March 12, 2009
Stegosaurus, Rhinoceros, or Hoax?
The controversial carving on the Cambodian Temple. From Stupid Dinosaur Lies.
By the time that our ape ancestors split from the line that would produce chimpanzees, which happened about 4 million to 7 million years ago, non-avian dinosaurs had been extinct for more than 58 million years. Birds, the descendants of one group of small theropod dinosaurs, are the only dinosaurs that survived the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. There are a number of people who reject the scientific view, however, and insist that humans and dinosaurs once lived together within the last 10,000 years or so. These “young Earth creationists” twist Biblical passages to support their view that Tyrannosaurus rex lived peacefully in the Garden of Eden. They also supplement their beliefs with some rather spurious evidence—like a carving found on a Cambodian temple.
It is not known precisely when the carving was first noticed, but during the past several years, creationist groups have been a-twitter about a supposed carving of a Stegosaurus on the popular Ta Prohm temple in Cambodia. (The story recently reappeared on the “All News Web” site, an internet tabloid that specializes in tales of UFOs and other humbugs.) Since the temple was built around the end of the 12th century, some take this bas relief to suggest that Stegosaurus, or something Stegosaurus-like, survived until a few hundred years ago. While certainly not proving their view that dinosaurs and humans were created together less than 10,000 years ago, it is consistent with their beliefs and is a favorite piece of evidence among creationists.
There is a substantial problem, however. Not only does creationism distort nature to fit a narrow theological view, there is no evidence that the carving in question is of a dinosaur. If you look at the carving quickly and at an angle, yes, it does superficially look like a Stegosaurus that a kindergartener made out of play-doh. As anyone who has spent time watching the clouds go by knows, though, an active imagination can turn something plain into something fantastic. If viewed directly, the carving hardly looks Stegosaurus-like at all. The head is large and appears to have large ears and a horn. The “plates” along the back more closely resemble leaves, and the sculpture is a better match for a boar or rhinoceros against a leafy background.
Even so, the sculpture only vaguely looks like a rhino or boar. We can be certain that it is not a representation of a living Stegosaurus, but could it be a more recent attempt at depicting a dinosaur? Indeed, it is quite possible that this carving has been fabricated. There are many sculptures at the temple, and the origin of the carving in question is unknown. There are rumors that it was created recently, perhaps by a visiting movie crew (the temple is a favorite locale for filmmakers), and it is possible that someone created something Stegosaurus-like during the past few years as a joke.
Either way, the temple carving can in no way be used as evidence that humans and non-avian dinosaurs coexisted. Fossils have inspired some myths (see Adrienne Mayor’s excellent book The First Fossil Hunters), but close scrutiny of geological layers, reliable radiometric dating techniques, the lack of dinosaur fossils in strata younger than the Cretaceous, and other lines of evidence all confirm that non-avian dinosaurs became extinct tens of millions of years before there was any type of culture that could have recorded what they looked like. As scientist Carl Sagan said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, and in the case of modern dinosaurs the evidence just isn’t there.
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I read somewhere once that it is a hippo with a lotus flower behind it, a common hindi carving.
Another possibility is that, if genuine, this carving is of a chameleon. The shapes of the head and body are reasonable for this interpretation, and chameleons have spines along their backs (though not as pronounced as in this carving). The tail is wrong, but it is wrong for a stegosaurus as well.
As you’ve said: “anyone who has spent time watching the clouds go by knows, though, an active imagination can turn something plain into something fantastic”. Indeed, if you want to believe is a rhino, or boar, which one is it though?, against a leave backdrop, so be it. But, is that a scientific point of view or something you make up to match your evolutionist perception of reality? I don’t know that the world was made 6000 years ago and I am also positive evolution through natural selection has nothing to do with it, nor does Darwin claim it does. And, by the way, Smithsonian, Adrienne Mayor’s book only proves that someone entrenched in evolutionist belief cannot have an objective understanding of reality even when reality stares right into her face. Are you going to censor this too?
[...] I’ve been wanting to write about this one for some time, and was prompted into action when I saw this discussed on a paleontology blog this morning (Dinosaur Tracking: Stegosaurus, Rhinoceros, or Hoax?). [...]
