Will we soon be extinct?

Do you ever walk around with the vague feeling that you're going to die soon? That could be because -- according a recent study -- the Earth might be due for a catastrophic mass extinction.
Population ecologists -- scientists who study the relationship between species and the environment -- from the Universities of York and Leeds in Great Britain took a closer look at the fossil record recently. They found that, historically speaking, we're living in a climate that traditionally has seen the extinction of large numbers of species.
The fossil record is the history of our planet. It's composed of information gathered from fossils, rock layers, ice samples and other geological phenomena. When put together, this information forms a picture of life and climate on Earth over the past 550 million years.
The population ecologists compared 520 million years of Earth's climate change with species extinction throughout the same period. What they found is somewhat alarming. During times of cool weather -- called icehouse periods -- biodiversity thrives. Biodiversity is the presence of a large number of different species. If an ecosystem (or planet) is diverse, then the conditions are right to support evolution, reproduction and genetic divergence. In other words, if our planet was a business, then biodiversity means business is good.
But during warm greenhouse periods, biodiversity suffers. This lack of biodiversity appears to be due to mass extinction -- the loss of large numbers of different species. According to the British population ecologists' study, as the global climate has heated up in the past, large numbers of species have died out.
So why might this be a big deal for us? Some of the worst mass extinctions found in the fossil record took place during climates very similar to the one in which we currently live. The York and Leeds researchers suggest that, based on predicted increases in temperatures over this century, Earth could see another mass extinction event as soon as a few generations from now. That means our younger readers' grandchildren could be around when this mass extinction occurs.
But science can't say for certain that it will. There's no evidence that periods of global warming have been directly responsible for mass extinctions. But researchers are able to show direct correlations between global warming and mass extinctions in the past. Higher temperatures loom conspicuously during these periods of extinction.
The worst mass extinction found in the fossil record took place 251 million years ago, during the Permian Period at the end of the Paleozoic Era. At that time, 95 percent of all of the species on Earth met their demise [source: University of York]. No one can say exactly why this mass extinction took place. Some scientists believe that a series of comets hit the planet and caused the oceans to become acidic (also creating acid rain inland). Others believe that poisonous gas from erupting volcanoes caused the same acidic cataclysm. Either way, it's clear that during this same period the global temperature also rose.
Regardless, why should we humans care if the planet may soon see another mass extinction like the one at the end of the Permian Period? After all, we've beaten acid rain before. And even if it gets hot outside, we have air conditioners. We (and our pets) should be okay, even if a mass extinction occurs -- right? Probably not. Find out on the next page why losing 95 percent of all species is really, really bad for the surviving 5 percent.

ghost reality

Some people might be hesitant to admit that they believe in ghosts. But if you've ever heard a chilling bump in the night when you're home alone, ghosts might not be such a leap of faith. In fact, a little more than a third of American adults believe in ghosts [source: Dolliver]. Perhaps more surprising is that 23 percent of adults polled said they'd personally seen or felt a ghost [source: Dolliver].
Every October, thousands of people pay to walk through commercial haunted houses, in which costumed actors stand in for otherworldly spirits. Customers can get the adrenaline rush of scary "monsters" popping out at them for a few minutes without any risk of getting their souls stolen or becoming possessed. But real-life haunted houses are a different story. Sure, there are plenty of paranormal enthusiasts who intentionally stay in purportedly haunted hotels and hunt for ghosts. But what if ghosts found their way into your home? If the poll results we just mentioned are accurate, the sensation of an uninvited guest isn't such an uncommon occurrence.
According to the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP), there are some things to pay attention to if you suspect your house is haunted. Seeing apparitions, hearing weird sounds, smelling odd odors, feeling "cold spots" within a room, noticing objects that have been moved or observing your pet acting agitated are all symptoms that people report in what the association calls a "typical haunting" [source: ASSAP].
The 10 places on the following pages have certainly filled that bill, boasting enough symptoms of otherwordly presence to become the world's most notorious real-life haunted houses.

