Dragon/Dinosaur falsehoods are told constantly by creationists to convince the lay audience of their falsehood about dragons being live dinosaurs people saw in the past, while the fossil evidence clearly states that this is all make believe. They regard dinosaurs as dragons only because they're big, scaly and reptilian, and regard certain ancient art as man's depictions of dinosaurs allegedly seen alive only because of their shape, never mind the details clearly showing us that they're not.
The first fabrication is the myth about Baryonyx being the dragon that St George killed to save a damsel in distress. It wasn't. Instead the dragon that St George slew is a heraldic dragon with bat wings, forked tongue, sometimes seen with woman's breasts, barbed tail, and a poisonous breath, which Baryonyx never had. Plus, the story of St.George and the Dragon may have been a Christianized version of the Greek Mythology tale about how Perseus slew Cetus, the sea dragon to rescue a woman named Andromeda from its jaws.
Secondly, the creationist claim about the red dragon shown on the Welsh flag being a Baryonyx dinosaur (as claimed in Ken Ham's book The Dinosaurs of Eden and The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved) is entirely false. The red dragon on the flag looks nothing like Baryonyx. Ham made it all up to fabricate the real story behind the flag's purpose. The real version of folkloric dragon legend, which inspired the Welsh people to adopt the red dragon as their symbol for the Welsh coat of arms, tells about about 2 dragons, a red dragon and a white dragon, that fought each other until a trap was set for them and both fell in. Trapped underground, they were both buried in a large hill for centuries, yet their movements created earthquakes that cause a fortress that was being built on top of them to fall down constantly. A boy, with no known human father, was found and ordered to be sacrificed to appease the pagan gods and make them stop the quakes. But the boy, the future Merlin from the Arthurian Legend, told them that it was the 2 dragons buried beneath the castle who were the ones causing the earthquakes. So, the men dig them out and the dragons emerged and continue the fight until the white dragon was driven out of the area by the triumphant red dragon. The boy says that the red dragon symbolized the people of Vortigern and the white dragon symbolizes the Saxons. Which symbolizes that in the future, the Vortigern, who are today called the Welsh, would fight the Saxons and drive them to the edge of their country and out of their land in 5th century AD, many years later.
Not too long ago, a creationist decided to put this claim in the Dragons were dinosaurs article that came from the now defunct EvoWiki website. It reads like this (misspellings included):
"The Roman Historian Livy, wrote about a great Dragon in Africa that attack General Regulus. Livy wrote: "After many of the soldiers had been seized in [the Dragon's] mouth, and many more crushed by the folds of its tail, its hide being to thick for javelins or darts, the Dragon was at last attacked by military engines and crushed by repeated blows of heavy stone.' History is full of stories about Dragons and men. It was not until the 1841 that Sir Richard Owan introduced the word Dinosuaria. Before that Dinosuars were simply called Dragons."
Here's the response.
What the creationist refers to is Roman Historian Titus Livius (Livy) (59 BC - 17 AD) a man who wrote a series of history books entitled, Ab Urbe Condita (meaning "From the Founding of the City"), a collection of 142 books that tells of the history of Rome from its foundation to what it was during Livy's time. What the creationist claimed is a direct fabrication of an account made in one of Livy's books about a sighting of not a dinosaur, but a giant anaconda-type snake known as The Carthaginian Serpent that measured over 100 feet long. According to this dragon legend, General Marcus Atilius Regulus and his men were laying siege on the country of Carthage when they encountered this giant anaconda serpent that made no aggressive moves on the army but was blocking their path and refused to move out of the way when the army advanced. So the men began to fight off the serpent, but many of them died while trying to kill it by being seized by the serpent's mouth and dragged into the water to be drowned. So Regulus began bombarding the snake with huge boulders until he finally killed the beast and had it measured to be 120 feet long. He then ordered to have its skin removed and brought to one of the temples in Rome as a trophy where it stayed there until it vanished in 133 BC.
In reality, dinosaurs and dragons are 2 different monsters, one real, the other imaginary. Dinosaurs are indeed real due to the countless finds of fossilized bones made around the world that tell us that they once existed on this earth millions of years ago. Dragons, on the other hand, are all just pure fantasy entirely made up by man in an effort to create exciting stories as entertainment for people interested in them. Richard Owen invented the word "Dinosauria" in 1842 to describe fossil remains of 3 dinosaurs, Iguanodon, Megalosaurus, and Hylaeosaurus and how they are not like any other animal that has ever lived in the past and in the present. Dinosaurs and dragons are not at all one and the same.