In 2007, I corresponded with the leading French dinosaur paleontologist Eric Buffetaut, who does fieldwork in Cambodia and Thailand, about this alleged Stegosaurus on the Cambodian temple. Here are Buffetaut’s comments:
“I think this carving is a recent fake. As you mention, it seems to be
a different color from the other blocks, which suggests a recent
addition, which had no time to weather to the same dark color as the
rest. [This block appeared while the temple was being
restored]. People in SE Asia are now perfectly familiar with dinosaurs
and what they may have looked like, so I can easily imagine a local
sculptor deciding to add a dinosaur carving to a Khmer temple (in a
place like Cambodia, restoration of remote ancient buildings is
likely to be done locally with not much supervision by trained
archeologists). I have seen many sandstone carvings of dinosaurs in
Thailand, made by local people as decorations.
Moreover, the head is not at all stegosaur-like. It is too big relative to the
body and in fact it is ceratopsian-like, with a neck frill and what
looks like a horn above the eye. It is totally unlikely that an
ancient Khmer sculptor could have combined parts of two different
dinosaurs in this way (not to mention the fact that no remains of
horned and frilled ceratopsians have ever been found in SE Asia). But
it is just the kind of amusing combination a modern Cambodian who has
seen dinosaur reconstructions in a book or on television could produce.
In my opinion, this carving is a modern creation.”
[...] would be gullible enough to believe in a flying trilobite? That’s almost as absurd as the idea of a stegosaurus living among humans in Cambodia…oh, wait. Posted By: Mark Strauss — Dinos Online | Link | Share/Save | [...]
In wonder we were viewing our Cambodian Stegosaur
When some guy with a monocle burst through the back door
He took out a pen with indelible ink
Said if anyone moves your precious stego’s extinct
We advanced on him slowly, couldn’t believe he would do-it
But then he took his pen and drew a red line clear through it
Alas, poor Stegosaurus, we knew him well
You looked like a dinosaur but now no one can tell
Before making his escape at the back of the residence
He said; Man and dinosaur didn’t coexist, so I’m destroying the evidence
We’ve put together a selection of ancient dinosaur depictions which have in common the fact that they all appear on or within a religious “temple” or cathedral. Currently, one of the most well-known of these depictions is the alleged stegosaurus depiction at the Ta Prohm Temple near Angkor Wat in Cambodia.
This stegosaurus depiction (or so it seems to be) has been debunked in the mind of skeptics by the fairly simple measure of drawing a line through the depiction’s most prominent feature—the armor plating along it’s back.
One can make up their own mind about the depiction as we review it again below. Our section on Dinosaurs in History and Art is extensive enough that we can now categorize the artifacts in a number of different groupings
Dinosaurs in the Temple; The Angkor Wat Stegosaur; the Bi-Pedal Dinosaur and Giant Creature at Umm El-Kanatir and Others
http://s8int.com/WordPress/?p=1075
[...] no record of any kind of Dinotopia, and most of the “evidence” creationists offer are like Rorschach tests; they see what they want to see. Watching humans flee from dinosaurs might make for exciting [...]
I’m quite surprised no one has commented on the similarity between the sculpture and a water buffalo, an animal well known in SE Asia. It quite clearly has a horn on either side of its head with a heavy ridge connecting them across the forehead.
http://www.backpackingmalaysia.com/images/gallery/animals/melaka-water-buffalo.jpg
http://a-z-animals.com/images/animals/water_buffalo2_large.jpg
The supposed frills on the back are, to my eye at least, carved so as to appear behind the animal no as part of the animal.
I think it is interesting that some scientists choose to totally dismiss a “young earth” scenario. Evolution says that everything is getting bigger and stronger, but in all actuality, everything is winding down. If 100,000 years is the best you can get from carbon dating (and everything has carbon), where do you come up with millions or billions of years? There is absolutely no proof of an old earth. Take a look at Dr. Mary Schweitzer’s find with the t-rex bone (soft tissue was found). How can soft tissue be there when they claim it is 68 million years old? Maybe, just maybe, our dates have been wrong. Science may claim to have issues with a “god”, but Science NEVER has issues with the word of God!
The fact is that the depicted creatures on walls are very raw depictions and inaccurate because of the tiny spaces available means that the tail couldnt be completed with thorns. Also, those oars are clearly issued from the spine.
