Cross-post: Dinosaur bones eaten in China

[Jed Dilligan]

From Science Forum:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=228x31819

I'm interested in the anthro angle on this. How long have they been using dinosaur bones in this way? Could the myths of dragons have arisen from this originally? I recall that there were Native American myths based on brontotherium (extinct large mammal) fossils.

[eppur_se_muova]

1. Similar ideas have been mooted ...

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griffin

Adrienne Mayor, a classical folklorist, has recently suggested that these "griffin bones" were actually dinosaur fossils, which are common in this part of the world. In The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times, she makes tentative connections between the rich fossil beds around the Mediterranean and across the steppes to the Gobi Desert and the myths of griffins, centaurs and archaic giants originating in the Classical world. Mayor draws upon similarities that exist between the prehistoric Protoceratops skeletons of the steppes leading to the Gobi Desert, and the legends of the gold-hoarding griffin told by nomadic Scythians of the region.<7>

7. ^ Mayor, Adrienne (2000). The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691058636.

(I'm not so sure this particular person was the first to suggest this -- seems the idea has been around awhile.)

[Jed Dilligan]

2. I had a "Zoobooks" when I was a kid

that showed how you could get the idea of a cyclops from a mammoth skull. There's a big socket-like hole in the forehead for fatty deposits IIRC.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

3. It's where the trunk connects.

:hi: