hi! i love your blog! also i was wondering if you could tell me more about how the protoceratops might have been the origin of the griffin myth? it sounds really interesting!
Thank you!
Dinosaur (and other prehistoric animal) fossils are often assumed to have been origins for various mythical creatures. While its certainly not 100% confirmed (Mark Witton disagrees that Protoceratops was responsible for the Griffin myth, actually, and he gives a pretty good explanation as to why), but I think it’s an interesting assumption and I think it’s totally plausible that fossils could have very much effected ancient people’s depictions of mythical creatures, even if very different from what the fossilized animal looked like in life (I mean, think about how different we used to think other dinosaurs used to look like based on what fossils of them we could find at the time).
For Protoceratops’s case, its generally thought that it could have inspired griffins because of its skull in particular. This hypothesis was first brought up by Adrienne Mayor, a historian who specializes in studying Folk Science (how ancient cultures interpreted scientific data). It’s beak, but not-so-birdlike head could have been interpreted as a half bird, half beast sort of creature. No one would have found a perfectly well preserved specimen (at least I highly doubt it), and no one would have had the knowledge to properly examine fossilized remains, so I don’t completely doubt that finding a seemingly half bird, quadrupedal creature could have had some hand in inspiring a mythical lion-bird.
According to Witton, the main issue with this hypothesis is that Griffins, being apart of Greek myth, supposedly predate Greece’s contact/trading with Asia, the continent where Protoceratops is found, but I’m not really an expert on history in general. I don’t know the totality of pre-Mycenaean Greek peoples’ capability to have been influenced by Asian fossils.
It’s some food for thought, though, and whether or not these fossils could have been the direct origin for the griffin, there’s still the possibility that they could have had some influence on the myth or even proved that they once existed.
I mean, take a look at how medieval European artists depicted elephants based on verbal accounts:
Or perhaps the possibility and other hypothesis that fossilized dwarf elephant skulls may have been interpreted as cyclopses, also by ancient Greeks, who were inexperienced with living elephants.
With that in mind, it’s fun to imagine how ancient cultures may have depicted fossils like these:
(And perhaps with the frill completely chipped off.)
