It has often been proposed that large reptiles, such as monitor lizards and crocodiles, might have provided the origin for the dragon myths of the world. There might be some truth to this, but the possibility that rather more spectacular reptiles might have played a contributing role is rather more plausible. Confirmation for this hypothesis comes from Hypoblanpied whartoni, described in 2003 from the Pleistocene of France (Freeman 2003).
Freeman (2003) identified seven characters shared by the new taxon and Kuehneosauridae: that's really interesting, because Hall (1991) had proposed much earlier that the giant, winged, flying, armour-plated, carnivorous, fire-breathing, indestructible reptilian European monsters of folklore may well be descendants of the small Triassic kuehneosaurids. The kuehneosaurid ghost lineage exceeds even those present in choristoderes (Storrs & Gower 1993) and coelacanths.
The juvenile holotype of Hypoblanpied is shown here: it's currently on display at the Muséum national d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris (sorry for small size of images; the object in front of Hypoblanpied is a turtle. Images courtesy M. Kosemen).
Interested in testing the possibility that Hypoblanpied might be the same animal as the pickled Oxfordshire dragon discovered in a garage and dating to the 1890s [shown here], the latter was x-rayed by David Hart (2004). The only real difference proved to be the absence of wings in Hypoblanpied (already obvious without x-raying, needless to say). This compelling evidence for the survival of giant kuehneosaurids into modern times has been mostly ignored, I think because of the obscure publication venues chosen by the respective authors. It's very cool and everyone should stop talking about all that other crap right now!
Unfortunately I really don't have time to elaborate further and will have to stop there, but, yeah, the pictures tell the story don't they.
Refs - -
Freeman, R. 2003. Fossil reptiles from the Picardian of France: a long ghost-lineage for Kuehneosauridae vindicates Hall. Dorsetshire Musings on Wanton Beasts and Such 234, 54-67.
Hall, M. 1991. Natural Mysteries: Monster Lizards, English Dragons, and Other Puzzling Animals. M. A. H. Publications, Il.
Hart, D. 2004. Anatomical evidence supports the survival of giant Pleistocene kuehneosaurids into the modern era. Bipedia 18, 22-30.
Storrs, G. W. & Gower, D. J. 1993. The earliest possible choristodere (Diapsida) and gaps in the fossil record of semi-aquatic reptiles. Journal of the Geological Society, London 150, 1103-1107.
UPDATE (added 2-4-2009): yes, this was a pretty rubbish April Fool's joke. Here are some of the in-jokes. Firstly, the skeleton is a composite, cobbled together from the bits of various different animals (it really is on display at the MNHN in Paris); the pickled dragon-in-a-jar is a confirmed hoax (made of silicon, latex and nylon by special effects company Crawley Creatures) dating to 2004. The spoof binomial incorporates Pamela Wharton Blanpied's name: author of the 1980 treatise on dragon behaviour, Dragons, an Introduction to the Modern Infestation. The R. Freeman referred to in the piece is of course Richard Freeman, also a genuine dragon authority and author of the 2005 book Dragons: More Than a Myth?. Richard has a great hatred of Star Trek: the Next Generation, hence the use of 'Picardian' in the spoof article. Believe it or don't, the kuehneosaurid hypothesis was actually proposed by Mark Hall in his genuine book Natural Mysteries: Monster Lizards, English Dragons, and Other Puzzling Animals. It is, so far as I know, not taken seriously by anyone. And that about sums it up. I said it was lame.
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The astonishing news seem to come thick today, don't they?
There is a little known theory that prehistoric man used dragons as first fire source, until making them extinct.
Very intriguing indeed. Hopefully, there will be more fossils.
I believe Zach Miller has done a few posts on several species of these late-surviving kuehnosaurids over at his blog.
I was kind of hoping that there would be a follow-up that would reveal more evidence for the amphisbaenian origin of mammals.
As you might have guessed, I threw this together in a hurry: I just haven't had time for anything as masterful as the amphisbaenians article, sigh.
I thought that dragon was a hoax, or atleast that was what i red in a book that featured it.