Wolf

I

INTRODUCTION

Timber Wolf

In marked contrast to their fond feelings for the domesticated dog, humans have historically feared, hated, and persecuted its ancestor, the timber wolf, also known as the gray wolf, Canis lupus. Indeed, many of the qualities that people value in the dog—its loyalty, its loving nature, its readiness to submit to authority, and its ability to learn—derive directly from the cooperative and subtle behavior of the wolf interacting with others in its pack.

Jim Brandenburg/Minden Pictures

Wolf, a large carnivore related to the jackal and domestic dog. Wolves are known for their keen intelligence, skilled hunting, and highly organized social structure.

There are two species and one subspecies of wolves. The gray wolf is native to the Northern Hemisphere. Gray wolves that live in the treeless plains of the Arctic are called Arctic wolves, and those found in wooded, subarctic regions are known as timber wolves or eastern timber wolves. The Mexican gray wolf, a subspecies of the gray wolf, is native to Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. The red wolf is native to the southeastern United States.

II

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE WOLF

Gray Wolf

The gray wolf, also called the timber wolf, inhabits mountains, forests, taiga, plains, and tundra across northern North America, Europe, and Asia. One of at least 36 species belonging to the family Canidae, which includes the coyote, jackal, fox, and domestic dog, the wolf is characterized by powerful teeth, a bushy tail, and round pupils, and lives and hunts in packs. The family Canidae is believed to have originated in North America 55 million to 38 million years ago during the Eocene Epoch.

F. Schneidermeyer/Oxford Scientific Films/BBC Natural History Sound Library. All rights reserved.

Wolves have strong jaws, powerful legs, and bushy tails. Certain features of the skull distinguish them from domestic dogs, some breeds of which they otherwise resemble. The shaggy coat of most gray wolves is smoky gray, but it may have a brownish or reddish tinge. The chest and abdomen are usually white, with black patches on the backs and sides. Some gray wolf populations are pure black or pure white. An adult gray wolf stands about 90 cm (about 3 ft) high at the shoulder, measures 120 cm (4 ft) in length excluding the tail, and weighs 31 to 54 kg (68 to 120 lb). Females are smaller than males, and southern gray wolves are smaller than those in the north.

III

HABITAT AND HUNTING

The wolf was originally among the world’s most widely distributed mammals. Historically it ranged from Canada to Mexico in North America, throughout most countries in Europe, and in northern Russia, parts of the Middle East, China, India, and Nepal. Highly adaptable animals, wolves are at home in a diverse range of habitats, from prairies and Arctic tundra to forests, lowlands, and all but the highest mountains. They also thrive in a variety of climates and may settle in areas inhabited by people. Choice of location is mainly directed by the availability of prey. Wolf packs establish and defend territory that can range in size from 26 to 2,590 sq km (10 to 1,000 sq mi), depending on the species.

Gray wolves will travel long distances in pursuit of prey, sometimes as far as 48 km (30 mi) in one day. The gray wolf can travel at up to 56 km (35 mi) per hour but is comfortable trotting at 8 km (5 mi) per hour. Particularly during the winter, large packs of up to 24 members will form to hunt deer, caribou, moose, and other large herbivores. Members of these packs cooperate to drive and ambush prey. They will usually select the weak, old, or very young animals for easier capture. Hunts can begin in the early evening and continue until morning.

Wolves also prey on rabbits, rodents, and birds. A wolf may consume up to 8 kg (18 lb) of meat at one time. When no live prey can be found, they will feed on carrion (decaying flesh of dead animals), berries, and invertebrates. There are few if any documented cases of a healthy wild wolf attacking a human without provocation.

IV

SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND BEHAVIOR OF WOLVES

Most wolves live in packs. Parents, their young, and nonbreeding adults make up a basic pack, which generally consists of eight or fewer members. Within each pack, one hierarchy exists for females and another for males. The pack leader is called the alpha male, and his mate is the alpha female. These two animals occupy the dominant rank in their respective hierarchies and are usually the oldest members of the pack. The alpha maintains its status by winning fights, and changes to lower-ranking positions are infrequent. Young pups remain somewhat outside the social hierarchies until they reach maturity.

