Covering up the Ta Prohm Stegosaurus

The Ta Prohm Stegosaurus carving was brought to international light in
two books by, Freeman and Jacques just before the turn of this century. (1997-1999). In their books about Cambodia they describe some the ancient temples. The mention the carving that depicts a Stegosaur.

“Among the vertical strip of roundels in the angle between the south wall of the porch and the east wall of the main body of the gopura there is even a very convincing representation of a stegosaur” (p. 144, emp. added). In their other book on Angkor, Jacques and Freeman were even more emphatic, saying that the animal “bears a striking resemblance to a stegosaurus” (1997, p. 213).


Here is a picture of this find:





Until just recently, stegosaur were depicted by science artist like this;







Now in the last few years they changed how they are drawn. They look like they are on Viagra. That they walked around defying gravity and always poised in a defensive posture! Also they elongated the neck and made the head smaller.








Now I know some people are going to say, " new information came to light, and now we better know how the stegosaur looked like"!

I think, the only new information that came to light, was the carving at
Ta Prohm. Which clearly shows men and Stegosaur lived at the same time.
All the new art, is just an attempt to cover up that fact.
What do you think?

[edit on 9-4-2008 by Howie47]

The thing is it isn't a Stegosaur.

It looks to me like an amalgamation of a Stegsaur and a Triceratops however since we have only the fossil record to go buy who knows exactly what they looked like.

I have always thought that since dinosaur bones can be exposed by weathering than somewhere in history older cultures may have pieced together a skeleton and come up with an unknown beast, a dragon perhaps.

If this then was recorded on parchment paper or stone then it could easily have been exposed to other cultures and represented in their art.

I would love for a dinosaur creature to be discovered today perhaps like Mokele Mbembe in the deeper less penetrable jungles of the world.

I am afraid thats the problem though, definative evidence is hard to come by.

Don't let them fool you with their artistic rendering of Dino's. Many times
paleontologist have admitted that these renderings are guess work.
With out flesh remains they have no idea how they ultimately looked.
The stegosauri may have been closely related to the rhino. They both have defensive armor. The rhino of course has horns. That do not appear on their skeletons! Because they are made of hair. The rhino back bone has upward pointing extrusions; that could have formed the stegasoars plates. So the stegosaurus also could have had horns. It is also believed that many Dino's could have been warm blooded. Species do change quite a bit, within their own kind.
Those changes can happen very quickly. Which has been documented many times, in living species.
This maybe a little of a stretch, for speciation change. At least I'm not saying, "T-Rex's turned into chickens", like modern paleontologist are trying to get us to believe.
Rhino skeleton:

People hate to think that the contemporary ideas they grew up with,
could be false.

I am afraid i must agree with my friend Sherpa. The problem is a lack of further evidence.

I would postulate that if a stegasaur were still alive during the time of the ancient Cambodian civilization, they likely would have revered it, for better or worse. It would have been a part of their contemporary mythology, and it is likely that they either would have gathered the bones and such, or maybe even held the animal's meat/hide/whatever as holy somehow. I believe we would have seen quite a bit more about this creature than just that one carving.

Perhaps i am incorrect. But it would seem that animals take on mythological proportions in ancient man's mind. Certainly this animal would have had a much more important place than being in just one or two carvings on their temple's.

Im a believer than humans did live with dinasaurs and when they found that T rex tissue not to long ago that proved it. If these things died a million years ago how the hell are they finding blood tissue stll....i happen to think they are working on cloning it as we speak. Lets face it if it comes out we did live together that means we as humans are much older and that throws most religions out the door.

Originally posted by mybigunit
Im a believer than humans did live with dinasaurs and when they found that T rex tissue not to long ago that proved it. If these things died a million years ago how the hell are they finding blood tissue stll....i happen to think they are working on cloning it as we speak. Lets face it if it comes out we did live together that means we as humans are much older and that throws most religions out the door.

