40 Responses to “Stegosaur in Cambodia?”

1. EdwardHowland responds: February 5th, 2006 at 4:05 pm

   Since this seems to be the first and as far as I know only reference to stegosaurs in Cambodia my first guess would be hoax. Further evidence may yet turn up however. We shall see…

2. Gil responds: February 5th, 2006 at 4:36 pm

   This carving looks to me like an Borneo Rhinoceros against a big-leafed backdrop. The rhino was on the mainland in historic times.

   Firstly, the head is big and heavy, and shows the same kind of horn that they have.

   Secondly, the tail is short and stubby. The stegosaur had large spikes on it - one would well imagine that being especially important to a stone carver.

   Both characteristics make the Stegosaurus identification spurious at best. The only thing speaking for the ID as a stegosaur is that it does look a bit like the claymation stegosaur in the first King Kong film of 1933.

3. Syndicate responds: February 5th, 2006 at 7:37 pm

   My first question would be what paleontological evidence is there for Stegosaur stenops having once existed in Cambodia and surrounding regions, and if it did, is it possible that the ancient Khmers had seen fossilized remains?

4. RBerning responds: February 5th, 2006 at 7:54 pm

   From looking at the picture closer I belive Gil is correct and the plates above the back were vandalized and broken to look as they are at present. The out edges look as if someone took a rock hammer and picked them to present condition.
   The key would be if there is a older photo than may show it otherwise.

5. Gurpreet responds: February 5th, 2006 at 9:16 pm

   The head does look much like a rhino’s to me, albeit a hornless one, such as the Sumatran rhinoceros, which I understand has a very small horn. However, the tail looks much more like that of a stegosaur or other saurischian (the lizard-hipped dinosaurs) than that of any mammal. It would be great to get a carbon dating of that panel; it does look lighter than some of the surrounding stonework.

6. CryptoInformant responds: February 5th, 2006 at 10:35 pm

   I’m afraid this is something other than a stegosaur, or at least one as we know it. If it is a stegosaur, then it would b descended from Toujiangosaurus, which was far more slender than its American cousin, and had shoulder spikes, but it could have evolved over time, after all it did have 145 million years to do so!

7. Scarfe responds: February 6th, 2006 at 12:31 am

   The problem with this situation is because of the availability heuristic, which occurs when people estimate the probability of an outcome based on how easy that outcome is to imagine. Because we as North Americans have in our minds what a stegosaurus must look like, especially when stripped down to the sparsest system of signs (visual cues), we can easily interpret that image as a dinosaur; however, who knows what the people who carved those images possessed as a frame of reference or system of symbolic representations. When Herodotus, the Greek Historian, observed a Hippopotamus, an unknown animal to him, he could only describe it insofar as it was like or unlike a horse because his frame of symbolic reference was culturally contingent on what was available to him (a horse). What is the creature depicted at the bottom of the column? It looks unlike any creature to me – perhaps a monkey, but I only think that because it has arms and legs in a very roughly humanoid fashion. The stylized aspect of the face is foreign to me, but it must have had some cultural/mythic/symbolic context for the person who carved it. Who knows what these people would emphasize and schematize in their art. I could be an entirely made up creature with no real basis at all.

8. fenston s. lo responds: February 6th, 2006 at 7:28 am

   If I had to bet money on it, I would say this is a hoax. If you look carefully at the animal in the picture and regard the tail as a stem, you can see the vestigial traces of leaves flowing out from the right side of the stem onto its back. Moving forward to just back of the front leg there are other vestigial traces of carved design.

9. Redoubt responds: February 6th, 2006 at 9:40 am

   Thought provoking? Yes. Believable as a representation of a dinosaur? No… not even close.

   The physical features are all wrong for a Stegosaurus. They’re not too good for a Triceratops either.

   My guess… just from the limited information available, is either that it’s a purposeful hoax or some ancient example of a fanciful imagination.

   For a comparative graphic, I removed the critter from its stony setting, highlighted the features of the head and placed representations of what a Stegosaurus and Triceratops probably looked like above and below.

