Dino Myths!

brianthebard

No not myths about dinosaurs, brought about by mistakes in recent studies (over the past century or so), but myths that existed for thousands of years that were actually related to dinosaurs. It just struck me when reading the stuff in the elephant bird thread, that it is conceivable that people saw the remains of dinosaurs and thought they were giant birds. I read an article before in the NG that suggested chinese dragon myths are related to dinosaur fossils found in or near rivers there, so its not that outlandish of a suggestion. Are there any other stories or myths or whatever that can't really be explained by modern animals or humans, but might have a basis in dinosaurs? Hope the point is clear.

Galvasean

I saw a documentary (forget the name unfortunately) recently on the History Channel talking about how the ancient Greeks interprated fossils incorrectly to create many of their mythical monsters. For example, take this elephant skull


The cavity where in life the trunk would attatch looks an awful lot like an eye socket, possibly leading them to interprate it as belonging to the legendary Cyclops.


Also, Protoceratops skeletons, with their beaked head and four legged bodies, are believed to have inspired the Griffin.


Where the wings and claws came from is not certain, perhaps Oviraptor (edit; that's not actually Oviraptor. It looks more like Citipati.) bones got mixed up with them?

They lived at the same time as Protoceratops in the same place and almost certainly fought and died together. Ditto for Velociraptor, as one very famous fossil shows:


In fact, the term used in palaeontology for when two specimens are mixed up is actually 'griffin'.

As far as China is concerned, rural places there still refer to dinosaur fossils as 'dragon bones' which are ground up and used as 'medicine'. Personally I find the practice abhorrent, but I digress.
I have also heard that the Chinese word 'Shenlong' means both dragon and dinosaur, named for a mythological dragon named Shenlong who was said to govern the wind and rain.

6th

Thats actually pretty cool about the cyclops!