My opinion is that fossilization occurs very rarely, therefore it occurs only whenever a type of specie is widespread on earth. Otherwise, it could never be possible at least to find remnants of rarer species, since fossilization is very rare, assuming that a subspecie of stegosaurus wich bear horns could have lived for a very little time, too short to drop evidence of its existance it’s more than a possibility. Varanus komodoensis has much in common with ancient dinosaurs, except the size wich is a sign of adaptation. I don’t think a common animal like this as old as it could be left any sign of fossilizations yet, still very common it is despite its linked extinct species (common because the rarer are links, hundred of species wich bear differentiations scales of evolution and adaptation that served as a path to last developed existent ones, whose no trace remains, yet they existed otherwise how could a dog issue from a trilobite)
…that looks exactly like a Stegosaurus…those plates are without a doubt on its back, they are not stylized Lotus petals…remember when science flourished because it wasn’t biased??? Darwinism has become the very thing that they always complained about when it came to open mindedness…the bible called the Earth round as early as the book as Isaiah(40:22), hundreds of years before Christ…the book of Job said the Earth sitteth upon nothing and it’s the oldest book in the bible…the bible was scientific before there was even a scietific method yet darwinism changes its theories year to year…get over yourselves, even if this were a hoax there are other reliefs like the ones at Teohuanaco that are without a doubt genuine that depict dinosaurs…soft tissue has been found in T-Rex Femurs and there is no way that could survive 65 Million years…the list could go on but the point is darwinists ignore as many facts for their agenda as they claim creationists do…
[...] least he was smart enough to not call it a stegosaur. Here’s what the Smithsonian thinks about it Stegosaurus, Rhinoceros, or Hoax? | Dinosaur Tracking And here’s what French paleontologist Eric Buffetaut has to say:
Saint Darwin:
I think you are confusing how science (and logic) works.
You have a well tested theory that has been accepted for hundreds of years.
Someone challenges it with new evidence that appears to contradict it.
You find many plausible explanations for that evidence that are compatible with the prevailing theory.
And that’s it. That’s not “making up something to match your evolutionist perception of reality”. That’s finding “plausible explanations”.
When excepcional claims are made such as that dinosaurs coexisted with humans despite the massive amount of evidence to the contrary they require exceptional new evidence. If that evidence can actually be explained by other means, then it is not such. If no sensible explanation that’s compatible with our current knowledge is found, then that’s a breakthrough. That’s something that forces us to reevaluate our current understanding. But if you find some reasonable and probable explanations, then there’s no much point in making a big fuss of it.
Being narrow minded would be to simply ignore the evidence. But looking for plausible explanations that don’t contradict tons of evidence is the only reasonable thing to do. Any other thing would be childish and irrational.
Noting unusual here. Deists have no morals about lying or seizing upon anything, no matter how spurious or nebulous, to support even their most outrageous claims.
Morality is really not to be found in religion. It takes atheists t demonstrate a respect for truth and logic.
I agree with Herbys: A theory isn’t ‘wishy-washy’ or any such nonsense. A theory prevails (unchanged) until it is disproven or modified because of evidence. @Tom, one mention of round earth science does not make. Besides, the Church believed that the Earth was the center of everything and we all know how wrong that was :rolleyes: And Darwinism does change but that is because science changes with evidence. In it’s purest form science is not dictated by human views but it is shaped by the evidence so it will change with new evidence. It is not a flaw in the scientific process it is how it works. @ Tammie, Geology, other radiological dating (carbon dating is simply the most well-known method. And evolution states that animals adapt to the environment, if that means getting smaller than so be it
In regards to the horn and ear, maybe the people that carved it actually knew what a dinosaur looked like better than we do… at any rate, imperfection would only lend credibility. After all, considering that modern day scientists now “know” what dinosaurs look like, why would a modern day artist bother to carve something so anatomically incorrect? The only way to authenticate it i suppose would be further testing…and not just taking a french paleontolgist’s opinion as fact. Perhaps a more detailed inspection by some archeologists would be better.
It’s amazing how people will cling to the smallest pieces of evidence, or the greatest misunderstandings, in order to prop up a view they consider to be essential to their understanding of the world. For one, just the statement by Tammie that “everything has carbon in it” just goes to show the average creationist’s level of understanding of carbon dating. And then acting smug about carbon dating’s not being effective beyond 100,000 years just compounds the ignorance on display. Please, at least have an understanding of your opponent’s arguments before you try to debunk them! Potassium-Argon dating, for example, is generally only used on objects MORE than 100,000 years old, up to many millions of years.
It’s sad how two people mentioned Dr. Mary Schweitzer’s extraction of soft tissue from a 68-million-year old T. Rex femur as though that was some kind of evidence against evolution. It would also be prudent to mention that Dr. Schweitzer herself is both a Christian and an evolutionist, who did not dispute the age of the fossils. Apparently, she knows something they don’t.
