With an impressive collection of cave art (drawings & paintings), pictographs, stone sculptures (petroglyphs), carvings and a library of dinosaur-looking ‘historical’ accounts of great beasts, often referred to as ‘dragons’, it is understandable for one to ask the question, “Were dinosaurs alive in a more recent time, coexisting with humans?” Regarding drawings, pictographs and petroglyphs of easily identifiable dinosaurs, it is easy to simply dismiss them as fakes, created in more modern times but this is not a scientific approach, if it is not accompanied by corroborating historical and forensic evidence.
Here are two (of many) historical accounts:
Lucius Cassius Dio (c. 165 – c. 235), a Roman historian and senator was one of several Roman writers who recorded the account of Roman general Marcus Attilius Regulus’ encounter with a dragon during the 3rd Century BCE. He wrote:
“A dragon suddenly crept up and setted behind the wall of the Roman army. The Romans killed it and sent the hide to the Roman Senate. When the dragon was measured by order of the Senate, it happened to be 120 feet long and the thickness was fitting to the length.”
Even Marco Polo, famed 13th century explorer, wrote about them during his time in the Far East:
“In this province (Carajan) are found snakes and great serpents of such vast size as to strike fear into those who see them … Some of them are ten paces in length … The bigger ones are about ten palms in girth. They have two forelegs near the head but for foot nothing but a claw … The head is very big and the eyes are bigger than a great loaf of bread. The mouth is large enough to swallow a man whole and is garnished with great [pointed] teeth.”
The skull below is off the dinosaur Dracorex, named for its dragon head appearance. If it were alive at the time and present where people roamed, one could easily see how such a dinosaur might be imagined as a dragon.
