evolution or an old earth, for reasons explained earlier.

Based on Taylor's reasoning, ancient people also must have seen griffins, cyclopes, unicorns, sphinxes, and mermaids--or prehistoric creatures related to them. More likely, just as with dragons, they were combimed products of common living animals, fossil or skeletal remains (or sightings) of rarer ones, and a little imagination or artistic license. Griffins are believed to be based on Protoceratops skulls combined with lion and eagle features; the cyclops legend based on elephant or mammoth skulls, and unicorns possibly inspired by narwhale nose horns (at least they were sometimes sold as unicorn horns in medieval times.

Other claims of dinosaurs in ancient art (Patton, 2006; Swift (2006, 2010), entail similar problems. Often the authors appear to operate under the principle that if an ancient artwork resembles a dinosaur or other prehistoric creature, by golly, that's what it must me-- without adequately exploring alternate candidates and explanations (Kuban, 2010b). This is not a very scholarly approach, and in the long run probably does more to undermine than advance creationist credibility.

Conclusions

Claims of non-avian dinosaurs in ancient art do not stand up to close scrutiny. Often they are based on selective or misleading comparisons, and inadequate consideration of alternate explanations, including the possibility of ancient artwork being based on fossil remains rather than live animals.

Notes

* In contrast, what would disrupt conventional geology would be the opposite type of find, where groups such as humans, whales, cows, bears, horses, or countless other large modern mammals were to be found far earlier in the geologic record than any evolution models allow, such as the early Mesozoic, or anywhere in the Paleozoic Era. However, no such find has ever been convincingly documented, as acknowledged even by major creationists groups such as AIG. This is a serious problem for YEC/Flood Geology models, since it is difficult to explain why there are not countless thousands if not millions of such finds. According to the YEC paradigm, all modern and prehistoric creatures were created and lived together only several thousand year ago, and were all subjected to a violent global flood even more recently (just a few thousand years ago). Moreover, many modern and prehistoric groups have overlapping geographic and ecologic ranges, as well as overlapping size ranges. So, none of the common creationists "Flood Geology" explanations (hydrologic sorting, ecologic zonation, or differential escape abilities) for their not frequently together or at least at the same geologic horizons solves the problem for YECs. In fact, any hydrologic sorting only makes the problem worse, since dinosaurs and large mammals would tend to sort together. The same goes for prehistoric marine creatures like ichthyosaurs and mesosaurs, which would tend to sort with dolphins and porpoises and small whales. But again, they are never found together, nor even at the same geologic horizons. If one adds to that other compelling evidence of extensive episodes of slow, gentle, and non-deposition throughout the geologic column, including vast dinosaur trackways and even expansive nesting sites (Kuban, 2010c), and the young-earth, global Flood model becomes thoroughly untenable.

** The Acknowledgements section of the book attributes the drawing to the author, PaulS. Taylor.

References

Blanton, John. 1999. "The Acambaro dinosaurs". The Newsletter of The North Texas Skeptics, Volume 13, Number 10. http://www.ntskeptics.org/1999/1999october/october1999.htm. Also see the Wikipedia article on the Acambaro figurines at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ac%C3%A1mbaro_figures

Kuban, Glen. 2010a. "Living Pterosaurs?" Web article at: http://paleo.cc/paluxy/livptero.htm

Kuban, Glen. 2010b. "Stegosaurus Carving on a Cambodian Temple?" Web article at: Stegosaurus Carving on a Cambodian Temple?

Kuban, Glen. 2010c. "Fossil Tracks and Other Trace Fossils Falsify Flood Geology" Web article at: http://paleo.cc/ce/tracefos.htm

Patton, Don. 2006. "Dinosaurs in ancient Cambodian temple: Amazing evidence that dinosaurs and humans coexisted." Website article at: http://www.bible.ca/tracks/tracks-cambodia.htm

Patton, 2008. "Art From Ancient Tombs In Peru (Probably Nasca culture)" Web article at: http://www.bible.ca/tracks/peru-tomb-art.htm

Ross, Sara. 2007. "The Ica Stones and Dr. Javier Cabrera" Web article at: http://pseudoarchaeology.org/b03-ross.html

Swift, Dennis. 2006. "Secrets of the Ica Stones and Nazca Lines" (no publisher info).

Swift, Dennis. 2010. "Ancient Dinosaur Depictions." Website article at: http://www.genesispark.com/genpark/ancient/ancient.htm

Taylor, Paul S. 1987. The Great Dinosaur Mystery and the Bible. Master Books. San Diego, CA.

Taylor, Paul, 2010. "Dragons and dinosaurs" Web article at: http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/j-dragon1.html


Fig. 1. Supposed "Edmontosaurus" petroglyph Unnecessary outline (left) and contrived reconstruction (right)


Fig. 2. The acutal petroglyph in Havai Supai Canyon (Grand Canyon)	Fig.21b. Eagle petroglyph similar to many others in the western U.S. in Havai Supai Canyon (Grand Canyon)

Fig. 3b. Edmontosaurus reconstruction (Credit: Wikipedia)

Fig. 3. Edmontosaurus skeleton. Credit: Palaeontologia Electronica.


Fig. 4. Collared Lizard Copyright Š 2005, Jerry Shue Canyonlands Natural History Association

Alleged Dinosaurs in Ancient Art

Conclusions

Notes

References

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