Ooh, this was my first prank encounter of the day! Congratulations to you, sir. I'm sure there will be much more to come on the rest of the Intertubes today.
Is that a cordylid skull?
What Naish fails to mention here is the theory of flight and flaming breath from manipulation of hydrogen gas in the large expandable stomachs of these reptiles. The 'wings' being formed from an extended, modified ribcage, were used for steering whilst the lift came from the vast amounts of hydrogen in the belly. The breath was produced by exhalation of this gas mixed with a chemical catalyst or bio-electric charge.
Dragons were real!
Hoax is this beetle which is said to shoot flammable gas from arse. It would explode!
The real question now is, did these dragons have the ability to breathe fire? And if so, how? I could easily imagine methane production might be at work here, so then the question becomes which came first, the fire breathing or the use of gas production to produce lift. The fact that gas-filled pockets could be present in the body of the dragon could explain though how they grew to such large sizes.
Of course, I have seen in other studies that classfy dragons as surviving Triassic rauisuchians or other crurotarsians, or iguanid-related squamates. But Hypoblanpied seems to validate the Kuhneosaurid hypothesis.
Fun! Love the picture. The question I wonder about is what happened when they farted. Didn't their bottoms burn? Maybe that's what caused extinction, too frequent incineration of nether parts.
What I want to know...did they take them on teh Ark? How did Fred Flintstone keep them from lighting teh Ark on fire?
You know the YEC's are eating this up. Love the blog, by the way.
Very good. I've long suspected many "myths" had some basis in fact (Aepyornis as the basis for the rock bird, deinotheres as the explanation for the one-eyed cyclops, the fossils of Protoceratops as the inspiration for the Griffin.) Your above hypothesis adds one more piece to the puzzle.
Where can I get ahold of this journal:
"Dorsetshire Musings on Wanton Beasts and Such"
Good news, Nature and Science have their complete collection of pal(a)eontology pdfs available online for FREE (yes, as cheap as a song and a dance!) today only!
details here:
http://tinyurl.com/55mp6b
I covered fire production in the recently discovered North American taxon Protardosuchus, a year ago today in fact:
http://microecos.wordpress.com/2008/04/01/woah/
Indeed chemical catalysis appears to be involved.
However, minimum unlikelihood analysis indicates that protardosuchians were basal archosauresque archosauropsids, so either fire production evolved twice among hellasaurs or more likely it evolved once among stem-saurians.
Bah, those things would never survive the Pliocene cooling that killed of choristoderes
Yeah, I've got a ton of dragon/wyvern posts up on my blog (click the "dragons," "wyverns," or "insanity" tags) and I have several more to write...I just haven't gotten around to it lately. Fun facts about dragons and wyverns:
1) Dragons are not wyverns, and vice versa. The draconian fossil record is pretty terrible as to their origins, but wyverns are definately archosaurs. It's been suggested that dragons represent extremely late-surviving therapsids, but almost nobody agrees with that. They're probably highly modified lepidosaurs, IMO.
2) Dragons can't breath fire--that's squarely a wyvern trait. This is accomplished by expelling chemicals from either side of their mouth in much the same fashion a bombadier beetle would. The chemical "sacs" are probably modified from venom sacs.
3) The largest living family of dragons is the Eudracocidae, which contains several species such as Eudracos magnificentissimus, E. lacerta, Feradracos octopodus, Megalodracos ezmerelda, and Sinospondylus brekkie. Chasmodracos bentoni is usually seen as sitting just outside the Eudracocidae.
4) Lindeworms exist, but are extremely rare. I'll blog about them, and a bunch of other problematic taxa, very soon, I promise!
You actually had me going there until I came to preserved dragon in the jar.:)
Actually,I found a dragon on the shores of the river Itchen, about this time last year ....
Just wondering why... but today is April first day, soooooo.... perhaps this is just a joke? ;)
Yes it is an april fools joke. The fragon in the jar is a type of soft flexible plastic and the other I had not seen before but it looks like styrene. Good one Darren.
ps
I like "Picardian of France" as it has a better startrekkian ring than Kirkian of Germany.