Wolves communicate with visual signals, scent, and sound. They also exhibit behavioral patterns that show dominance over or submission to one another. Body language makes it clear which animal has higher rank. Tail position and bared teeth convey various moods and attitudes, including submission, fear, and a readiness to attack. Scent signals are also used in communication. A pack establishes and defends its territory by marking it with urine and feces. Communal howling is an important social activity and may serve to assemble pack members, communicate with other packs, maintain territorial claims, or express pleasure. It is also used as a hunting cry, frequently sounded at dusk in preparation for the chase.

V

REPRODUCTION AND LIFE SPAN

It is believed that wolves mate for life. The alpha pair has exclusive breeding rights during mating season, which occurs during the spring. After a gestation of about two months, a litter of blackish-brown pups is born. Average litter size is 6 but can be as large as 14. For the first six weeks, the pups remain in the den, or lair, which may be a cave, a hollow tree trunk, or a thicket. At nine days old the pups open their eyes. After one month, they are gradually weaned and then fed regurgitated food by adult pack members. At 3 months they begin learning how to hunt, and by 18 months they are fully grown. Females reach maturity at two years of age, and males at three. The family remains together for at least two years, even when the mother breeds in successive years. Wolves generally live eight to ten years in the wild.

VI

CONSERVATION HISTORY

By the early 20th century, wolf populations had been significantly reduced in many areas, and the animal has neared extinction in Western Europe, Mexico, and regions of the United States. Under the United States Endangered Species Act of 1973, the gray wolf was listed as a threatened species in Minnesota and as endangered elsewhere in the United States except Alaska. In 1995 and 1996 the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) reintroduced gray wolves into Yellowstone National Park and the Sawtooth Mountain region of central Idaho. These reintroductions have been highly successful, and in early 2008 the USFWS announced that it would remove wolves in the northern Rocky Mountain region from the federal list of endangered and threatened species. In early 2007, wolves in the western Great Lakes region were removed from the list. Gray wolves outside these areas remain protected.

The Mexican gray wolf was nearly extinct by the 1970s and listed as endangered in 1976. A successful captive-breeding program was initiated and in 1998 it was reintroduced to areas of Arizona and New Mexico.

VII

CULTURAL REFERENCES TO THE WOLF

Wolves appear in the stories, legends, and myths of many cultures around the world. Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome, and his twin brother Remus are said to have been suckled by a she-wolf. The werewolf myth dates to ancient Greece, and the fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood” tells of an encounter between a girl and a wolf. In the Jungle Books written by Rudyard Kipling, the boy Mowgli is raised by a wolf in India. In Norse mythology the giant, terrifying wolf Fenrir is the eldest son of Loki and a giantess.

VIII

RED WOLF

Red Wolf

The red wolf, Canis rufus, is smaller than its close relative, the gray wolf. Virtually extinct in the wild, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service is breeding red wolves in captivity. They have had mixed success when the captive-bred red wolves were released into two wilderness sites within their native habitat in the southeastern United States. Some wolves were able to thrive while others died.

Tim Davis/Photo Researchers, Inc.

The red wolf is smaller than the gray wolf. An adult red wolf stands about 65 cm (about 2 ft) high at the shoulder, measures 100 to 130 cm (3 to 4 ft) in length excluding the tail, and weighs 20 to 36 kg (45 to 80 lb). It has long legs and ears and its head is not as wide as that of the gray wolf. The coat of red wolves varies in color from light tan to black with reddish head, ears, and legs. Scientists have debated whether the red wolf is a subspecies of the gray wolf, a separate species, or a cross between the coyote and the gray wolf.

Like other wolves, the red wolf is territorial, mostly nocturnal, highly social, and an efficient hunter. It frequently preys on white-tailed deer and raccoons. Red wolves usually live in pairs or small family groups, and they establish a territory that ranges in size from 26 to 260 sq km (10 to 100 sq mi). Pack size and territorial area are generally smaller than those of gray wolves.