Try Sumatran Rhinoceros which actually lived in the neighboring area at the time:
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/animals/images/primary/sumatra-rhino-baby.jpg
The “spikes” on the back are in fact ornaments which can be found all over the temple area. In this picture you can see that the ornaments in fact are in the relief above as well:
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/01/58/cb/0f/ta-prohm-dinasour.jpg
However, we may want to ask a few most valid questions at this point:
1.If we for the sake of argument pretend it is an art work of a dino just for a moment: What does it prove? Does that make The Flintstones a documentary?
2.Are statues and ornaments of, for instance, the elephant headed god Ganesha or the monkey headed god Hanuman true descriptions of reality as well? And what about the Nagas, the mutli-headed cobras with human faces that can be found in the Cambodian temple as well?
3.
a)Creationists claim the dinosaurs lived with Adam and were wiped out in the Flood.
b) Creationists say this carving is proof the carver saw a live stegosaurus.
c) Ta Prohm (the temple in question) was built in 1186.
d) So according to Creationists, the dinosaurs did NOT kick the bucket in the Flood, but were in fact strutting around a hundred years after the Battle of Hastings.
Which consequently create a somewhat incommodious contradiction for the creationists to answer to.
I’d say, Occam’s razor seem to be most appliable here.
Not all Creationists believe that all the dnosaurs became extinct during the Great Flood. If you are going to be so critical, you should at least know what you are criticizing. You shouldn’t generalize so much, it makes you seem ignorant of all beliefs other than your own.
Evolutionists have their minds made up. Don’t confuse them with facts. How desperate is it for someone to suggest “The ‘plates’ along the back more closely resemble leaves, and the sculpture is a better match for a boar or rhinoceros against a leafy background.” It’s obviously a stegosaurus”?
Such complicated explanations. Anyone with a pocket knife could have easily reworked the soft stone with little effort. Obviously someone saw an opportunity to perpetrate one of the greatest hoaxes ever. I’m looking at a high rez photo I shot myself. The plates are crudely carved and the edges are sharper than the rest of the carving, suggesting a reworking that was hastily done and not so long ago.
I do stone carving myself. What’s apparent to my eye is that the rest of the bas relief has rounded edges from years of weathering. The beveling along the outer edge of the creatures plates are sharp. in fact it looks to me like a straight edge knife was used to shave that area down and with less skill. It plainly looks like a modification to me
Stegosaurus or not?Maybe a relation or ancestor? We could answer this question by posting on this site all of the unquestionable fossil evidences of the transitional forms (there must be hundreds maybe thousands of them) leading up to Stegosaururs then we could see if something matches.Seems to me this would the scientific thing to do. I think you will agree that TRUE science finds the evidence and then comes to a conclusion, it does not start with a preconceived idea or belief and then finds evidence to fit it.
No other animals are carved with leaves on the background. Do you know how hard it is to sculpt art on the temple wall. They are on stone that has no cement glue. The stone are preciesely stacked upon each other. If youve seen cambodian temples there are no empthy spaces so there would be no place for the carving to take place.
I don’t know if you people at Smithsonian are blind or just plain stupid. Quote: “… The sculpture only vaguely looks like a rhino or boar.” The guy who wrote that is an idiot and should be fired. That is a stone carving of a stegosaurus, plain and simple. Why don’t you do some ‘research’? You know, go on site and investigate. Your article provides no critical ‘data’, just the same old tripe.
i am a young cambodian kid, i muz admit i know much abt temple and i have juz knew abt this STRANGE thing. i want to comment on this a bit.
There are some point state that, people juz dream it up. there are those point that say that: the carving isnt the same as what scientific illustration.there are points which may say its fake.
Well, if u look on the wall, u can see that there are other normal animal in the group. if, we cambodian to dream up an animal, its carving, statue wont be carved near these normal creature. the sculpture would make sure to sculpt it in the other place, like those nagas, elephant god…but no, it is simply there in the normal creature cetegory. may be the sculptor didnt feel amazed by this dino at all. they were juz normal animal they see.
and for those who match this to the illustration of science, imagince you are to carve these stone. if u illustrate it scientifically, how can it be art? what abt the theme of the wall?
and i must admit that the color of this wall do really look strange from the other. but i used to see temples n this color.
I would be sure to pay a visit to this wall soon.
there are a lot of myth of these ancient temple:
-the temples map combined makes up the Dragon Star topology.