What we have recently are "mummified remains". Hermetic sealing is some powerful stuff ;-)

Originally posted by Quazga

Originally posted by mybigunit
Im a believer than humans did live with dinasaurs and when they found that T rex tissue not to long ago that proved it. If these things died a million years ago how the hell are they finding blood tissue stll....i happen to think they are working on cloning it as we speak. Lets face it if it comes out we did live together that means we as humans are much older and that throws most religions out the door.

What we have recently are "mummified remains". Hermetic sealing is some powerful stuff ;-)

10 million years thogh? I mean thats got to be one hell of mummification to keep tissue for 10 million years.

Not So Ancient

The temple complex at Ta Prohm was built in 1186CE -- just eight hundred years ago.

Elsewhere, at the time, Saladin was taking Jerusalem back from the Crusaders, the shoguns were shoving the Emperor of Japan off his throne and the first universities were opening their doors in Europe.

Back then, Indo-China wasn't shrouded in thick forest teeming with leftover dinosaurs. It was the heartland of a great imperial people, the Khmer, whose empire at the time (as you'll see from this map), covered modern Thailand, Laos and quite a bit of Burma as well as Cambodia itself. In fact, the builder of Ta Prohm, King Jayavarman VII, was the greatest of the Khmer kings, unifying and ruling over the empire at its height. He was renowned for his architectural works, but no records show that he ever went stegosaur hunting.

The capital of his empire, Angkor, was a vast metropolis which, together with its surrounding settlements occupied an area of 1,158 square miles and supported a population of possibly half a million. It was, we are told, easily the largest pre-industrial urban area of its kind.

Ta Prohm, part of this mediaeval megalopolis, was a Buddhist monastery of no small size.

The temple's stele records that the site was home to more than 12,500 people (including 18 high priests and 615 dancers), with an additional 80,000 souls in the surrounding villages working to provide services and supplies.

The Khmer empire had contacts with other civilizations in its neighbourhood and with the ancient, high civilization of India (from which it acquired Buddhism and Hinduism). It was rich, sophisticated and cosmopolitan. If its people had lived alongside dinosaurs, we'd know about it from dozens of sources, not just from one odd little carving on a temple stela.

* * *

And then this. You've been quoting 'Jacques and Freeman' as though they're a couple of paleontologists who know all about dinosaurs. Well, they're not.

Claude Jacques has very solid academic credentials. Indeed, he is a Director of Studies at the École pratique des Hautes Études of the great Sorbonne, the University of Paris. But he is an historian, whose speciality is the Khmer Empire, not a palaeontologist nor a 'cryptozoologist'. Academic specialization being what it is, he is hardly the man to make a trustworthy identification of a stegosaurus.

As for Michael Freeman, he's a professional photographer whose work I made use of when editing travel guides in Singapore at the beginning of the Nineties.

And the book you're quoting so enthusiastically is, by the way, just another travel guide.

[edit on 12-4-2008 by Astyanax]

reply to post by Astyanax


There are undisturbed nature preserves; only minutes from every large city on earth. New species are reported every month! Whole forest are being discovered with hundreds of new species. Yet you want us to believe the whole of Cambodia was occupied, 900 years ago??
You seemed to miss the fact; that my reference to the books. Was
just to show how the stegosauri was brought to public attention. Never used them as experts. Only mentioned the quotes to show it was mentioned in their books.

10 million years thogh? I mean thats got to be one hell of mummification to keep tissue for 10 million years.

In most cases, it was supposable 65 million years ago. Many of these bones where found laying exposed on the surface of the ground.
Water can seep through almost any surface.
But as top evo scientist have admitted. If Dino's lived along side of man. Evolution is finished. So they fight the facts with all their might.

I would postulate that if a stegasaur were still alive during the time of the ancient Cambodian civilization, they likely would have revered it, for better or worse.