Another dragon/dinosaur falsehood YECs promote is the story of a town of Bures near Sudbury in England where, in 1405, it was terrorized by a dragon with a crest on its head, saw like teeth, and a long tail. This dragon had been known to kill and devour many sheep as well as shepherds until the monster was driven off in the swamp never to be seen again, by the shooting of arrows from the town's inhabitants. The inhabitants could not kill the dragon because of its impenetrable armored skin. All that they could do was drive it out into the swamp with their bows and arrows. The creationists concluded falsely that the dragon that terrorized the town was either a Dilophosaurus or a Crylophosaurus of the Early Jurassic age. TrueAuthority.com, a creationist site, even assumed stupidly that since Dilophosaurus in Jurassic Park had a venomous saliva which it uses to spit on its enemies and there are in many cases tales being told about dragons having a poisonous bite and venomous saliva in England, then the dragons in the English stories could possibly describe the likes of Dilophosaurus or Crylophosaurus, including the dragon that invaded the town in the story— or so they thought. What they thought and concluded is entirely false.
None of these 2 dinosaurs have impenetrable armor, nor do they have a poisonous bite and spit. The poisonous spit concept was made up by Hollywood producers of Jurassic Park, who got their ideas from a spitting cobra and a Australian frilled lizard! Nor are their fossilized remains found in that country. Dilophosaurus' remains actually have been found in North America and Crylophosaurus' remains actually have been found in Antarctica. Both dinosaurs lived 190 million years ago separately during the Early Jurassic Period and both dinosaurs didn't have bodies that resembled wyrms. What creationists promote is a fabricated version of a story of a serpentine dragon known as a wyrm, a snake-like dragon with 2, 4, or no limbs and a tuft or a crest on its head. This wyrm was sighted in Bures where it devoured many sheep along with their shepherds until the archers came and drove it away into the swamp with their arrows, only to turned up in another town called Wormingford, where it was finally slain by a brave knight, who either speared it according to one story, or killed it by felling a tree on it in another version of the tale.
This may be a sighting of a crocodile that escaped from the Tower of London where King Richard II kept a menagerie full of animals, including a crocodile that escaped from its cage and disappeared into the river Thames. John de Trokelowe, a monk who wrote the account, described the dragon to be green colored with "a crested head, teeth like a saw, and tail extending to an enormous length." This description closely matches a crocodile. The crocodile is a green reptile with impenetrable scales, a long tail, and saw-like teeth. The monk must have added the crest or tuft to the description to embellish the story and make the crocodile more scary and dragon-like than it ever was. Unlike the two Early Jurassic dinosaurs whose color is completely unknown, the crocodile had armor on its back, which gave the archers in the story a very hard time trying to kill the animal. No crested dinosaur ever had such impenetrable hide.
Another dragon falsehood creationists, and especially cryptozoologists, made up is that of an alleged claim of sauropod dinosaurs shown engraved on a section of the Babylonian wall known as the Ishtar Gate and on an ancient Babylonian cylinder. These creatures, which both creationists and cryptozoologists falsely regard as dinosaurs, are known as Mushhushshu (meaning "furious snake" in the Babylonian language) or Sirrush (loosely meaning "splendor serpent" in the Akkadian language.), a monster both creationists and cryptozoologists falsely claim to bear a striking resemblance to the fabled sauropod dinosaur of the Congo basin known as Mokele mbembe. According to the creationists, it is even said that King Nebuchanezzar may have kept one of them in his palace as a pet while Nebuchanezzar never in fact kept such creatures in his palace. What the creationists and cryptozoologists promote about Sirrush is entirely false.
In reality, what the creationists and cryptozoologists promote is a direct fabrication of Babylonian mythology featuring Mushhushshu (or Sirrush), the monster that served as the guardian of the Babylonian deities including Tishpak who defeated and enslaved the snake dragon to serve the gods as their chief bodyguard, according to Babylonian Mythology. Later on Marduk, the supreme god of the Babylonians, adopted the monster as his symbol and it is featured on the Ishtar gate along with lions and aurochs.
According to the Wikipedia article about Sirrush, German archaeologist Robert Koldewey, suggests that another dinosaur named Iguanodon was close to being Sirrush because of it having the same bird-like feet as the mythical animal. Wrong suggestion, dude! Iguanodon, a 30 foot, plant-eating dinosaur that lived over 120 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous Period had only 3 toed feet with blunt-hoof-like nails that couldn't grasp anything the way a bird of prey can. It had human-like hands, each bearing a thumb claw used as a defensive weapon against predators like Deinonychus. It had a beak and Iguana-like teeth for chewing plants, a thick, stiffened tail and the ability to walk on two legs as well as on 4. It had no crest, no snake head, no forked tongue, and especially no feline body legs, tail, and fore feet. So, Iguanodon cannot be Sirrush of Babylonian mythology and neither can Apatosaurus.