Oh well, I guess the game is up. Time permitting, I will add an update that explains all the in-jokes (if you can call them that). Overall, I feel this effort was pretty lame, but it was the best I could do with only 30 minutes to spare.
"Nature" published an article on dragons in, I think, the early 1980s. Making the point, among others, that Dragons (which have four legs PLUS wings) are only VERY distantly related to Wyverns (which are self-respecting tetrapods, with two legs and two wings). I've looked for it recently without success: does anybody have a reference?
The jar undoubtedly holds an African Kongamato, well known from the Congo, Zambia, and Angola. It is obvious.
You forgot to write that Hypoblanpied became extinct due to the spread of parasite Physis intestinalis Scopoli 1786.
I was believing it at first (well, I was believing that the skeleton was real; I think the origins of dragon myths are well enough explained already), but then I got to the ghost lineage comment and the bottled dragon pic. This was great!
...btw, what IS that skeleton? Plastic? Or is it some real fossil?
This thread is probably not the best place for nitpicking, but for the sake of accuracy:
It's roc, not rock.
Just in case any of the regulars here aren't already familiar with it, Adrienne Mayor's book "The First Fossil Hunters" argues a plausible case for many monster myths as arising from discoveries of well-preserved fossils in classical antiquity. She has another book about the same processes among Native Americans (as in the brontotheres, mentioned in an earlier post). Both books are well documented, with extensive primary references - well worth a read.
"The question I wonder about is what happened when they farted. Didn't their bottoms burn?"
Interestingly, Lilian, heraldic dragons are indeed sometimes depicted incensed, with flames coming from, err, both ends of the alimentary canal: doubtless this was originally drawn from life. I myself once included a dragon incensed as part (the crest, to be precise) of an achievement ("coat") of arms which I designed for a solid-fuel fire company I then worked for. Sadly, they didn't in the end go ahead and apply to the College of Arms to be granted a Patent.
'case for many monster myths as arising from discoveries of well-preserved fossils in classical antiquity'
Greeks and Romans had very un-imaginative mythological beasts - griffins, hydras, centaurs, gorgons etc were put together from body parts of known animals.
Four legs plus wings is not only possible but has happened in the past (Triassic). But the wings were not limbs, but some form of feather (derived from scales) sprouting from the vertebrae. And apparently more than once. So it makes the fabled dragon a possibility but very highly improbable.
"Greeks and Romans had very un-imaginative mythological beasts - griffins, hydras, centaurs, gorgons etc were put together from body parts of known animals."
Meet the platypus, which to the layman has a duck-like bill, a beaver-like body and tail, venomous spurs, lays eggs, and altogether looks so much like a chimera that scientists at first thought it was fake.
Need more? Okay, how about we look into the past, at the drepanosaurids. Superficially bird-like head, body somewhat like a monkey or anteater, prehensile tail with a spike on the end like the nailtail wallabies, anteater-like arms.
Not to mention that at first many mythological beasts were more original, but they have since been "familiarized" by the popular media. Apparently originality doesn't bode well with the masses. The gorgons originally had armored scales, tusks in their mouth, wings, and were impervious to damage. The idea of gorgons being people with snake's stapled on for hair only caught on later.
Ed, dragons got their wings from a freak hox mutation early in their evolution. In fact, at least one draconologist (Eddings, 1875) has suggested that the wings are derived from ancestral forelimbs (as in wyverns) and that the normal-looking arms are, in fact, the "new" limbs. This idea has not gained much, if any, support. Embryo studies on Eudracos lacerta has shown that the "normal" forelimbs buds appear first followed by the wing buds. However, the wings grow at a faster rate than the forelimbs--which is not surprising.
For those who care, I have now fessed up on the April 1st post and have added an update: see above.
Jerzy - Mayor argues the case for some, but not all, mythological beasts as arising from classical discoveries of fossils. (She implicitly accepts that some are composite artistic creations.) For example, she puts together a strong case for griffins as being based on a mis-interpretation of protoceratops remains, as an animal which has a beak (like an eagle) and claws (like a lion). She also picks up on the point that the classical authors who first describe griffins clearly state that nobody had ever seen a live one. It's a solid, scholarly book, and a welcome change from the uncritical "every legend must have a grain of truth" approach touted by some authors.