Just because modern man has made Icons of dinosaurs, it is no reason to believe the ancients; that lived along side of them, would do the same. Probably just another wild beast. Probably revered animals that were more human like. Like monkeys. Or animals that showed great intelligent; like elephants.

reply to post by Howie47

There are undisturbed nature preserves; only minutes from every large city on earth.

You're talking about twelfth-century Cambodia, Howie, not twenty-first century North America or wherever it is you live. There were forests aplenty, but no game reserves. There were also millions of people. They traded and travelled like people do everywhere, within Cambodia and around the region. If there really were stegosauri in the forests or marshes (or wherever), surely we would have more evidence for their existence than one little carving on a temple pillar?

Also remember that this was not some out-of-the-way monastic retreat, where the incumbent monks saw something strange in the nearby forest and carved it on one of their pillars. Ta Prohm was a city in itself, and it stood within the much greater megalopolis of Angkor. The workers who built it, and the monks and layfolk who lived there, were city slickers, not a bunch of rice-straw-sucking yokels. And that carving doesn't stand out from the others in any way -- it's the same size and the decorations round it are similar. That suggests your 'stegosaurus' was some beast well known to them, though it may now be extinct, or vanishingly rare.

The jungles of Indochina have presented us with a few surprises lately -- such as Pseudoryx ghetinhensis, discovered in 1993, or Laonastes aenigmamus, discovered in 2005. Perhaps the stela depicts some local, now-extinct or near-extinct beast, possibly a relative of the tapir. Or it may be a mythical creature from Hindu-Buddhist folklore like a garuda, naga or makara. These are often portrayed in side-by-side with real animals in ancient art.

So let's not jump to the conclusion that the beast portrayed in that carving is a stegosaurus. There are many much more likely possibilities we must eliminate before we settle on something so far-fetched.

reply to post by Astyanax


I really don't get your argument about population and approximation to habitat?
Was the stegosauri fearsome monsters, as they are now being portrayed? Or were they more docile, as portrayed in the carving; and as they were, before the carving was revealed to the world?
This thread isn't really about how definitive this portrayal is as proof.
It is about an attempt to cover up any possibility of it being seen as
a stegosaurus. By changing how stegosauri are depicted.

reply to post by Howie47

This thread isn't really about how definitive this portrayal is as proof. It is about an attempt to cover up any possibility of it being seen as a stegosaurus. By changing how stegosauri are depicted.

Oh, that old thing? Easily debunked. We only have to answer two questions. Here's the first.


When did palaenotolgists start to claim that dinosaurs carried their tails horizontally instead of dragging them?

A January 2006 Geotimes article contains the answer. Here's the relevant excerpt.

The dinosaur renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s reflected a new ecological-environmental awareness... Debate over the posture, gait and speeds of dinosaurs peppered the pages of Nature... By the mid-1970s, paleontologists began using trackways of long-striding bipedal dinosaurs to estimate the maximum speeds they attained.

So by the mid-1970s, palaeontologists were agreed that dinosaurs didn't drag their tails and had started arguing over how fast they ran instead.

As the article explains, the first evidence that dinosaurs carried their tails in the air came from trackways (fossil trails of footprints and other marks made by dinosaurs), not from skeletal remains. This was later confirmed by analysis of dinosaur bone fossils, many discovered after the 1970s. Read the whole article; it will show you how much disagreement and argument goes on between scientists before a theoretical consensus finally emerges. Science is not doctrine, and scientists are not priests.

But let's go to the second question, shall we?


When was the Ta Prohn 'stegosaurus' discovered?

For your theory to be correct, it should have been discovered before the mid-70s, but not too long before -- otherwise the palaeontologists would have started covering their trackways, so to speak, during the 1950s or 1960s.