There's an image of an ancient Mesopotamian cylinder being shown here on Genesis Park in comparison with an artist's modern, yet slightly outdated conception of an Apatosaurus. Genesis Park is a strict creationist site that claims to feature artifacts depicting what they believe to be evidence of dinosaurs living alongside humans while ignoring the gross inaccuracies featured in the depictions and hiding parts of the image that clearly tell us that the alleged monsters in the artifacts are not at all what creationists claim them to be. They should have known better, but they don't. While presenting what they believe to be evidence supporting their dino-human fallacy, creationists will deliberately take great care to blur, hide, and distort images, photos, and artifacts and compare them to modern, yet slightly outdated conceptual paintings and drawings of dinosaurs, while throwing out everything that clearly exposes them to be wrong point blank on everything they claim about dinosaurs and humans living together thousands of years ago, and especially hide the fact that Sirrush, Serpopard, a mythical animal that's a cross between a leopard, or a lioness, and a snake, which is actually what the cylinder depicts, and other supposed dragons and monsters depicted in ancient art, literature, and artifacts shown on Genesis Park, as well as on s8int.com, is absolutely everything Apatosaurus and all other dinosaurs are truly not.
Sirrush according to Babylonian Mythology is described to have a snake head, a lion like body, a curled crest on its head, a forked tongue, a large pointed horn, bird-like hind feet and lion-like front feet, and a very skinny tail. Unlike Sirrush and especially Mokele Mbembe, Apatosaurus was not a swamp bound creature, but a highly terrestrial dinosaur with a row of spines jutting from its huge, thick neck, round, curvy back, and much of its thick, reptilian, whip-like tail. It has a stiff, horizontal, neck posture that makes a circular sweeping bend from left to right, lacks pointed cat-like ears, crests, or horns on its horse-like head and has thick elephantine legs with compact feet. This Late Jurassic dinosaur is not at all like the Serpopards shown on the cylinder with feline bodies, legs, ears, and tails, and vertical, curvy, swan necks entwining each other. These creatures depicted on the cylinder are all Serpopards, that's everything sauropods and Iguanodontids are not.
Another distorted dragon myth is one of the best examples of how YECs would abuse and distort cryptozoology for their own purposes. On Ham's AiG site as well as in the March 1993 issue of the Creation Ex Nihilo magazine, there is a claim being made (taken from an old, outdated 1845 article in a newspaper known as The Geelong Advertising that's likely been taken out of context and distorted to fit in with Ham's narrow-minded beliefs. Otherwise, the article is non existent.) that involves a creature of Australian mythology known to the Aborigine natives as the Bunyip. This legendary creature has been known to terrify many natives who dared to venture into its vicinity within the rivers, swamps, creeks and billabongs (creeks and pools from dried up river beds) where it lives. It gives out a loud bellowing cry and would kill and devour people (mainly women and children) and animals during the night hours. What Ham idiotically parades in his drivels is a direct fabrication of the real story of the Bunyip that never looked like a hadrosaur at all, which is what Ham wrongly and stupidly claims the bunyip to be known as in the conclusion of his faulty article.
Hadrosaurs, also known as "duckbilled dinosaurs" due to their duckbill like beaks, lived during the Cretaceous Period many millions of years ago. NO hadrosaur ever ate meat. They ate only plants. Some of them were swamp bound creatures that lived a lifestyle similar to that of a moose, but could never swim like ducks, seals, and alligators due to their narrow, non-splayed toes, flat stiffened tails, and strong rough teeth for chewing only dry plants, which is contrary to what people used to think of what Hadrosaurs were decades ago. Instead of a hadrosaur, the real Bunyip is either a man-like or seal-like creature with either fur, feathers, scales, tusks, flippers, horse like tail, head of a bird or a dog, a long neck, etc. depending on which version of the story is told by those who claim to have seen the creature. Although the creature is considered a myth nowadays, some scientists believed that the legend of the creature came from ancient sightings of a large extinct Australian mammal known as Diprotodon, the world's largest marsupial that became extinct about 20,000 years ago. No marsupial ever laid eggs despite what is claimed in Ham's idiot article. The author just threw the pale-blue-eggs-claim (actually they were emu eggs) in there to fabricate the claim even more. According to them, the early Australian settlers must have greatly feared the creature when they first came to the country around 50,000 years ago, which is perhaps how the Bunyip legend came to be. Today, the Bunyip is seen occasionally in TV commercials as well as seen mainly in children's TV shows and literature.