   They too are probably subject to errors because no human has ever seen one alive. But they are also likely far closer to fact than the carving in Cambodia…

10. BIGFE78 responds: February 6th, 2006 at 10:08 am

    THIS IS NOT THE FIRST TEMPLE OR PYRAMID WITH A CARVING OF A DINOSUAR. IF YOU DO SOME RESEARCH ON SOME THE AFRICAN, CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICAN TEMPLES (PYRAMIDS) THEY ALSO HAVE WHAT IS TO BELIEVED AS DINOSAUR CARVINGS, THUNDERBIRDS AND SOME CENTRAL AMERICAN TEMPLES EVEN HAVE CARVINGS OF WHAT LOOKS TO BE SPACECRAFT. OUR WORLD IS A MYSTERY IN IT’S OWN BEING BECAUSE OF LOST KNOWLEDGE AND IGNORANCE TOWARDS EACH OTHER. SUCH AS DESTROY AND CONQUER.

11. Marlantis Buzz responds: February 6th, 2006 at 11:40 am

    I spent about an hour on it and came up with the following (GooD GoD). Can’t say how old it is or if it’s a fake. If I were to go further above the and below the noted square It gets more interesting in clever way(s) as it should. The decipher indicates…
    (Ti it ROYAL GooD GoD…quup).
    there are some other letter combinations I’ll not dwell on for now. I wouldn’t dwell on the icon more than face value. It did what it wanted to do and that was get attention being some what outta place. The hidden pattern oddly enough associates with other lands far far away. Thanks, I enjoyed this and will keep it in mind. Buzz

12. 2400bc responds: February 6th, 2006 at 12:18 pm

    I suspect the lighter appearance of the stego carving is due to cleaning.

    It seems you can’t win with hardcore skeptics. I’d bet the reason it was cleaned was because some skeptic proposed that the dirt and crud on the carving was hiding/distorting some of the details and that it would prove to be something else when cleaned. When it was cleaned some other skeptic comes along and says it is too clean and that it looks as if it has been manipulated!

    Also, skeptics who ridicule people like me who think man & dinosaurs have always coexisted ask where is the evidence - shouldn’t their likeness show-up in artwork by the locals if the locals have encountered them? Then when examples do turn-up the skeptic cries “Forgery” or “Mis-identification” rather than back down from there wrathful, condescending tone of “You are so ignorant for even suggesting such a ridiculous notion!”

    All I would like to see from every skeptic who has posted on this article is one thing: Stop moving the goalposts. If you criticize someone and then you turn out to be wrong then back down from you claim rather than grabbing at thin air to hold on to your belief.

13. Redoubt responds: February 6th, 2006 at 12:55 pm

    Speaking just for myself, I find skepticism a healthy thing. Or sharpened to a finer point… a fish is less likely to end up as dinner if he is not apt to bite on every worm he sees.

    I feel that there is a distinct line between something being ‘possible’ and then, being ‘fact’. It is possible that steggy shared a jungle with some ancient Cambodians? Why not? I am not nearly young enough anymore to know everything. But at the same time, I do not feel bound to accept it as truth.

    Redoubt’s Captain Spymaster Secret Decoder Mood Ring says… Lighten up, guys.

14. jjames1 responds: February 6th, 2006 at 1:14 pm

    Marlantis Buzz–exactly what are you talking about? What did you “translate?”