But in the 1960s and early 1970s, nobody was going archaeologizing in Cambodia. The Vietnam war next door had already begun to spill over into the country, mixing with the communist insurgency that had been going on since 1955 or so. In 1970 there was a military coup and an intensification of the insurgency, and by 1973 the USAF was carpet-bombing the Cambodian jungle. In 1975 the Khmer Rouge took over and the country was closed to Westerners. A couple of years later the Vietnamese invaded. The country was engulfed in further war and chaos until 1991. It was only after the 1991 ceasefire that normality slowly began to return, and with it foreign visitors, including archaeologists. So the carving could only have come to international attention after that date.

And in fact, as far as I can tell, the first mention of the Ta Prohm 'stegosaur' is the one in Jacques and Freeman's book, which was published in 1999.

Conclusion: no such conspiracy

Obviously, if the Ta Prohm carving didn't become known to the world till after 1991, it cannot have had anything to do with palaeontologists' rethinking of dinosaur posture twenty to thirty years earlier. The conspiracy you're suggesting never existed. Another creationist myth deflates like a pricked balloon

Goodnight, Howie.

reply to post by Astyanax


We're not talking about how Dino carried their tails when they walked.
The question is on how they are pictured. Did Dino's continuously hold their tails in the air? Hardly. Can you picture a T-Rex standing up to look for prey, with it's tail in the air? Scientist never said, "all Dino's walk with their tail in the air." See my quote.

Additionally, tracks tells us how a trackmaker carried its tail

Regardless, your point is mute. Because obviously Dinosaur didn't hold their tails in the air all the time.
I said earlier. The publishing of the before mentioned books. Revealed the stegasaur carving. In 1999-2000. Since that time almost every picture drawn of a stegosauri; is with the tail in the air. Maybe it is a
coincidence. Maybe not.


The pictures of stegasaur didn't start changing till very recently. Last few years.

Additionally,

Dinosaur tracks have been found in over 1000 locations throughout the world, on every continent except Antarctica. In the U.S., they are especially abundant in southern and western states, including Texas, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, as well as some eastern states, especially Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. Most tracksites are found in quarries, mines, riverbeds, desserts, and mountain terraces--wherever Mesozoic strata are likely to be exposed. Paleontologist Martin Lockley notes that in the western U.S. alone new sites are being reported at the rate of about 50 per year (Lockley, 1991). Of course, the original settings in which the tracks were made were considerably different from the modern ones. Most tracks were made in the kinds of places one commonly sees tracks today: near shorelines and tidal flats, where large expanses of moist sediment are found.

So many tracks being found very close to the surface! Often under just inches of hard sediment. Often in small streams and coastal tidal flats, which haven't changed in 65 million years?! NOT! Would lead us to the conclusion that 65 million years of geological history has NOT happened, since those tracks were laid down!

[edit on 13-4-2008 by Howie47]

reply to post by Howie47

We're not talking about how Dino carried their tails when they walked. The question is on how they are pictured.

That must mean the conspirators are not paolaeontologists but textbook publishers and journalists. But how could that be, when they simply took up the new scientific knowledge when it became known to them? Are you suggesting that they already knew all about the latest science but kept it a deep dark secret until somebody published a picture of a 'stegosaurus carving' from Cambodia, at which they instantly panicked and started depicting dinosaur tails correctly? Hilarious.

Did Dino's continuously hold their tails in the air?

When they were on their feet, yes. Their long tails balanced their long necks. If they let down their tails they would tip over forwards and crack their jaws.

Can you picture a T-Rex standing up to look for prey, with it's tail in the air?

Yes. See 'Stance and gait in the flesh-eating dinosaur Tyrannosaurus', B. H. NEWMAN. 1970, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, vol. 2 #2. Please note the year of publication.

Obviously Dinosaur didn't hold their tails in the air all the time.

Not so obviously, as the following paper demonstrates. The main thesis (that hadrosaurs were bipedal) is no longer generally accepted -- hadrosaurs, like stegosaurs, are now widely agreed to be quadrupedal -- but the reported details of fossil anatomy that indicate a stiff, more-or-less horizontal tail are not in dispute.

'The Posture of Hadrosaurian Dinosaurs'. Peter M. Galton. 1970, Journal of Paleontology, Vol. 44, No. 3. Again, kindly note the date of publication.