Red wolves were historically hunted, trapped, and poisoned by North American settlers, who viewed them as a threat. In the early 20th century red wolves were subject to predator control programs due to fears that they caused extensive cattle losses. As the number of red wolves declined, mating patterns were disrupted and they began to interbreed with coyotes. Red wolf habitat has also been destroyed due to logging, mineral exploration, and land clearing.

The red wolf was first protected as an endangered species in 1967 under a law that preceded the Endangered Species Act. In 1973 the USFWS initiated a captive-breeding program for the species. By 1980 red wolves were considered extinct in the wild.

Captive red wolf pairs produced their first litters at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington, in 1977. The captive red wolf population has since increased and in 1987 four pairs of red wolves were reintroduced to the Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern North Carolina. In 1991 and 1992 additional red wolves were reintroduced to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. These efforts have met with limited success, and the red wolf remains a protected species.

Scientific classification: The wolf belongs to the family Canidae. The gray wolf is classified as Canis lupus, the Mexican gray wolf as Canis lupus baileyi, and the red wolf as Canis rufus.

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Myths and mysteries of the crystal skull

Intriguing, mysterious and eerie, they are real works of art. The crystal skulls have been of great interest to archaeologists and anthropologists who are curious about their existence and purpose. Why would so much work and time be spent on perfecting a human skull made out of one of the hardest substances known to man after diamonds, rock crystal? The cutting of which requires great expertise and precision and the carving and polishing of which is equally time-consuming? In other words, why a skull?
It is not something that one finds in ancient paintings or carvings, which have all sorts of deities and exotic creatures of fantasy and folklore. Why would anyone want to carve a skull out of clear or milky quartz?
Anyhow, humans are a strange and complex species to say the least and have been around for thousands of centuries so one never knows what they might have been up to in the past. But what some scientists and sceptics say about these skulls is that they were probably made in the 1800s, as the tools used or required to do such work were not available to the civilisations of the past.
But then there are many that still claim these specimens to be the channels of ancient knowledge and were made for a very special reason. To delve a little into the mystery of the crystal skulls, let’s see how they were discovered and the legends attached to them.
Many perfect skulls were found in parts of central and South America and Mexico. Mainly believed to be of Mayan or Aztec origin, there are believed to be 13 of these skulls made and then later scattered all over the globe. They were part of rituals and ceremonies and are supposed to hold knowledge regarding the history of the human race and civilisation. The first and the most famous is the Mitchell Hedges skull discovered by the archaeologist in 1927 during an archaeological dig at an ancient Mayan site in the tropical jungle of Yucatan also known as Belize.
After burning 33 hectares of thick forestation, the area revealed a huge stone pyramid, walls of a city and an amphitheatre, which could seat thousands of spectators. The site was called ‘Lubaantun’ or ‘The Place of the Fallen Stones’. The story goes that when Mitchell Hedges returned to the site after three years, his daughter Anna Mitchell was with him and she discovered the skull under the ruins of an alter.
The story was later refuted as it came to light that Anna had not accompanied her father on that expedition but that Mitchell Hedges had bought the skull at an auction held by Sotheby’s in London. However, Anna stuck to her story till she died at the age of 100 in 2007. Anna claimed that she had several dreams regarding ceremonies and rituals performed by the ancient Mayans whenever the skull was in her bedroom at night.
She also gave the skull for scientific examination to Hewlett Packard. The findings were quite puzzling. The skull had been carved with diamonds and then smoothened with a solution made out of silicon sand and water. But the strangest part was that the entire workings were done against the “axis” of the crystal. This means that whenever a piece of crystal or quartz is cut, it has to be done according to the axis formed by the molecular structure of the rock. Going against it would shatter the entire piece. So how was this done in the first place?
Then we have the other skulls found in other sources. There is the British skull and the Paris crystal skull. They are said to have been bought in the 1890s by mercenaries in Mexico. One is at the London’s
Museum of Mankind and the other is at the Trocadero Museum of Paris.
The Mayan and the Amethyst skull were bought to the United States by a Mayan priest. They were found in Guatemala and Mexico. They were both tested and were found to have also been cut against the axis of the rocks. Then we have MAX, the Texas skull, which was in the possession of a Tibetan healer, Norbu Chen, who gave it to Carl and Jo Parks against a debt.
It was only after Jo found out that the skull was of archaeological interest worldwide that she took it out of her closet and had it examined by an expert. It was indeed found to be ancient. Another crystal skull enthusiast Joke Van Dieten Maasland has a smoky quartz crystal skull, which was discovered in 1906 during the excavation of a Mayan temple in Guatemala. Joke states that the skull has healing powers and helped heal a brain tumour in a book she has written titled, Messengers of Ancient Wisdom.
The skull is named E.T. because it has a pointed head and an exaggerated jaw with an overbite, which makes it look like it an alien-shaped head.
The rose quartz crystal skull is very much like the Mitchell Hedges skull and was found near the border of Honduras and Guatemala. Its lower jaw is movable just like the above mentioned one.
The Aztec skull that is at the Museum of Man in London has been said to move on its own inside its glass case and museum staff seem uncomfortable around it. The Sha-Na-Ra, Jaguar Man and Rainbow skulls have all been unearthed at ancient sites according to researchers.
Are these skulls really the ancient showcases of human wisdom and hold powerful knowledge or as scientists say, just clever fakes? But the only thing is that a “fake” is a replica of the original. And whoever made these bafflingly mysterious crystal skulls and for whatever purpose, has left a big question, the answer to which is really not ‘crystal’ clear.