-lightning strike at a predicted date and time at the temple site.
-alien spcae craft at the temple site.
all are unproven. u know, may be it really is a magical world.
It’s funny how much people really want to believe this is a stegosaurus. The fact that it has a short neck and no barbs on it tail doesn’t matter. The fact that there is no fossil evidence of stegosaurus living in Cambodia matters. People want to believe in mysteries. I suppose all of you who believe this is a stegosaurus believe in ghost, ufo’s, fairies and Santa Clause too. Look closely at the plates. They have sharper edges that the rest of the bas relief. They are more crudely carved. IT’S A FAKE! somebody with a pocket knife carved the plates into the soft stone as with the intent of perpetrating a hoax. Most likely some religious nut job tying to fabricate evidence to support creationist theory.
“Either way, the temple carving can in no way be used as evidence that humans and non-avian dinosaurs coexisted.”
How pathetic. Perhaps it can’t be used as *proof* that they co-existed, but it sure can be used as evidence. The idea that those shapes look like leaves is laughable. Perhaps you should listen to your own suggestion that an “active imagination can turn something plain into something fantastic”, like in the case of clouds floating by.
I also think the suggestion it’s fake is grasping at straws. I’m sure many atheist archaeologists would be only too happy to prove it is a newer carving than everything else, yet nobody has.
I think, that if it is not a stegosaurus as we know it, it is quite likely a relative of it. Perhaps it does have a horn and doesn’t have tail barbs.
This is some of the worst ‘science’ I have ever read. Get someone who knows what they’re talking about, not making “but maybe” guesses.
Magnum – you’re putting words into creationists’ mouths there and obviously don’t understand what they believe. They believe that perhaps the biggest dinosaurs were wiped out in the flood, but that many existed for a long time after that – in fact there is some evidence that animals we refer to as ‘dinosaurs’ are still alive today. (eg. Loch Ness-type animals have been sighted all over the world – even crocodiles can almost be put in the ‘dinosaur’ category).
I’ve posted a detailed review of this case at my Paluxxy website. You can go directly to the article at:
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/stegosaur-claim.htm
Many other articles related to alleged out of order tracks, fossils, and artifacts are on the main menu at:
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/
In response to Lea…, yes, dinosaurs are alive today–but not the kind you are talking about. They are called birds. Almost all paleontologits now consider birds not just the ancestors of dinosaurs, but proper members of the dinosaur clad (feathered theropods to be more precise).
If dinosaurs died out less than 1000 years ago, where are the bodies? Should there be bodies and bones right on the earth’s surface. Or when these people came across dead dinosaurs, wouldn’t they have kept the bones for rituals or something. What I am asking is, if dinosaurs just died out, why are all the evidence of their existence only found in fossil form?
Go there and have a look yourselves. It is wishful thinking at best to believe that the carving depicts a stegosaur. There are much nicer and more interesting carvings than this at the temple complex.
I have been to this temple and seen it with my own eyes (May 2010). It amazed me and I spent quite a bit of time looking for a reason for it. It does not appear fake. It matches other work in the temple. It is indeed in a row with other easily recognizable common animals.
Could it be fake? Of course, I am no expert, just another tourist taking in the wonders of Angkor, but it in a location that makes a fake difficult at best (one would have to move a large portion of temple to place the stone). The stone does show signs of age, there are no obvious signs of modern tool cuts involved.
All I know is when you see the wonders of the area it is easy to believe many wondrous things.
I had heard from a relative in December 2010 that there was a carving of a dinosaur on one of the Temples in the Angkor section of Cambodia (NOT Angkor Wat – which is a Temple of its own, away from Ta Phrom where this carving appears). The idiotic mention that it was carved by those filming “Lara Croft – Tomb Raider” bears ridicule as this carving was reported long before the movie company filmed a sequence a few hundred feet away. To the person who says that it doesn’t look like a Stegosaurus from a different perspective, I ask if you had ever seen it yourself. I did – just 10 days ago.
This work depicts a stegosaurus – not a pig or a rhino or a bunch of lotus leaves. Its depiction could have been based on an observation from a distance by one or a few individuals and drawn from memory. There’s a Cambodian postage stamp from a year or so ago that shows an artist’s rendition of a Stegosaurus with a skeletal image behind it. the plates don’t match on the two images in shape or number. That happens with artists. It proves nothing.