The next fabricated dragon story often pops up in creationist propaganda. It is the flying dragons at Aberdeen myth (Hit tip to Dr Stephen Moreton for this one!). Here is the version as it appears on numerous creationist websites:
“In the end of November and the beginning of December last, many of the country people observed … dragons … appearing in the north and flying rapidly towards the east; from which they concluded, and their conjectures were right, that boisterous weather would follow.”
The barking mad Philip Bell from s8int.com even inserts the words “probably pterosaurs” in his version of the account below.
http://www.s8int.com/dinolit1.html
The source, given as the Statistical Accounts for Scotland, 1793, p. 467., is entirely misquoted on purpose. Anything to spread lies, lies, and more lies on dinosaurs living with humans. It is obvious that whoever originated this myth was not familiar with the Accounts, as they are divided up into volumes and parishes. Consequently there are many pages numbered “467”, each volume containing hundreds of pages. One has to cite the parish. Note also, the Accounts are NOT a “government report” or a “newspaper”, as claimed on some creationist sites. They were a project by Sir John Sinclair in collaboration with the Church of Scotland.
The true quote is found in the account for the Parish of New Machar, in volume 6. This is available on-line here. There you have to search the accounts for County of Aberdeen, and scroll through them to New Machar. The comment is a footnote on p. 467. Now here is what it REALLY says:
“In the end of November and beginning of December last, many of the country people observed very uncommon phenomena in the air (which they call dragons), of a red fiery colour, appearing in the N. and flying rapidly towards the E. from which they concluded, and their conjectures were right, a course of loud winds, and boisterous weather would follow.”
Creationists have deliberately edited the quote to remove the parts that make it clear that what is being referred to is just a meteorological phenomenon, possibly streaks of red cloud sailing through the sky at a rapid pace, followed by stormy weather. No pterosaurs.
There are other alleged claims of dinosaurs made by YECs that take bits and pieces of the images shown on ancient pots, cave walls, rocks, church engravings, even sculptures of mythical beasts, out of context and distort them to fit their beliefs and parade them in the hope of swaying the gullible and the naive to their beliefs. A good example of this is a claim made by Philip Bell of s8int.com, a site full of distortions paraded in order to fool people into believing that there were indeed dinosaurs and pterosaurs people once saw alive, by taking ancient artwork and artifacts, including the ones creationist hoaxers made themselves, depicting mythical and modern animals, and making false comparisons with images of dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and other prehistoric life that predates the dawn of man (and all painted by modern artists who never, ever saw a live dinosaur or a live pterosaur at all, let alone anybody else).
Bell himself was the one who made up this claim of an alleged dinosaur engraving being found in an old English brass tomb belonging to a man named Richard Bell, Archbishop of Carlisle from 1477 to 1495. These brass images, as shown on a few creationist sites including this AiG idiot page, are actually images coming from a brass floor tile of the cathedral which depicts a partially preserved engraving of a lion killing a winged dragon (the lion's head and the dragon wings are missing from the image due to them being worn away by people walking on them for centuries) which is a popular form of religious art drawn on church walls in medieval times to symbolize Christ, representing the lion, battling and defeating Satan, representing the dragon. Bell’s pictures are spoiled by bright reflections making the depictions more ambiguous. One image shows what Bell falsely believes to be "Eryops", a Permian amphibian that lived 270 million years ago at the same time as Dimetrodon, the well known sail-back reptile, a pelycosaur most often mistaken as a dinosaur.
This is what Eryops really look like based on fossil evidence (From Wikipedia).
Now, here's an image of what YECs believe to be "Eryops" as seen on Ham's website.
And here's what the image really is of when it's brightened and outlined by yours truly.
Now, does that look like an Eryops to you? No Eryops had perky ears.
The photographer saw the images and took poor quality photographs of them that hid the details within the images that refute the idiot claims about the animals being dinosaurs. Seeing only what he wants to see he then shows them off to the lay audience, and falsely brands them "proofs" of dinosaurs (other than birds) living with man some centuries ago.
All these things and more like them is what is routinely peddled in the creationist literature that propagates lies about dinosaurs and humans living together. The claims are all nothing more than fakes, distortions, fabrications, misidentifications, just so stories, and hoaxes, all made up by creationists to beguile the people into believing in a world that never was so they can get rich off of them, or recruit them to their crude fundamentalism.
