The stegosaurus on the temple

I think it highly unlikely that there were boars or rhinos around with plates along their backs.

The second option sounds a lot more likely.

The argument is self-defeating.

Creationists claim it is a stegosaurus because it reasonably resembles one. Which means we know what a stegosaurus must have looked like. Since no-one has discovered a live stegosaurus, knowing what a stegosaurus looks like does not appear to require that we live alongside them. Hence that the person who carved the relief knew what a stegosaurus looked like (presuming it is one) need not have lived alongside them either.

😕

How old is this temple? Creationists put the era of the dinosaur several thousand years in the past, right? If the temple is of more recent vintage, then this depiction of a stegosaurus (assuming that is what that carving is supposed to be), was NOT based on the sculptor having actually seen one.

And if you look at any Byzantine church, you'll see clear and irrefutable evidence that not only did the people there see Jesus walking around every day, but that he also sported an impressive afro hairstyle that often takes up the entire upper half of the painting.

I think it could be some other animal with leaves behind it...I would think if the 'leaves' were stego spikes, they would not have the line in them sperating them from the back of the animal.

The 'plates' closely resemble the lotus petals which are a frequent motif in Hindu and Buddhist sacred art.

...in fact if you look at a less closely-cropped version of the picture, you can see pointy-petal things on the left, outside the roundel. See, for instance, http://geochristian.wordpress.com/. In fact that site has a good discussion of the image, written by a Christian (but hurry, as it's a blog and the URL may not link straight to that page for long).

Of course, if some viable population of stegosaurids did survive into recent history, it would be only reasonable to assume that they would look much different than they did 65 million years ago. They could very well have become smaller, changed the shape of their heads. . .grown feathers. . .developed wings. . .

Or maybe someone found a stego skeleton and they were able to make a wild guess

If the temple is of more recent vintage, then this depiction of a stegosaurus (assuming that is what that carving is supposed to be), was NOT based on the sculptor having actually seen one.

To be fair (though I'm not sure why I'd want to be), it would not be necessary for the sculptor to have lived contemporaneously with dinos - only for dinosaurs to have been alive recently enough for stego still to have a place in oral history. Equally, the things like incorrectly-shaped plates and horns are not worth much as evidence on the identity of our temple stego - if you look at engravings of giraffes etc from the middle ages and before you'll see some pretty wacky stuff. Word of mouth does odd things... as does carving in stone when you're basically a mason, not a sculptor.

By the way, here's the direct link to the post which Mr Henderson referenced above. Again, I think that the arguments from anatomical inaccuracy are worthless (this guy hangs a big part of his argument on minor inaccuracies like the curvature of the spine, then suggests it was actually meant to be a chameleon!) but the image of another animal with leaves in the background seems to support the pareidolia hypothesis... The poster also suggests it could have been a mythical beast like a makara, which is plausible.

Outeast:

Thanks for linking to my blog post about Stegosaurus. I merely suggested a chameleon as a much better possibility than a dinosaur. I could be wrong, but better to go with a creature that the temple builders may have been familiar with than one that has been extinct for 140 million years.

Chameleons are not native to Cambodia, as far as I know, but they do live in India, and the builders of the Angkor Wat temple complex were Hindus.

Kevin N, I wasn't actually dissing you for the chameleon suggestion per se - just saying that it is inconsistent to reject a stego hypothesis on the basis of anatomical inaccuracies but then suggest that the animal is it depicting is one that is far less like the image.

The whole line of discussion is plain silly in any case: dinosaurs have been extinct for millions of years, so there is no very plausible way that a stego could possibly have a place in the culture's consciousness. Whatever the image is, it's not a stegosaurus.

Unless it's a modern fake, that is:)

It could be almost anything I suppose, but if someone were trying to create a fake, why would they use a stegosaurus? Why not a T Rex?

This stegosaurus depiction (or so it seems to be) has been debunked in the mind of skeptics by the fairly simple measure of drawing a line through the depiction

if it is a rhino why does it have a bulky tail

if it is leaves around it why do they start from the shoulders and move down to the tail if they were leaves they would go around the whole thing or half and it even seems to follow its back if someone had carved it there later with the technology today they would pick that up it is still aged and everything

I've written a detailed review of the case which can be found at my Paluxy controversy website (which also has many other articles on alleged out-of-order artifacts, fossils, and tracks, at: http://paleo.cc/paluxy.htm
Or you can go directly to the article at:
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/stegosaur-claim.htm
Thanks!

Woooow. Creationists? At what point in the bible does it say anything about dinosaurs let alone anything about us living alongside dinosaurs?

I mean wooooow. Atheists will say anything to get a crack at us these days.
Just..wow...