BELIEVERS: IT’S A STEGOSAURUS AND IT’S ANCIENT

The “stegosaurus carving” is located on a central stele that features a date. Translated into the modern calendar it reads as 1186 AD. Other carvings on the column clearly show the ancient artist’s expertise at reproducing known animals.

Anatomical Accuracy

A major criticism of the carving is that the alleged stegosaurus is not anatomically correct. The three concerns are:

The head is too large

There are no spikes on the tail (Thagomizer)

The hind legs are too short

It’s important to point out that none of the carvings are precisely correct and the ancient artists exaggerated elements to emphasise the importance of the creatures including lions, elephants and horses.

With regard to the missing spikes, they would not be clearly visible based on the angle of the carving.

The hind legs are more of a problem but it could be that the artist simply shortened them so that the carving would fit into the space available.

There is no evidence that the carving is recent.

According to the researchers associated with the ruins, there is no evidence of over-carving or recent replacement stonework. Historians, in general, agree with this point. The carving appears as genuine as the other carvings on the same pillars that show lizards, monkeys and swans to name but a few.

There’s a good reason the stone is lighter coloured!

The guides and the researchers at Ta Promh are happy to explain that visitors to the temple have been making plaster casts (moulds) of the stegosaurus carving and that this process has lightened the stone. Early photos of the stele clearly show that it was once the same shade as those around it.

Really based on a fossil?

No stegosaurus fossils have been found in the region. The closest discovered were in China a fair old distance away. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the ancients didn’t find one just that it’s quite unlikely.

Nobody has ever owned up to carving it – even anonymously.

As the heading says! If the carving was a hoax it is almost inconceivable that the hoaxers would have made at least some attempt to let people know how he or she fooled the world.