On a more humorous note, if dragons/wyverns produced fire, then this argues for their not having feathers, which would otherwise have been an incendiary hazard (but c.f. Darren's post about battling birds and perilous plumage); I leave discussion of the cladistic implications to others more knowledgeable on the topic than myself. (Evolved from feathered dinosaurs, and losing the feathers, or evolved from elsewhere - maybe there's a research grant waiting for someone on that one...)
Not lame, Darren -- well worth reading and fun.
Darren-- it's not up to the very high standard you set with earlierr 1 April posts, but I doubtmany of us could do as well in 30 minutes, or 30 hours!
The skeleton is obviously a composite, but what of? Cervical and dorsolumbar vertebral series, and scapula, from some mammal (Felis?). Tail from a lizard, I'd guess. Feet look Avian, but the legs they are attached to??? And is the skull ... modified from a turtle skull of some sort?
Wow! So Greeks also made paleontological expeditions to Mongolia, where Protoceratops fossils come from!
BTW - those who don't know it yet, find a copy of Herbert Wendt 'Out of Noah's ark : the story of man's discovery of the animal kingdom'. It deals with origins of dragons and many other mythological animals.
Jerzy - No, Mayor argues that the Greeks heard the griffin story from the Scythians, who had trade contacts further east, and whose surviving art (including tattoos preserved in permafrost) features griffins. I suggest you read the book, or at the very least some of the reviews on Amazon; that would put you in a better position for criticising it. The reason I mentioned it is precisely because it's a decent piece of traditional, scholarly research, and contains quite a lot of material likely to be of interest to regulars here, in the same tradition as some of Darren's articles on cryptozoology, re-examining old source material from early naturalists about long-necked seals, etc.
"and whose surviving art (including tattoos preserved in permafrost) features griffins."
And, iirc, at least one other unknown animal (an illustration of it appears in The First Fossil Hunters) with an intriguingly theropod-ish head...
Where else!
BTW, there's a region in the north of France that's called Picardie. Picards are what the inhabitants are called.
Jerzy, just once more: Mayor's books really are science. Read them.
Jerzy,
steppes reached from the Danube to the Chinese border, and nomadic people, indo-europeans first, turco-mongols later, were moving and migrating on this steppes, usually (but by no means always) from the east to the west. The Greeks came into direct contact with steppe culture after the Persian empire evacuated its provinces of Macedonia and Thrace, wich had served as a puffer zone between the steppes and the mediterranean. The Greeks also had colonies on the Crimea and even deep in the Eurasian mainland, Tanais was located were Rostov-on-Don is now. A few hundred years earlier, the Cimmerian invasion of the middle east must have touched the Greek colonies of Asia Minor, too.
Darren, neat!
I had not spotted the skeleton as a fake... I wonder, should some discrepant feature have given it away? It looked a plausible saurian, only the topic and date gave it away.
Gordon, David, Johannes, I'm glad to see you all sticking up for the lady (Adrienne Mayor)... chivalry's not dead, I see!
I also admire and have read with great interest her work.
Wonderful April Fool Dragon story! (and thank you, Sir Gordon, David, Johannes, and Graham, for defending my honor as a scientific investigator)
Just a general reminder, not directed at anyone in particular:
Let's be careful about how we use the word 'science'. Mayor's suggestion, that the legend of the griffin originated with chance discoveries of Protoceratops fossils by the ancients, is certainly clever, well-made, and scholarly. (And it may, for all we know, also be correct.) But scholarly is not necessarily the same as scientific. Is the 'Protoceratops hypothesis', if I may call it that, falsifiable? Is there any way to disprove it? I'm not sure there is. And if that is the case, it shouldn't be called science.
Sorry if this sounds negative but weâre dealing with a subject - mythology - that by its very nature contains elements that are, and probably will always so remain, highly speculative. Weâd do well to keep that in mind and not go (too much) beyond the data in our interpretations.