15. Marlantis Buzz responds: February 6th, 2006 at 2:10 pm

    I’m teaching myself the ancient navigational image code known by many names. I learned the name Divine Grid via reading Sitchen when I was trying to figure out what I had stumbled onto. It involves hidden illusion embedded in this case the stone surface. It’s an ancient universal way to communicate with images to start and later one learns how to find what few letters and numbers there might be. Yes it involves PhotoShop, cut paste overlays in my case, before computers a mirror or film overlays would work. It’s been kept secret from the masses for thousands of years. Most debunkers on this subject are paid to scare you off or they from a wealthy background that thrived from it’s secrets. I’m not into it to expose the past wrong doings. I don’t let debunkers bother me either. As mentioned before…they just keep your replys in tune and quick. The code involves many patterns where a formula(s) is applied to one reveal the hidden image and second, try toread the darn things. If you are left handed, they are easier to work. Right handers have little patients with it. Sometimes on C2C you will hear the term THE OTHER CODE. That is what this is. I don’t usually give up my formulas and seldom challenged for my level of knowing. I do welcome advice from those more experienced at it than I. Even though I’m slightly dyslexic, I use a couple math codes when numerics and letters are clustered in a secondary pi sorta way. First impression people think I’m a grand stander but I’m not. I take this very serious for some cures to health problems are my focus to decipher. This involves ancient mythology and zodiac missing pieces held back from the past.

    The dinosaur topic here basically shows a communication wherein, the plates on the back represent the association to other images elsewhere, and can be very old. The animal is afoot showing motion horizontal toward the right. Outside of the circle on the vertical strip is the capital letter A, below is a horizontal S. Here and there are faint faces in halves or quarters. That’s more than enough to get my attention and open it up to see what’s there.

16. Lego responds: February 6th, 2006 at 4:19 pm

    Perhaps the depiction is of a not yet discovered dinosaur.
    Then again the stegosaurous in the Smithsonian is made up of 30 or so individuals. Perhaps they have a few wrong body parts and the Cambodia depiction is correct.

    One might also want to check out this site for other puzzling depictions.

17. 2400bc responds: February 6th, 2006 at 7:26 pm

    Huh?

18. 2400bc responds: February 6th, 2006 at 7:37 pm

    Redoubt -

    Actually, skepticism is like a tool - it can be either constructive or destructive, depending on how it is used.

    If skepticism is used as a way to avoid reality and maintain imaginary scenarios then it is unhealthy. On the other hand, if it is used to filter-out misunderstandings in order to have a more accurate interpretation of reality then it is healthy.

    Skepticism is not just blatantly good, it is neutral, and in a way the end justifies or condemns the means. One can only tell if applied skepticism was constructive or destructive by hindsight.

19. bccryptid responds: February 7th, 2006 at 3:49 pm

    An isolated carving by itself proves nothing and is of no value other than the good natured banter and speculation here. Are there corresponding stories, legends of such creatures? There would have to be if they roamed Cambodia alongside man. I’d think the horns and spikes from such an animal would be one of the most revered ceremonial hunting trophies there from time imemorial, where are the carvings of kings adorned with them?

    Offhand I would have to agree with the majority of posters here. It’s a hoax, done by someone apparently using a Walt Disney cartoon as their model rather than a true Jurassic era saurian.

20. Lizkas responds: February 8th, 2006 at 6:45 am

    I was just trying to post that all these drawings of dinosaur-like forms by pre-scientifc peoples (if you check some of the above links!) are very intriguing…

21. Umbriel1 responds: February 8th, 2006 at 3:36 pm

    I hardly think it shocking that a surviving medieval “Stegosaurus” might differ significantly from the ones we see reconstructed in museums. As Lego points out, there may well be many undiscovered variations on Stegosaurus — consider the number of specimens ever recovered, relative to the number that must have existed over the millions of years they walked the Earth (sorry, Creationists).

    Moreover, while a few species, like the coelacanth, have survived unchanged over tens of millions of years (sorry again…), surely it’s not unthinkable that a medieval “stegosaurus” might have been a representative of some relatively new sub-species that had evolved over the 140 million years since stegosaurus officially became extinct.

    And some of the pics on Lego’s “genesispark” site are curious indeed. I think most can be adequately explained as mythological depictions or modern hoaxes, but some, like the “Mesopotamian Cylinder” look uncannily dinosaurian.

22. herbertsql responds: February 10th, 2006 at 10:41 am

    As an artist myself, I find it amusing that skeptics are picking at the anatomical incorrectness of this rendering. If I were going to draw a stegosaurus from memory, that’s what it would look like, by gum.

