Dragosaurus Friday July 27, 2007

 

Recently, it reoccurred to me that the myth of dragons may be related to dinosaurs. After all, it cannot be said that we are a terribly inventive species. We often can’t see what’s in front of us. So could several civilizations, scattered across the globe, with no mutual contact, independently invent nearly identical myths about giant lizards without having seen any?

This is, after all, a planet now known to have been inhabited by large lizards.
Hmm.

A collective memory maybe?
Or a collective mental block towards the obvious?
(The world is flat! I swear!)

Ok, now my argument…

Read this article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6276948.stm
And then look at this: http://www.strangescience.net/stdino2.htm

The first outlines how Chinese villagers had been eating “Dragon Bones”, actually dinosaur fossils, as a nutritional supplement.
The second is a collection of historic books on dinosaurs and dragons, a few of which are on both.

So is it possible that remnant dinosaurs coexisted with early humans?

Well, let’s first prove that we don’t know what we don’t know.

Dinosaurs, early relatives coexisted

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/20/MNGKSR3NGB1.DTL&type=science

So, there was no mass extinction before the dinosaurs? Wow. Mr. Aldrich will be pissed to hear that. 18+ years of teaching down the drain.

There is some evidence, unfortunately embraced by creationists, that humans and large lizards coexisted in Peru. Drawings on caves and burial stones show dinosaur like creatures interacting with humans.

See: http://www.omniology.com/IcaPeruDinoArt.html

And in Australia:

Australia’s Megafauna Coexisted With Humans

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/05/050531215140.htm

And in Mexico:

http://paranormal.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.viewzone.com/dinoclay.html

http://www.genesispark.com/genpark/ancient/ancient.htm

Unfortunately, these findings don’t support a neat, clean, mass extinction theory. So they’ve been adopted by the usual paranormal geeky/freeky types, and ignored by archeologists wishing to attain tenure.

Hmm….Let’s look at that mass extinction theory more closely.

Mass extinctions were first theorized by Georges Cuvier, who, notably, didn’t believe in evolution. An extinction is typically defined when 60% of a known species, or species group, dies off.

After Cuvier, the theory of extinction was supplanted by theories of uniformitarianism. Do species die off suddenly? Or morph through evolutionary processes into creatures we no longer recognize as related?

Sadly, the church supported catastrophies. So today we have Floods, and astroids and volcanos to thank for our place on the food chain.

Interestingly, there is no formal division between dinosaurian reptiles and well, reptiles. In fact alligators are considered “dinosauria” by most classifications.
(See: http://www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/faq/s-class/whatis/index.html)

But I diverge. Extinctions, yes, extinctions.

See:http://webspinners.com/dlblanc/paleo/dino-colo/extinction/other.php

I especially like the part about the “border periods” between epochs. What, you mean the species don’t all keel over on the second tuesday after their eviction notice? (Shhh! don’t tell those fundies waiting for Judgement Day, they’ve based their whole world view on these notions of a punctuated universe.)

Allright, so now we know that we:
1. Don’t know what a dinosaur is.

2. Don’t know if there is such a thing as a mass extinction.

3. Don’t know when the majority of dinosaurs died.

4. Know that there is evidence that humans and large lizards coexisted.

5. Know that dinosaur fossiles are refered to as dragon bones in China.

Hmm.

Well, it seems someone else had this thought, and has written a lovely reference page on the subject:
http://www.nwcreation.net/dinosdragons.html

Unfortunately yet another creationist(Are they really the only voice of scientific dissent these days?) but still a lovely page. Happy reading!

So, what’s a dragon?

And what’s with the whole fire breathing thing?