"Wow! So Greeks also made paleontological expeditions to Mongolia, where Protoceratops fossils come from!"
Obviously! What language do you think its name comes from?
WTF? Chivalry is dead, and if that means I have to drive a stake (or my own rock hammer) through its heart, then so be it. <SPLORTCH> I'm not standing up for a person (let alone the silly concept of "lady"). I'm standing up for a hypothesis.
<headshake>
Who cares about "scholarly"... that word doesn't even exist outside the English language anymore, except when talking about a subset of medieval theologians...
It's easy to test if that's the most parsimonious hypothesis that explains the data. That's enough. Phylogenetic hypothesis can't really be falsified either; that's what the principle of parsimony is for.
Too bad â science can't prove anyway. If it's the most parsimonious hypothesis, we have to accept it as such till someone finds a better alternative.
David:
Someone better rename 'Google Scholar' then...
Seriously though, even if you don't like the term I used it's still true that not all academic research is science. History is not science, for example, even though it's a perfectly respectable academic discipline. And the kind of 'paleomythological' research that we're talking about stands closer to the humanities than to the (natural) sciences.
But what, exactly, are the actual data in this case? The ancients' descriptions/depictions of the griffin? I have some issues with that. For example: on page 33 of her book The First Fossil Hunters, Mayor cites the Roman author Aelian, who gives a description of the griffin's appearance and habits. Aelian states, among other things, that the griffin has wings and that it nests on the ground. It becomes clear from Mayor's narrative in the rest of this chapter that she considers any reference to wings in the griffin to be artistic licence; yet, at the same time, reference to nest-making habits are seen as supporting evidence to her suggestion that descriptions of the griffin are based on some real animal. In other words, I get the impression that those aspects of griffin descriptions that fit with what paleontologists now know about the biology of Protoceratops are given more weight than those that do not, and that there is an element of subjectivity involved that is more than I'm comfortable with.
Lest there be any misunderstanding, I am not picking on research that tries to find links between mythology and paleontology, and I'm not saying that Mayor's suggestion is necessarily incorrect. The case she's making is not bad at all; in fact, it's pretty good. But for anyone to go and say "The legend of the griffin originated with discoveries of Protoceratops fossils" would be taking extrapolation way too far. I donât want to see that become some 'truth' that'll be endlessly and uncritically repeated anywhere and anytime dinosaurs are discussed.
Exactly. But my point was that the 'Protoceratops hypothesis', at least as it is now presented, does not really fall under the science category. Academic scholarship, yes. Science, no.
Found the reference! (Has "Nature" improved its online index since the last time I looked a few months ago?)
Robert M. May, "The Ecology of Dragons," Nature 264 (1976), pp. 16-17. Includes comments on phylogeny: unlike Wyverns, Dragons have six paired appendages (four legs, two wings), suggesting a position outside Tetrapoda: their resemblance to Wyverns would be a remarkable convergence.
Only if you restrict "science" to "natural sciences". It makes and tests hypotheses all the time. So do the other "humanities" (another English-only term).*
* Yeah, except when they don't. "The closer you get to humans, the worse the science gets." Pseudoscience seems to be easier to get away with in, say, economics than in sociology, in sociology than in ethology, in ethology than in neurology, and in neurology than in chemistry. But still, all "humanities", even economics, can at least be done as science. It just so happens that experiments in economics tend to become rather gruesome, but I digress.
Of course.
Er, no, as a misunderstanding of the frill, especially when the frill is broken (as it usually is)...
(Not to give a false impression... I'm not sure, but it's fairly likely that the proverb "the closer you get to humans, the worse the science gets" originated within biology, where more nonsense tends to be blathered about the origin of humans than the origin of turtles, and more about the origin of turtles than that of beetles. But the proverb does appear to apply globally.)
David:
Some mighty long frill this Protoceratops fossil* must have had, then.
* That griffin image is on a +2000-year old Central Asian agate seal. Exact location unknown, but in all likelihood from somewhere geographically closer to the ancient Scythian Empire than Greece is.