I happen to believe that the Earth was created by God, who let evolution take it from there, so my opinion that what I saw there was a Stegosaurus is not based on that count. There is an unidentified creature below this one, within the same type of circle, but it has a ridge pattern on its back. Above, the animal could be any number of things, but it does resemble some animal that could have been left over from ancient times. The artists had elephants and horses around to study in detail. An animal at a water hole seen from a hundred yards or more away would not have been done so perfectly.
Comments from people who talk about the use of a pen knife or touched-up leaves shows that they have not seen this in person. Nor have they seen the thousands of other wonderful carvings which represent wars between great armies of the 10th and 11th centuries, deities, Apsara dancers and other works.
The fact that no bones have been discovered in a land that has primarily been a jungle in which only indigenous peoples roamed shows a lack of understanding of the land. The huge lake (Boeung Tonle Sap) grows to about 4 times its immense size during the rainy season. No one digs deeper in this huge area than it takes to plant rice or corn. Wars have been erupting back to back in this country for eons. 13 million mines were laid out here, of which 4 million have still not been unearthed. This is not a land suitable for searching for dino remains.
So of course there has been little done in this area to conduct scientific excavations. The question of how impossible it would have been for one or two dinosaur species to exist beyond the time of the great cataclysm is there. But in a jungle where no records of human work exists beyond the rock temples in the rotting, festering environment is not that much of a stretch of the imagination.
The meaning of this animal having been able to hang on in an uninhabited jungle environment is not that unreasonable. If crocodiles, turtles, dogfish and that “cao-somthing” fish they caught, and still catch, off of the Philippines, all made it, why would it be so preposterous to believe that a few other species survived until man came around?
FUNNY, THOUGH THE ARTICLE STATED IT WAS PLAINLY NOT A STEGASAUR WHEN VIEWED STRAIGHT ON, THEY FAILED TO PROVIDE SUCH A PHOTO FOR COMPARISON – - HIGHLY SUSPICIOUS.
THAT SHOULD READ “STEGOSAUR” – I CAN TOO SPELL – I JUST CAN’T TYPE – LOL
@QUINTON – 10,000 YEARS NOT 1000 YEARS – - AND HAVEN’T YOU READ OF THE DINO BONES (TYRANNOSAUR I BELIEVE), WITH SOME UNFOSSILIZED MATERIAL INSIDE – -THERE WAS EVEN TALK OF TRYING TO EXTRACT DNA ALA “JURASSIC PARK”.
THERE ARE “LIVING FOSSILS” BEING FOUND ALL THE TIME – -ANIMALS WE WERE TOLD DIED OUT LONG AGO ONLY TO BE FOUND ALIVE AND WELL – CASE IN POINT THE FISH KNOWN AS THE COELACANTH. READ AND LEARN, MY FRIEND
I find it odd that a small child could tell you that it is a dinasour. However, overpaid “scientists” need to scratch thier heads.
Do You believe Marco Polo – he wrote this……
Leaving the city of Yachi, and traveling ten days in a westerly direction, you reach the province of Karazan, which is also the name of the chief city….Here are seen huge serpents, ten paces in length (about 30 feet), and ten spans (about 8 feet) girt of the body. At the fore part, near the head, they have two short legs, having three claws like those of a tiger, with eyes larger than a forepenny loaf (pane da quattro denari) and very glaring.”
The jaws are wide enough to swallow a man, the teeth are large and sharp, and their whole appearance is so formidable, that neither man, nor any kind of animal can approach them without terror. Others are met with of a smaller size, being eight, six, or 5 paces long; and the following method is used for taking them. In the day-time, by reason of great heat, they lurk in caverns, from whence, at night, they issue to seek their food, and whatever beast they meet with and can lay hold of, whether tiger, wolf, or any other, they devour;
The idea of dinosaurs and man living together at one point in time is a fascinating idea. However, I can’t find any articles on this subject that don’t break down into a ‘creationist’ vs. ‘evolutionist’ debate. A confirmed atheist, I don’t see it as completely implausible that perhaps the dinosaurs died out more gradually than initially thought. To my mind, this doesn’t prove a thing about ‘creationism either – just another mystery on top of what is a already a mystery laden subject.
A couple of points:
1) The carving does resemble Stegosaur, vaguely, and also vaguely resembles other animals, such as a rhinoceros. The carving is crude, and not an accurate depiction, even if it were a Stegosaur. The only feature that truly causes one to think it may be a Stegosaur is the plates over the back; without those, there would never even be the suggestion that it is a stegosaur. There are other carvings with background objects, so the “plates” may or may not actually be on the back, but rather objects behind it that were carved just as crudely. There are other carvings of animals, but they are all modern animals, and equally inaccurate… artistic renderings, not attempts at accurate illustration. The most likely conclusion is that it is modern animal, carved with the same inaccuracies as all the others.
