A reader has sent to All News Web these photos of the stunning Ta Prohm Temple (pictured below) deep in the jungles of Cambodia.This temple is the work of the remarkable Khmer civilization which lasted from the 800’s AD until the 1400’s AD.
The temple is covered with the most intricate of carvings. The reader who was visiting the area noticed very distinct and clear images that seem to depict a Stegosaurus (pictured above), indicating that this creature might well have survived up until the Khmer era in the region. One expert on Khmer ruins has told us that it is unlikely that these images are a recent addition to the temple.
What ever you do, DO NOT let a creationist see this. EVER!
really? I am a Christian and i find this intriguing. I want to know more about this. There was a case that some one mad that all the dragons that show up in ancient jewish, christians, muslim texts are actually dinosaurs.
I’m sure our archeologists are not the only ones that have found dinosaur fossils. There is no reason that more ancient peoples wouldn’t have come to similar (enough) conclusions that we have. While we were under the sanction of Christianity (that more or less forbade this kind of knowledge), The Khmer may not have. We would have been able (intellectually) to come to the same conclusions that we have, in the past 100+ years, had it not been for the Church so diligently keeping everything a secret or totally forbidding its study. Since I know nothing of the Khmer, I could be totally off base.
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Remember when everyone was going crazy over this?
Light, fresh markings without any grime or wear?
…hmmm…
ANCIENT! 😀
Hey is that steggy…?
Don’t make me get Crocoduck.
@...TGGeko: Too late, i already saw it.
@...Paul_Is_Drunk:
The temple isn’t terribly ancient, it was made in 1186 and maintained until the fall of the khmer empire in the early 1400’s. Plus what about the mayan pyramids that were discovered with pristine hieroglyphs on them?
@...nyokki:
You know i saw a documentary a while ago about how the ancient greeks and romans thought ancient elephant bones were the remains of giants and cyclopes. Having that in mind why would the khmer in 1186 (when the above temple was built) not only discover the stegosaurus which so far has been only found in the USA, but also recreate the placement of its’ plates and legs in a surprisingly accurate manner. When the first megalosaurus model was built in 1852 it was reconstructed according to ancient accounts of dragons. Why would the khmer -a decently “ancient group of people- who also held a belief in Dragons and whose dragons looked like This go and dig up stegosaurus bones and not assemble them to look like their sacred reptilian gods, demigods, icons etc. ? Of course it would be unscientific for me to say that it is not impossible for the Khmer to have discovered a beautifully preserved stegasaurus skeleton in a quarry or riverbed. But given that they have not been found anywhere outside of north america the odds would be astronomical. Now there is one other possibility; that temple could be depicting a Tuojiangosaurus which so far has been discovered in China. Obviously it would be safe to assume that the Tuojiangosaurus could have lived outside of china. Having that said the shape of the Temple creatures backplates look far more like a stegosaur than a Tuojiangosaurus.
@...HoChunk: I raise your crocoduck with a Platypus, and the Sharktopus.
see:
fishheadsalad.com/tossing/steg/steg.htm
@...slakinator:
That makes a lot more sense than a stegosaurus fossilized or living magically appearing in 12th century Cambodia. Still,what are the odds a carving of a rhino and foliage would look like a stegosaurus?
I can’t give credence to a page with that many spelling errors and the words “so called” in quotes.
Whether they found a nice preserved skeleton or saw a live one is an irrelevant notion. If EITHER of those happened the head would be tiny compared to a massive body. The proportions of steggys are totally different – and besides, what slackoff steggy lover leaves out tail spikes?
PS: Lotus, they were in Portugal as well. Not Cambodia, but not divided by vast oceans, either.
