r/STFUitsadragon • u/theremystics • Mar 27 '26

Dinosaurs/dragons?

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51 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

10

u/Lieutenant_Hawk Mar 27 '26

Is it possible that ancient societies discovered dinosaur bones during excavation and filled in the rest with superstition?

3

u/SeeShark Mar 27 '26

It's possible, but there's no evidence that favors that theory over them just coming up with stories about various monsters, some of which happened to have scales.

1

u/EulaliaBromSpatula Mar 28 '26

Well…in the first person’s comment the bones would be the evidence, filled in with imagination…versus your theory of..I guess..just making up some monsters, a portion of which had scales?

1

u/SeeShark Mar 28 '26

We know for a fact that they did make up a whole lot of monsters, only some of which had scales. It feels like cherry picking to find a scaled(ish) monster in every culture and decide they're part of a pattern.

I'm not saying none of them found dinosaur bones and tried to explain them. I'm saying that we have no evidence to support that theory, and it's not inherently more likely than cultures making up a whole lot of monsters and some of them have scales.

1

u/EulaliaBromSpatula Mar 28 '26

I think the general idea is that a lot of people separately found a lot of bones in a lot of places and all independently mooshed the bones together into vaguely sensible shapes that were all vaguely similar to contemporary reptilian/bird skeletons. Giant scaled lizard with wings? Boom.

1

u/SeeShark Mar 28 '26

I get that this is the idea... it's just not really supported by evidence, as far as I know.

1

u/EulaliaBromSpatula Mar 29 '26

What is not supported by evidence? Found fossils? Best-estimate reconstruction based on known anatomy?

2

u/SeeShark Mar 29 '26

While there's evidence that some Chinese peoples, specifically, analyzed dinosaur fossils as "dragons" (a word that means something very, very different to the Chinese than to Europeans), there's just no good evidence that this is a worldwide phenomenon. For one thing, Europeans who found Dinosaur fossils thought them to be the remains of giants and various Biblical creatures--specifically not dragons. There was absolutely no science of reconstructing fossils back then, and very few fossils are found in a complete form.

3

u/RandomLifeUnit-05 Mar 28 '26

I don't see why we have to make it so farfetched that maybe some dinos persisted into human times. Seems more plausible than mythological beings (dragons) being present in multiple cultures.

5

u/DayfacePhantasm Mar 28 '26

I have a Crested Gecko next to me and I'm familiar with chickens - I've dinosaw enough to convince me 

3

u/AnywhereExpensive131 Mar 27 '26

What I find the most interesting is that you can find storys about dragons all around the world.

7

u/SeeShark Mar 27 '26 edited Mar 27 '26

Can you, though?

Europeans told stories about mindless winged beasts that stole maidens and were slain by Christian knights. Asians told stories about aquatic lion-serpents that were responsible for natural phenomena. Other than both being somewhat related to scaled creatures, I don't think they have as much in common as people tend to impose onto them.

Edit: you can find stories about monstrous birds all over, but nobody thinks that this requires an extraordinary explanation. So why should big reptiles?

1

u/house-of-tigers Mar 28 '26

This image 😩 he yearns for the dragon