In 1992, this hollow rock-crystal skull was sent to the Smithsonian anonymously. A letter accompanying the 30-pound, 10-inch-high artifact suggested it was of Aztec origin. (James Di Loreto & Donald Hurlburt/Courtesy Smithsonian Institution)

Sixteen years ago, a heavy package addressed to the nonexistent "Smithsonian Inst. Curator, MezoAmerican Museum, Washington, D.C." was delivered to the National Museum of American History. It was accompanied by an unsigned letter stating: "This Aztec crystal skull, purported to be part of the Porfirio Díaz collection, was purchased in Mexico in 1960.... I am offering it to the Smithsonian without consideration." Richard Ahlborn, then curator of the Hispanic-American collections, knew of my expertise in Mexican archaeology and called me to ask whether I knew anything about the object--an eerie, milky-white crystal skull considerably larger than a human head.
I told him I knew of a life-sized crystal skull on display at the British Museum, and had seen a smaller version the Smithsonian had once exhibited as a fake. After we spent a few minutes puzzling over the meaning and significance of this unusual artifact, he asked whether the department of anthropology would be interested in accepting it for the national collections. I said yes without hesitation. If the skull turned out to be a genuine pre-Columbian Mesoamerican artifact, such a rare object should definitely become part of the national collections.
I couldn't have imagined then that this unsolicited donation would open an entirely new avenue of research for me. In the years since the package arrived, my investigation of this single skull has led me to research the history of pre-Columbian collections in museums around the world, and I have collaborated with a broad range of international scientists and museum curators who have also crossed paths with crystal skulls. Studying these artifacts has prompted new research into pre-Columbian lapidary (or stone-working) technology, particularly the carving of hard stones like jadeite and quartz.
Crystal skulls have undergone serious scholarly scrutiny, but they also excite the popular imagination because they seem so mysterious. Theories about their origins abound. Some believe the skulls are the handiwork of the Maya or Aztecs, but they have also become the subject of constant discussion on occult websites. Some insist that they originated on a sunken continent or in a far-away galaxy. And now they are poised to become archaeological superstars thanks to our celluloid colleague Indiana Jones, who will tackle the subject of our research in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Details about the movie's plot are being closely guarded by the film's producers as I write this, but the Internet rumor mill has it that the crystal skull of the title is the creation of aliens.