@...TrayShadix: I was actually looking at the picture and realized ”
oh shit there are no tail spikes, maybe they were lazy.” In defense of the carving depicting a stegosaurus one could bring up that the megalosaurus and dimetradon were not proportioned correctly in their initial reconstructions. Despite that it isn’t too far fetched to assume that they could have deduced that the skull was indeed a skull based on seeing the shapes and features of lizard skulls. They could have made a fairly accurate recreation by assuming that it’s skin and flesh was probably similar to the aforementioned lizard skull. I mean that is pretty much one of the things we do when we attempt to recreate a dinosaurs living body. Again, in defense of the carving being a steggy we could assume that if they indeed found a skeleton it could have been missing its head. Either way it is pretty interesting. I’ve always enjoyed the thought that the earth very well may be older or younger than we think, simply because it is not possible for us to absolutely say ” yeah this is the exact time of when this animal lived. Think about it, Even though we are able to come up with evidence about the time period we can’t assume that the evidence itself isn’t wrong nor can we assume it is right. I mean we simply weren’t there to witness it. I guess that is the fundemental flaw with science. Despite our ability to replicate a consistent series of experiments and prove that certain things exist we tend to get caught up in there being only one explanation. Of course the explanation itself is multifaceted, it often takes multiple actions and variables in order to come to that one conclusion. Also, the multiple acts are often the product of a chain of events as well. Eventually you hit a roadblock that can’t really be solved scientifically or spiritually and as such we just give up and just agree that there is only one truth. I’m not saying that means the dinosaur actually was alive with humans nor does it mean that god exists. Like i said before, It means that we have to stop settling for one overall answer and assume that we might be both wrong and right due to the possibility of an invisible factor be it god, nature or the core principals of science itself.
@thelotuseater: Congratulations- you’ve just written the largest and most worthless mass of intellectual mush that I’ve seen in a long time.
You know, we as 1st world people who’ve seen casts of stegosaurus bones in museums and depicted in books (which often depict them as having a single row down the middle like this carving, unlike the “two rows in a V” depiction that also has been proposed) see this as an obvious depiction of a stegosaurus. I’m not sure that people without that background would look at this and see what we see. Trying to look neutrally, I can see the creature below the plates to be anything from a pig to a hyena. What’s coming out of it’s back could be anything from spikes to flames to rays of sunlight (think WWII era Japanese flag). I think this is just a case of modern people not being able to put themselves into the mindset of earlier people.
Applying Occam’s razor to this, I would say it is a hoax, or, as WistfulID said, just the 21st century brain filling in the gaps and making a stegosaurus.
Science does not just ‘give up’ and accept the ‘one truth.’ We know the age of the earth, and we know when the dinosaurs lived and died.
They have representations of huge dragons and large multiarmed and animal shaped deities. Is it really so strange that they might put another freaky thing that might resemble a dinosaur on there.
It`s just a chameleon,folks.
What I found interesting about that link slakinator posted was that the author was quick to decry the possibility of the carving being a stegosaurus, but then turns around, and makes the same mistake that he claims the people who are calling it a stegosaurus have made. He morphs it into what he thinks it is, in order to give his argument more validity.
Neither approach is any more valid/scientific than the other. The truth is, even if that is not an anatomically correct “steg”, neither is it an entirely anatomically correct rhino either. All of the carvings are anatomically distorted in one way or another. Not to mention, there are actually a couple of other dinosaurs whose anatomical makeup are better matches to the carving than a Steg, so that many of the other counter arguments also fail.
IMHO, The one sound argument made that made any sense was that all the other carvings were of local flora, fauna and animals, and therefore this carving was more likely to be of the same, rather than that of a dinosaur.
Occams razor would certainly dictate that we presume it to be an indigenous ruminant, though again, it is a presumption, and by no means a certainty.
The carvings included Gods, and mythical as well as indigenous animals, and there isn’t even any guarantee that the artist never traveled to a foreign land and actually saw dino bones somewhere, so who knows what that really is…
I’m w/ Phyreblade and WistfulD.
Do we need any more proof that the earth is 6000 years old and man and dinosaur co-existed?
Check and mate, Mr. Dawkins.
@...thelotuseater725: Well said. In this individual case, though – I’m with Wistful.
UPON FURTHER INSPECTION – The same stones that circle the “steggy”‘s back also circle the outside of the border itself – it’s just a fucking decoration.
looks like a chameleon 2 me
@...zilch:
If the spine plates weren’t so big I’d agree with you.
Head’s wrong, tail’s wrong, spines are wrong, body wrong, leg’s wrong… Not a stegosaurus. More likely a chameleon. And skat1140, we’d need a hell of a lot more evidence that this to support a 6000 year old earth.