    And of COURSE it was done with a chisel. Just like the rest of the wall. Sheesh. Most artists have “handwriting,” and this artistic style matches the rest of the pictures, as well.

    Isn’t the triceratops head frill a neat addition? It’s actually more convincing to me than if it HAD been a perfect replica. Says that there was some confusion there. Combined legends? Conflicting sightings? Cool.

    Oh, and that thing at the bottom? It’s a dog. Forget the exact Asian name, but it’s commonly depicted that way.

    (Poor Marlantis Buzz, it’s past time for your next dose of Abilify.)

23. Mnynames responds: February 11th, 2006 at 12:04 pm

    Putting aside the wild and often conflicting speculations of Sitchin, Von Daniken, and Velikovsky for the moment, one image does not a monster make. Well-read cryptozoologists might point out the carving of the so-called Pictish Beast, about which we know very little, but there are still several carvings, and to my mind at least differ little from depictions of Kelpies and Dobhar Chu, about which local legends have much to say. As far as I know, the Khmer, while not without their mysteries, are a relatively well-known people, and as such their legends have been largely recorded. So if they have no legends concerning such a beast, the case for a southeast Asian stegosaurid becomes less likely. As for how it differs, yes, animals evolve, and this one would have had a lot of time in which to do so. However, as all known stegosaurids and nodosaur relatives had very small heads, it seems unlikely (But not impossible, after all, herbivorous crocodiles once walked the Earth too, and who would have predicted that?) that this would have changed. On the suggestive side, stegosaurids survived into the cretaceous on the Indian subcontinent, so any would-be survivors would likely be found not too far away. Therefore a stegosaurus would more likely be found in Asia than, say, Canada or the Amazon. To my mind though, the image just looks like a rhino with a decorative pattern behind it.

24. Marlantis Buzz responds: February 13th, 2006 at 6:48 pm

    Based on the image placement, unique presentation and quality of this web site’s graphics I thought this might be a place where I might meet others with the same hobby as I. Guess I was wrong or perhaps too new . At least I learned a new word…ambilify. Thanks for sharing.

25. Redoubt responds: February 13th, 2006 at 7:08 pm

    … what if? Wouldn’t it be grand if a dinosaur had survived… or maybe still survives somewhere?

    I have no hesitation in wishing for a real Jurassic Park. Man’s world would never be threatened by such a simple threat as dinosaurs because it is already on a path to self-extinction.

    In fact, this planet was in far better hands when T-Rex and Steggy were directing traffic.

    In fact, given the choice, I’d gladly vote for a dinosaur over smirking chimpanzee.

    But sadly, in fact, the dinosaurs are probably all gone and all we are left with is the chimps.

26. CryptoInformant responds: February 14th, 2006 at 8:21 pm

    “In fact, this planet was in far better hands when T-Rex and Steggy were directing traffic.

    In fact, given the choice, I’d gladly vote for a dinosaur over smirking chimpanzee.”

    Very funny, but even more true. I disagree with the idea that dinos are all gone. I went to Central Park once and several tried to steal my lunch. THEY’RE CALLED PIGEONS! So, VOTE Pigeon FOR PREZ!

    Ol’ Toujiang’s relatives in India definitely makes the location more possible. Large heads mean large(r) brains, so maybe the stegosaurs needed more smarts to survive in a world of mammals, and also may have either been accompanied by ceratopsians, or evolved new headgear.

    Things fit into place alot easier if you look at the individual parts of the problem first and then see if it fits.

    Creationists get their theories blown out of the water and then get mad at us for adapting ours?