2. There are other drawings, carvings, etc, in other places that appear to be mythical creatures that resemble dinosaurs. The existence of such carvings is no evidence that they were carved by someone who had actually seen such creatures. Carvings and drawings do not mean that the creature existed or was seen by the artist; the artist could have been carving some mythical creature that we think looks like a Stegosaur. I don’t find that likely, though, since the other carvings all seem to be of real animals.
3. The idea that a crude and indeterminate carving is serious evidence of anything is absurd, when there is absolutely no other evidence to support it. We have written histories from multiple cultures on several continents, and none of them mention dinosaurs in any form. If dinosaurs had existed with humans, there would certainly be some mention of them in writings such as the Bible, or ancient Greek, Roman, Arabic or Chinese historical accounts. But there are none. That one group of Stegoasaurs survived in Cambodia and nowhere else is a slim possibility, but highly unlikely.
4. Finally, even if it were a Stegosaur, carved by someone who had seen a live Stegosaur, this would not disprove the theory of evolution or the accepted science that the earth is billions of years old; it would certainly not provide any evidence for a “young earth” theory. It would simply mean that the ancestor of a dinosaur species had survived to modern times, as unlikely as that is. It would mean that all non-avian dinosaurs had not become extinct when it is believed that they had. Many species descended from other species older than the dinosaurs survive today, such as crocodiles, so the possiblity that a dinosaur species also survived the mass extinction is not out of the question. If such a thing were true, it would not in any way refute current science, and it would not support the belief that the earth is less than 10,000 years old. Finding evidence of a live dinosaur in modern time or would not disprove evolution. The only thing that would disprove evolution would be finding human or any modern skeletal remains in the lower strata where only dinosaur or other ancient fossil remains are found.
PS: Marco Polo’s account sounds like an exaggerated description of a Komodo dragon more than any dinosaur. They are not as large as he describes, but they have a serpent-like tongue, large claws, and can kill almost any other animal. Polo is known to have “embellished” his stories (lied?); he was probably recounting a description he had heard second- or third-hand. To assume that he was describing a dinosaur is as silly as believing that the temple carving is a Stegosaur.
Some of the comments are funnier than the article itself, but of course it is left to the eye of the beholder. It is left to the individual to say what it is. My kid says it is a Stegosaur. But what pains me is the author’s words “it does superficially look like a Stegosaurus that a kindergartener made out of play-doh” what the author fails to understand here is (I suppose) there are 1000s of “play-doh looking” petroglyphs and geoglyphs all around the world. MAYBE because they never had computers and latest 3D computer graphics software.
For a skeptic like me all Sauropoda looks the same, hence they are the same species. And for a scientific skeptic like the author all the man-dinosaurs cave paintings and arts are just “something that looks like dinosaurs”
Scientists are not supposed to jump to “blind conclusions”. Who knows what we could find in some unexplored parts of the Amazon? Living fossils are not urban legends, they are real.
Quote: “As scientist Carl Sagan said, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
What about the extraordinary claim of mindless evolution of the information in the DNA? I think that requires some very extraordinary evidence! No brain, and there was information!
This article shows that image interpretation is a business of ambiguity, as is also the interpretation of fossils and strata, as well as determining on what terms different kinds of measurements are to be made and interpreted.
As there are numerous sane young earth creationist scientists around finding support for their view in what is measured and observed, one could just as well say that the Darwinists are distorting nature to make it fit their narrow worldview.
What stands out to me the most is the double standard when it comes to examining the evidence.
Evolutionists readily accept a host of proposals, suppositions, and interpretations that take great liberties in departing from the available evidence. Take a look at what they accept for evidence of the Oort cloud, or abiogenesis, or the unchanged yeti crab, or grossly inconsistent radio-metric dating results, etc….
Yet as a perponderance of evidence arises supporting the Biblical creation account, there isn’t even a shred of curiosity. There is just harsh and rampant criticism. After reviewing several of the criticisms of several of the cave-drawings/carvings that depict man/dinosaur co-existance, they simply don’t hold water. They don’t even pass the common sense test. They are glaringly inconsistent with their assessment of other “evidence” that they interpret to support their beliefs.
