This Fight Scene from the 1933 King Kong film shows how Tyrannosaurus rex used to be portrayed (upright posture and tail dragging).
It also proves that dinosaurs and giant gorillas lived at the same time.
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Are you sure that’s a Saltasaurus and not, say, a Rocasaurus, Neuquensaurus, or Alamosaurus? I mean, is it labeled?
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That settles it. If other primates lived among the dinosaurs, why not humans also?
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@Socratic.Fanatic
I can see a point behind your questions. As I have said before, I have established that I cannot say yes or no to the Ica stones at this time…
Anyhow, what do you think of Cassius Dio’s account of the Romans fighting a dragon outside of…somewhere that used to belong to Carthage?
The design on the dinosaur’s back is what struck me as similar to Saltasaurus…
Which, as I’ve already pointed out, had significant differences.
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[[quote=“J.E.S, post:104, topic:36403”]
Anyhow, what do you think of Cassius Dio’s account of the Romans fighting a dragon outside of…somewhere that used to belong to Carthage?
[/quote]
I like Cassius Dio’s account just about as much as I liked (i.e. disliked) having to translate that same dragon story in Livy. In high school Latin class we had to take turns translating Livy every other day and Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars on the other days. I was a crazy teenager who thought Latin would be good for me. (OK, I suppose it was but I didn’t enjoy it much.)
I assume you understand that both Livy and Cassius Dio reported those alleged dragons stories centuries after the fact, right? Military heroes and even average soldiers loved to tell exciting stories of their exploits in far away lands. Much like fishing stories, everything get bigger the more it was retold. And whenever you see words like “monster” and “dragon” in an ancient text, you should keep in mind that these words basically mean “big and scary animal”. (The first European to see a war elephant in full battle armor called it a monster.)
The same can be said in modern times. When Indonesia was a Dutch colony, some soldiers thought that local tales about “dragons” were just mythical stories—until they saw one with their own eyes carrying off a young woman. They were on the island of Komodo and saw the scariest giant lizard that they could ever have imagined. The name stuck. Even many American zoos today keep a few Komodo dragons around (although most don’t have the huge adults which are quite big but apparently are not nearly as large as they used to get back in the 1800s before major habitat destruction on the islands.) Yet an untrained person could be forgiven for calling them “dinosaurs” or “monsters”. Indeed, Komodo dragon suits them just fine. What was the animal in the stories which got passed down to Livy and Cassius Dio? Nobody knows. Did it actually exist? Nobody knows.
Your question reminds me of a story told by one of my linguistics professors as a cautionary tale. He said that some ancient historian (I can’t remember what culture) told an exciting story about an army having to fight some kind of “100 legged monster”. It was described as two hundred feet long and twenty feet wide. It was covered in thick-skin and had never ever been defeated. Yet not until centuries later did scholars figure out that it wasn’t a monstrous animal at all. No, it turned out to be the name of a “military formation”!_ Military tacticians called it the “1000 legged monster” because it was composed of 50 foot soldiers in a tight formation of ten rows or similar, with their cowhide shields held outwards. (This should remind you of a somewhat similar Roman testeudo, turtle formation.) That story serves to remind us that not only can “dragons” and “monsters” be virtually any large fearsome animal that is foreign to one’s culture, it can even be something which has been confused by language barriers!
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Oyyy.
So the Romans were fighting the very last Dragon?
You can’t possibly think that story has anything to do with dinosaurs… or are you now saying that the Romans were lucky enough to fight the last Dinosaur?
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The Nephilim were actually giant gorillas! Who knew?
And I saw a History Channel documentary saying that those giants came from outer space. They wouldn’t have built a TV program around it if it weren’t true!
By the way, I saw one of their series that focused on different kinds of weapons of centuries past. They claimed to “put them to the test.” This particular episode supposedly evaluated the strength and merits of chain mail. They draped it on mannequins and had swordsmen, archers, and spear throwers attack. The alleged chain mail ripped easily as if it was nothing. The camera zoomed in on astonished observers and their mockery of its poor performance. The narrator with an authoritative English accent concluded, “The chain mail was little better than no protection at all.” All of this was done with a straight face, never admitting to the audience what was obvious to any viewer with an ounce of common sense and two eyes: they were using “costume chain mail”, probably bought from the same catalogue which supplies rubber swords and styrofoam armor to movie propmasters. The TV “documentary” was full of stuff like that. I suppose the producers and the History Channel executives would rationalize it as “just entertainment” but the program reinforced the ridiculous bias that people of past centuries were stupid and spent hundreds of hours and enormous wealth on inventions which had no value.
I suppose chain mail armor of modern manufacturer was too expensive for their documentary budget and thought it less entertaining. But I was aghast that anybody with any self-respect could participate in such sham—even for a paycheck. Of course, it makes me wonder how many historical falsehoods are promoted on such programs that I don’t pick up.
Meanwhile, I have no doubt that there are people confidently posting online, “I saw a documentary on TV and it demonstrated that chain mail was nearly worthless and only served to weigh down the warrior and made them easier to kill.” Yet, as long as TV is ratings driven, nonsense about alien autopsies and dinosaurs pulling plows will displace accurate historical accounts which educate the public and help them learn to separate solid evidence from wild fantasies.
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Also don’t forget that according to these documentary makers, humans and mermaids share a common ancestor…
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Speaking of dinosaurs, I got to learn about the biggest one ever discovered so far today. Sadly he’s not on an ica stone and also sadly existed some 100,000,000 years before Homo sapiens…
Popsci article writeup:
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I saw this dino at the museum. (A cast of it, anyway.) It’s so big it doesn’t quite fit in the hall, so its head is sticking out to greet visitors. Meet the Titanosaur
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You could always make a new ICA stone.
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That wins the award for coolest video I have seen today. It looks huge on the tiny video playing on my screen. Standing next to it would be a “whoa” moment I think.
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Thank you, glad you liked it. It really is overwhelming when you stand next to it!!
Holy cow, that thing is amazing! I have goose bumps! Thanks for sharing 
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What a great video! [Science Videos | American Museum of Natural History ]
Has anyone read specifics about what it ate and how it “hunted”.
Some have suggested that the T-Rex (with a large olfactory area in its skull) was much more likely to smell the carcas of an edible Dino - - and obtained its food by frightening off smaller predators.
Hyenas have this problem. They are excellent hunters, but they cannot defend their food from alpha predators like Lions.
If we look at the feet of the Titanosaur . . . I find it hard to believe it chased anything. And yet clearly his teeth are amazing! Was it an ambush predator? Lying in wait (hiding behind a really big mountain?!) … and using it’s long neck to lunch it’s jaws out from shrubbery?
Or was it just so big it walked up to the kills of other animals and took it!?
These animals were sauropods, and therefore chiefly herbivores. See how it doesn’t have sharp teeth or claws? So it munched away on plants like a cow. The poops must have been enormous!
There is a very good dinosaur course on coursera (from U. Alberta) called Dino 101 and it starts on Sept 2.