The author and Scott Whittaker, director of the Smithsonian's Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) Facility, examine the "Mitchell-Hedges Skull." Silicone molds of the skull's carved features were analyzed by SEM for evidence of tool marks. (James Di Loreto/Courtesy Smithsonian Institution)

These exotic carvings are usually attributed to pre-Columbian Mesoamerican cultures, but not a single crystal skull in a museum collection comes from a documented excavation, and they have little stylistic or technical relationship with any genuine pre-Columbian depictions of skulls, which are an important motif in Mesoamerican iconography.
They are intensely loved today by a large coterie of aging hippies and New Age devotees, but what is the truth behind the crystal skulls? Where did they come from, and why were they made?
Museums began collecting rock-crystal skulls during the second half of the nineteenth century, when no scientific archaeological excavations had been undertaken in Mexico and knowledge of real pre-Columbian artifacts was scarce. It was also a period that saw a burgeoning industry in faking pre-Columbian objects. When Smithsonian archaeologist W. H. Holmes visited Mexico City in 1884, he saw "relic shops" on every corner filled with fake ceramic vessels, whistles, and figurines. Two years later, Holmes warned about the abundance of fake pre-Columbian artifacts in museum collections in an article for the journal Science titled "The Trade in Spurious Mexican Antiquities."

French antiquarian Eugène Boban with his collection of Mesoamerican artifacts at an 1867 Paris exposition. Among the objects on display were two crystal skulls. At his feet rest a pot and a battleaxe Boban exhibited as Aztec. Both are fakes. (Courtesy Jane Walsh/Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City)

The first Mexican crystal skulls made their debut just before the 1863 French intervention, when Louis Napoleon's army invaded the country and installed Maximilian von Hapsburg of Austria as emperor. Usually they are small, not taller than 1.5 inches. The earliest specimen seems to be a British Museum crystal skull about an inch high that may have been acquired in 1856 by British banker Henry Christy.
Two other examples were exhibited in 1867 at the Exposition Universelle in Paris as part of the collection of Eugène Boban, perhaps the most mysterious figure in the history of the crystal skulls. A Frenchman who served as the official "archaeologist" of the Mexican court of Maximilian, Boban was also a member of the French Scientific Commission in Mexico, whose work the Paris Exposition was designed to highlight. (The exhibition was not entirely successful in showcasing Louis Napoleon's second empire, since its opening coincided with the execution of Maximilian by the forces of Mexican president Benito Juárez.)
One small crystal skull was purchased in 1874 for 28 pesos by Mexico City's national museum from the Mexican collector Luis Costantino, and another for 30 pesos in 1880. In 1886, the Smithsonian bought a small crystal skull, this one from the collection of Augustin Fischer, who had been Emperor Maximilian's secretary in Mexico. But it disappeared mysteriously from the collection some time after 1973. It had been on display in an exhibit of archaeological fakes after William Foshag, a Smithsonian mineralogist, realized in the 1950s that it had been carved with a modern lapidary wheel.

In 1886, the Smithsonian acquired a crystal skull that may have been a pre-Columbian bead re-carved in the 19th century. This catalogue entry shows the object at close to its actual size, and with a vertical drill hole through its center. (Courtesy of Paula Fleming Collection)

These small objects represent the "first generation" of crystal skulls, and they are all drilled through from top to bottom. The drill holes may in fact be pre-Columbian in origin, and the skulls may have been simple Mesoamerican quartz crystal beads, later re-carved for the European market as little mementos mori, or objects meant to remind their owners of the eventuality of death.
In my research into the provenance of crystal skulls, I kept encountering Boban's name. He arrived in Mexico in his teens and spent an idyllic youth conducting his own archaeological expeditions and collecting exotic birds. Boban fell in love with Mexican culture--becoming fluent in Spanish and Nahuatl, the Aztec language--and began to make his living selling archaeological artifacts and natural history specimens through a family business in Mexico City.
After returning to France, he opened an antiquities shop in Paris in the 1870s and sold a large part of his original Mexican archaeological collection to Alphonse Pinart, a French explorer and ethnographer. In 1878, Pinart donated the collection, which included three crystal skulls, to the Trocadero, the precursor of the Musée de l'Homme. Boban had acquired the third skull in the Pinart collection sometime after his return to Paris; it is several times larger than any of the others from this early period, measuring about 4 inches high. This skull, now in the Musée du Quai Branly, has a large hole drilled vertically through its center. There is a comparable, though smaller, skull (about 2.5 inches high) in a private collection. It serves as the base for a crucifix; the somewhat larger Quai Branly skull may have had a similar use.