I was skeptical about these carvings until I read what committed atheists have said about them. Their intellectual dishonesty lends to the credence that this is in fact evidence for the Biblical creation model account.
from what i’ve read online,Creationists are just as harsh and rampant about discrediting science to support their agenda.Creationists believe that Noah’s Arc really existed, and that 2 of EVERY living animal in the entire world was herded onto a giant boat and saved.This absolute nonsense, and if you think this really happened, and that Dinosaurs and man lived next to each other, then you don’t deserve to be have your beliefs taken seriously in my opinion.
On a related note:The History Channel and Discovery Channel spoon feeds people all kinds of nonsense about ancient aliens, and the pyramids.maybe Angkor was built by aliens! After all, it’s too “sophisticated” to have been built by humans.All these crack-pot History channel “experts” filling peoples heads with crap.
Maybe i should start a re-thinking of the origins of Christianity and the saints? After all, many of the saints depicted in Church look an awful lot like singer Kenny Loggins, and if you show any child a photo of Kenny Loggins, and depictions of saints, there is clearly a similarity. Don’t be so quick to disregard these images, maybe we need to fully examine the relationship between Kenny Loggins and the saints? Of course not, just using typical Creationists nonsense logic.
Obviously a stegosaurus. Have an open mind and realize common theories and estimations may be way off. Perhaps few survived extinction and were very endangered. The proof is in the pudding. Can’t keep passing artifacts and early depictions as nothing.
@38: “I find it odd that a small child could tell you that it is a dinasour. However, overpaid “scientists” need to scratch thier heads.”
A child can also tell you that the earth is flat, and that the sun moves across the sky. As an alternative to a childish world view, you might consider listening to Galileo — and to other adults who take the trouble to “scratch their heads” head before giving an answer.
The critter in the carving is most probably a Sumatran rhinoceros. You have a choice between “throw out the incredibly vast array of evidence for evolution” and “this is an embellished rhino carving.” Only an idiot would choose the latter.
I would be curious to know if this carving is the only one in the temple. It would seem that if it was a Stegosaurus, the creature would have probably been revered, and worshiped like the Elephant is in India and other parts of Asia and as such, the carvings would likely be all over the temple, and appearing in other locations in different poses. If it’s a one-off, then it’s likeness is probably either a coincidence, and could either be a rhino, or simply a mythological creature stemming from their pantheistic beliefs at the time the temple was built. IMHO
This is an interesting debate. I visited this site about two weeks ago, and as a person of a scientific background (engineer), I came to the most obvious and simple conclusion.
In a time where the opulence of the Khmer Empire was at its peak, and peace was made between the surrounding nations, people in the area successfully excavated and identified fossil remains.
When thinking about this evidence logically, this explanation requires the fewest logical steps to fit the evidence. Why is it so hard to believe that someone other than western trained paleontologists are capable of discerning that what looks like bones could be from what used to be an animal? How did this end up being a religious discussion? Is it so hard to believe that westerners are not the only people capable of unlocking knowledge of the past?
It is amazing to me to see the distance that distraction and sleight of hand can take you. The facts are that there are about as many ‘depictions’, carvings, drawings, illustrations and representations of generally anatomically correct ‘dinosaurs’ dated to the current (Holocene) epoch, as there are bone artifacts of the represented images. To be championed by creationists, to the distraction of evolutionists does a disservice to the material, means neither can take a breath long enough to assess the evidence in any kind of meaningful way. The creationists view that ‘every’ artifact is genuine is no more valid than evolutionists denying validity to ‘any’ of them. You are both guilty of the same offense.
For esample, the provenance of some of the ICA stones is verified by a regional report prepared by Jaun de la Santa Cruz’s in 1613. In that report , Santa Cruz states that “…during governing of Pachakuti Inca Jupanka (1438-1471) in the region where Ica province is situated today, great number of stones with engravings had been revealed.”
That provenance however, does nothing to substantiate the cottage industry of thousands of stones carved by local indigent farmers as response to the market of the local tourist trade. (As is practiced all over the world at high traffic ‘ancient civilization’ tourist locations.) One does not negate the other. Some of the stones are genuine, and some of those stones display images of man and dinosaur co-existent. And some of the stones are current ‘fakes’.
Both sides of the argument need to just quit their posturing, and start digging into the truth of both giants and recent dinosaurs, figuring out how to bring science and religion kicking and screaming into the 21st Century. You might just add most of the rest of Newtonian Physics along with the historical sciences. Their paradigm aren’t going to last the next decade either.