The publishing of the before mentioned books revealed the stegasaur carving in 1999-2000.... ]The pictures of stegasaur didn't start changing till very recently. Last few years.

Here's a picture from 1996. It shows the horizontal tail, as well as the very small head we now know stegosauri had. The head alone completely debunks your argument, because small heads on stegosauri continue to appear in scientifically-informed pictures of stegosauri to this day... and the head of the creature in the carving is huge compared to its body.

For your information, the change in dinosaur tail renditions occurred after 1989, when papers presented in 1986 at the First International Symposium on Dinosaur Tracks and Traces (Albuquerque, New Mexico) were subsequently published in a book entitled Dinosaur Tracks and Traces. The book brought the new information about dinosaur posture and stance to a non-specialist audience, and the rest is history.

Finally,

So many tracks being found very close to the surface! Often under just inches of hard sediment. Often in small streams and coastal tidal flats, which haven't changed in 65 million years?! NOT! Would lead us to the conclusion that 65 million years of geological history has NOT happened, since those tracks were laid down!

This argument suggests that your knowledge of geology matches your knowledge of palaeontology. But I grow weary of this; your argument is debunked, the relevant information is now on the thread for all to see and draw their own conclusions. My work here is done.

reply to post by Astyanax


Astyanax must not of read the material he posted as a rebuff.

A study of the stance and locomotion of Tyrannosaurus was made for the mounting of the partial skeleton at the British Museum (Natural History). This shows that the posture was much more bird-like than is indicated by previous mounts, and also the tail is shorter. (During walking) the vertebral column was held nearly horizontal with the tail clear of the ground. The fore-limbs acted as struts to stop the body sliding forward as the animal raised its body from the (resting position).

So my contention that Dino's didn't always hold their tails in the air is
verified by Astyanax's link.
I never said the head was correctly depicted in the relief. But rather
that the artist didn't have intimate knowledge of every detail. Of an animal the was describe to him. Or that he saw at a distance in the jungle. Astyanax argued that point. Saying the artist would have to had an intimate knowledge if stegosaur, if they were still alive. Not his exact words. That would be pure conjecture.
The knowledge of Dino tracks. Is even greater evidence that totally devastates the hypothesis, that men and Dino's were separated by 65
million years. If I was on the other side of this argument. I wouldn't want to go there.

reply to post by Howie47

You're a scrapper, Howie, I'll give you that. The trouble is, you don't know when you're licked. You remind me of the Black Knight:



That link was to the abstract of a paper. The paper itself contains the information. Anyway, what part of the word 'stance' don't you understand?

Never mind, here's something you can read online.

Striking a New Pose

Enjoy.

Originally posted by bigfatfurrytexan
...I would postulate ... they likely would have revered it ...

Chinese. Dragons. 'nuff said.

Originally posted by mybigunit
Im a believer than humans did live with dinasaurs and when they found that T rex tissue not to long ago that proved it. If these things died a million years ago how the hell are they finding blood tissue stll....i happen to think they are working on cloning it as we speak. Lets face it if it comes out we did live together that means we as humans are much older and that throws most religions out the door.

Wait, let me get this straight. Since they found T-Rex tissue unfossilized, and if dinosaurs were proven to exist in the time of man, it's RELIGION that's going to be thrown out? Wouldn't logic dictate that you throw out the dating methods of the dinosuar fossils? Or would that interfere with your faith in evolution?

How can religion be thrown out when, at the very least, the bible speaks of at least two dinosaurs living in man's time: leviathan, and behemoth.

[edit on 7-5-2008 by sir_chancealot]

reply to post by sir_chancealot


No, the tissues were NOT unfossilized, they were crystalized. they were able to remove the crystalization and return the tissue to a somewhat gooey state. Keep in mind, they are able to pull fragmented DNA out from Dinos, so some organics were able to be pulled previiously.