From: m (mt_2@yahoo.com)
Date: Fri Jul 09 1999 - 03:24:42 MDT
--- Jason Spencer <spencer@ualberta.ca> wrote:
> >>Elizabeth Childs wonders:
> >>> ...if we don't have some aesthetic memory of the
> dinosaurs...
> >>
> >>We dont. Missed em by several tens of millions of
> years. However,
> >>if the ancients found dinosaur skeletons, they
> would be at a loss to
> >>explain them. Perhaps the flood legend recorded
> in the book of
> >>Genesis came from finding fossils of sea creatures
> on mountainsides,
> >>and the dinosaur legends were spawned by the
> discovery
> >>of a t-rex skeleton? spike
> >
> >Seems pretty unlikely that the ancients would have
> found a T-Rex skeleton
> >complete enough to give them any idea of what the
> animal would have looked
> >like when alive, or indeed any dinosaur skeleton
> that would have let them
> >understand that they were looking at the remains of
> a lizard-like creature.
<snip>
This is something I've also wondered about for ages.
Maybe there were some intact skeletons found in our
prehistory. The very fact that they *were* found may
have led to their being destroyed or ferreted away for
one reason or another, hence no "smoking guns".
Look what happenned to some Mastodon relics.. they
were (supposedly) fed to dogs!
Any early discoveries would have been in "easy"
places,
leaving us with harder pickings.
The ancient Greeks definitely had noted fossil sea
shells in uplands, and theorised various changes
(including catastrophes) to explain them.
> So, has anyone seen any gargoyles that look
> sufficiently Protoceratopsian
> that might add credence to this claim?
Nuts.. everyone knows that Gargoyles were modelled on
the Hunchback of Notre Dame (or maybe Charles
Laughton) :-).
Mike
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