27. Stephen Penton responds: February 16th, 2006 at 5:17 am

    Lets look at the evidance that dinosuares are dead we haven’t seen them for ages or have we if you look scintificaly there is less oxygen in the air so an animal lieing todate wouldn’t be able to reach the size it could have in the acinet times if you look at the scorpion water scorpians were about 4 foot long in the pre dino ara because of the massive amounts of oxygen in the water but the land scorpians thwere on’y about 8 inches because of the lack of oxygen in to air and we see this size fluks all trough out time but the oxygen in the water has remained curent so we still have small minioes and mamth “Protolybyathans”like the gian squid or even there bigger brothers the gargantuan squid so if you look around give time fro change maby the bufflo was something like a kentosaurus infact i would probly be more likely to say that the carving was of a kentosaurus instead of a stegasaur saying the kento din’t have a spiked tail like it’s cusin steg and the only skelital differance is that kento was about half the size so it would have a better chance of surviving an extinction event but anyway the fact is that if you look at the theroy of exilution mamles came from retiles so maby the mamles of today are a mixed of evolved pre dinosar reptiles and dinosaures that have evolved like raptores into birdes of prey braciosaurus into gerafes ECT.
    so the fact that a dinosaur was seen in the ancit times dosn’t much surprise me i mean in a few cetureies a form of inteligence is going to see stuff like the monalisa and wonder what kind of creature they were like we are with these carvings of dinosaurs

28. Scot Hickerson responds: April 10th, 2006 at 3:57 am

    This sculpture is part of a column that holds up a huge wall, it is not fake and it is also obviously a stegasaurous. They carved it because they saw one. There is other evidence that dinosaurs and man coexisted. The human footprints and dinosaur footprints in the same layer of rock in Glen Rose Texas. The ancient Ica Stones that have drawings on them of dinosaurs. Cave drawings depicting dinosaurs. All of the dragon stories throughout history and descriptions in ancient writings. And last but not least is the Article in this months Discover Magazine in which a Paleontologist discovered soft tissue with intact blood cells in a T-rex thigh bone. You could say that soft tissue could survive for 65 million years which is impossible, or that dinosaurs lived in modern times and the earth is not millions of years old. Evolution is bullcrap. There is plenty of evidence of a young earth if you are not willingly ignorant. Take all of the sitings of lockness monsters all over the world. I think that there are living dinosaurs today.

29. Loren Coleman responds: April 10th, 2006 at 7:53 am

    Who says that it is definitely “impossible” for soft tissue to survive for millions of years?

30. cor2879 responds: April 24th, 2006 at 4:33 pm

    There is much writing throughout history of encounters with dinosaur like creatures. Of course the ancients had other names for them… primarily dragons. Today when we hear dragon we think of a traditional fire-breathing monster, but this was not always so. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Bible to the writings of Marco Polo (the Chinese Emperor’s chariot was carried by a pair of ‘dragons’)and even some early 20th Century English Dictionaries, Dragons were regarded as real, if rare, living creatures. Even today, dinosaur-like creatures are known to exist. Komodo Dragons and Crocodiles. I am not claiming that they themselves -are- dinosaurs, but the fact is they are large reptiles who match many of the characteristics of dinosaurs. Consider for a moment that the facts are possibly being reshaped to fit the theories, rather than the theories redefined to fit the facts.

31. shumway10973 responds: July 5th, 2006 at 2:15 am

    that is the same thing as in the book of Job, in the Bible, God talks to Job about the Behemoth and Leviathon without having to really go into detail and in fact it sound like God is just pointing over there some where at an actual creature. There is an interesting book I found at a christian bookstore I worked at talking about documented encounters between men and dino (like?) creatures, some of them up to WWII.

32. Noir responds: August 9th, 2006 at 2:11 am

    From an artist’s perspective….if you look at the rest of the carvings on the panel they are very stylized. Judging by the guy at the bottom and the way his hair is done, then going back to look at the carving of the supposed stegosaur, I would say it’s actually a canine with a raised ridge of fur as if it’s angry. It has pointed ears and it’s head is down like a jackal or wolf on the defense. As lovely as it is to think a stegosaur or any dinosaur may have survived into modern times, I don’t think this is representative of that.