I'm not trying to be facetious. I did deliberately look for an ancient griffin image as un-Protoceratops-like as possible, but that's just to emphasise my point: how are we, objectively speaking, to conclude that that image is a less realistic griffin depiction than most of those shown in Mayor's book? How are we to know which, if any, aspects of that particular reconstruction are artistic licence and which are not?
If we implicitly or explicitly assume that a griffin image that has some resemblance to a Protoceratops is more realistic than one that has none, we are putting the cart before the horse. We are letting our preconceptions about how a griffin should look like guide our thinking. And that is not the scientific way of doing things. That's what I've been cautioning against here.
Wyverns, dragons, and lung (oriental dragons) are three orders of the supraorder archosauria. Wyverns themselves are advanced pterosaurs, derived from an obscure group that stood on their hind legs much as birds do.
Dragons are most closely related to the crocodilians, going back to a common ancestor with the suchians and and even earlier (I spaced the name, dang it).
Lung on the other hand were one of the first archosaurian groups to split off from the main line, and eventually came to be comprised of two suborders, with one suborder consisting of three infraorders.
The terravermia (earth wyrms) includes the lung wang, plus animals such as the sphinxes, griffins, hippogriff, and shedu, and pegasus. That's right, the fabled flying horse is in all actuality a type of reptile.
The vermiform -named thus for their best known representative- include the serpentiform, lizard form, and turtle form infraorders. The last of which also including the dragon turtle family, though some researchers insist that dragon turtles belong to a suborder of their own.
Note that with the exception of the mammalian manticore all other hexapodal tetrapods are members of the reptilian superorder, with animals such as the pegasus and the hippogriff having hairlike feathers instead of fur.
I think if there was some exchange of ideas between Ancient Greece and Mongolia, Greeks would known much more facts about Mongolia than fossil Protoceratops.
Ancient peoples paid little attention to fossils and when rarely, they tried to reconstruct fossil animal it they did it spectacularily wrong. Greeks themselves turned elephant skull into Cyclops. So I don't think Mongols would reconstruct Protoceratops. BTW - why Protoceratops, if the same fossil beds have Tarbosaurus?
Jerzy, I think you should read Mayor's book. It seems that ancient people around the Mediterranean at least were far from naive about fossils and geological processes. Mayor also explains how the 'cyclops was based on an elephant skull' idea is a completely apocryphal recent (20th century) invention, originating with Othenio Abel in 1914.
Myths do get blurred and artistic liscences are "tacked on" over the centuries and as one gets farther and farther from the original source (whether it just be a local legend or a "grain of truth" to the myth). To use your griffon example, look at the hippogriff, which can arguable be called the most popular "type" of griffon around today, especially due to its appearance in Harry Potter. However, the ancients never thought the hippogriff might be a real animal. In fact, the whole idea of the hippogriff was invented as an example of an impossible circumstance, such as the modern saying of "when pigs fly". The horse and the hippogriff were supposed to be deadly enemies, such as the mongoose and the snake, or the hyena and the lion, and so a mating of the two was thought to be impossible.
As for the statements on Mayor, I feel David is right on this one. Its not biology per se (unless one counts the skeletons of Protoceratops), but it is still sort of science, just social science.
> BTW - why Protoceratops, if the same fossil beds have
> Tarbosaurus?
Because *Protoceratops* is extremely common, and *Tarbosaurus* isn't?
I'd like to see some references, Alan. If you're using Drake & Steer (2003), you can just stop. Steer is the David Peters of draconology. "Oriental dragons" are nothing more than semi-aquatic lindworms. Lindworms as a group are poorly understood--the best known living species is Lindwyrmus nychognathus from Argentina.
As I said above, dragons are certainly not archosaurs. Even the most basal taxa with skulls lack antorbital fenestrae, for example, and they are robustly constructed. What's more, the pelvis is distinctly "primitive." Although there is a fully perforated acetabulum, several workers have noted the similarities in overall form to basal synapsids. Wyverns are archosaurs, however. Even the most heavily built wyvern (Jugoceras) has residual antorbital fenestrae. Lindworms are difficult to classify, but preliminary genetic tests have shown that they are closer to wyverns than dragons.
Hope this helps.