33. CryptoInformant responds: October 7th, 2006 at 1:47 pm

    Evolution=BULLCRAP? Gimme a break! Saying it is “impossible” for the tissue to have survived is like saying that it is impossible for similar animals to have evolved from different lines of descent. The baleen whale has been invented at least three times now! Oh, oops, I just personally blew YET ANOTHER creationist theory out of the water! But, of course, this will not be the last we hear of it, or any other “zombie theories”. No matter how dead the creation theory is, it just can’t stop coming back to suck your brains out.

    maybe a bit harsh, but only a little.

34. pentatonika responds: January 18th, 2007 at 5:27 am

    Let us consider the locations of the stegosaurus fossils which have been found. A stegosaurus fossil has been found recently in Portugal. Until then, they have only been found in the United States. The find in Portugal is believed to be evidence of a continental drift between Europe and North America.

    If the Twelfth Century Cambodians knew about stegosauruses, that leaves two possibilities: either none of the stegosauruses in Cambodia have been disinterred, or the Cambodians traveled widely for their time.

35. sschaper responds: February 2nd, 2007 at 2:22 pm

    There are physical processes on the molecular and atomic level such as racimization that prevent soft tissue from being preserved for 70 plus million years. A few thousand years appears to be the upper limit. This is why deriving DNA from amber-preserved mosquitoes isn’t going to work for Cenozoic Park unless the time scale is systematically off.

36. Xaane responds: February 10th, 2007 at 2:29 pm

    There’s a problem with the assumption that the “Stegosaur” is actually a Rhino.

    Rhinoceros do not have large dinosaur-like tails. My 7 year olds instantly identified this as a Stegosaurus, not as a Rhino. It is a dinosaur depicted, the only real question is whether it is a hoax.

37. kelpie responds: February 15th, 2007 at 2:47 am

    It really doesn’t matter what you believe in, it appears the historical references to dinosaurs or dragons speak for themselves. There are just too many global accounts of human/dino encounters to be stuck in prideful mire. From Egypt to Ecuador, China to Scandinavia, Canada to Australia…aboriginal peoples lay claim to animals that they would have known nothing about simply by fossil record. If one labels another as a creationist simply because it’s easier that way, then we have learned nothing from history, and will refuse to accept any possibilities otherwise.

38. watercrest responds: May 13th, 2007 at 2:59 am

    The Cambodian people and tourists through curiosity tend to touch and rub on the statues or stone carvings along the countless wall murals of these temples. After successive touching and rubbing over time some of these stone carvings become smooth devoid of any moss or dirt. This may explain why this image of the “stegosaurus” appear to be of a different shade.

39. Crazyharp81602 responds: November 29th, 2007 at 4:27 pm

    Good point.

    A few months ago I made an article on my blog about the alleged carving and how, in comparison to the latest discoveries and studies of the dinosaur, it is not what some people assume it is.

    You can find it right here. Check it out.

    The Stegosaurus Carving That Isn’t

40. selahsagacious responds: January 15th, 2008 at 12:40 am

    Ancient people were aware of dinosaurs. they found out about them the same way we do - by finding fossils and imprints! The chinese have been finding dinosaur fossils for hundreds of years. They were called “dragon bones”. They were boiled in soup and ground into powder for longevity. The chinese word for dinosaur is “terrible dragon”. In the americas natives saw imprints of pteradactles and other fossils and of course thier imaginations were peaked just as much as ours is. Most of the pictures I’ve seen are completly unconvincing including this “steg”. It frankly could be anything. The strange monkey creature under the “steg” could it be a real humanoid monster? I’m sure someone w/ a fancifull enough imagination will make that claim. There are many ancient depictions of unicorns from all over the world. Why not believe in them too? Its not very rational to learn paleantology from a Flintstones cartoon.
    For all you creationist- if you want to blow evolution out of the water simply show a rabbit bone in jurassic strata. Find a rat tooth next to T-Rex fossil, find a horse bone next to triceratops fossil. Do that and Darwin is byebye. ~~Ain’t gonna happen…

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