Macabre Obsession
The 19th century was a period of keen fascination with skulls and skeletons in Europe. During the reign of Louis Napoleon (1852-1870), French artists created stereoscopic photographs, called Diableries, of miniature dioramas of skeletons at dress balls, libraries (below), conferences with the devil, and in amorous trysts. Wicked lampoons of corruption at Napoleon's court, they illustrate how popular skeletal imagery was when the first crystal skulls made their appearance. (Courtesy of Paula Fleming Collection)

A second-generation skull--life-size and without a vertical hole--first appeared in 1881 in the Paris shop of none other than Boban. This skull is just under 6 inches high. The description in the catalogue he published provided no findspot for the object and it is listed separately from his Mexican antiquities. Boban called it a "masterpiece" of lapidary technology, and noted that it was "unique in the world."
Despite being one of a kind, the skull failed to sell, so when Boban returned to Mexico City in 1885, after a 16-year absence, he took it with him. He exhibited it alongside a collection of actual human skulls in his shop, which he dubbed the "Museo Cientifico." According to local gossip, Boban tried to sell it to Mexico's national museum as an Aztec artifact, in partnership with Leopoldo Batres, whose official government title was protector of pre-Hispanic monuments. But the museum's curator assumed the skull was a glass fake and refused to purchase it. Then Batres denounced Boban as a fraud and accused him of smuggling antiquities.
In July 1886, the French antiquarian moved his museum business and collection to New York City and later held an auction of several thousand archaeological artifacts, colonial Mexican manuscripts, and a large library of books. Tiffany & Co. bought the crystal skull at this auction for $950. A decade later, Tiffany's sold it to the British Museum for the original purchase price. Interestingly, Boban's 1886 catalogue for the New York auction lists yet another crystal skull. Of the smaller variety, it is described as being from the "Valley of Mexico" and is listed with a crystal hand, which is described as Aztec. Neither of these objects can now be accounted for.
A third generation of skulls appeared some time before 1934, when Sidney Burney, a London art dealer, purchased a crystal skull of proportions almost identical to the specimen the British Museum bought from Tiffany's. There is no information about where he got it, but it is very nearly a replica of the British Museum skull--almost exactly the same shape, but with more detailed modeling of the eyes and the teeth. It also has a separate mandible, which puts it in a class by itself. In 1943, it was sold at Sotheby's in London to Frederick Arthur (Mike) Mitchell-Hedges, a well-to-do English deep-sea fisherman, explorer, and yarn-spinner extraordinaire.
Since the 1954 publication of Mitchell-Hedges's memoir, Danger My Ally, this third-generation, twentieth-century skull has acquired a Maya origin, as well as a number of fantastic, Indiana Jones-like tall tales. His adopted daughter, Anna Mitchell-Hedges, who died last year at the age of 100, cared for it for 60 years, occasionally exhibiting the skull privately for a fee. It is currently in the possession of her widower, but 10 nieces and nephews have also laid claim to it. Known as the Skull of Doom, the Skull of Love, or simply the Mitchell-Hedges Skull, it is said to emit blue lights from its eyes, and has reputedly crashed computer hard drives.

The Mitchell-Hedges skull, top, and the British Museum skull were the subject of a series of 1936 articles in which British Museum curator Adrian Digby and physical anthropologist G. M. Morant debated whether the two were based on the same original skull, which Digby posited was perhaps revered as a Mesoamerican "death god."

Although nearly all of the crystal skulls have at times been identified as Aztec, Toltec, Mixtec, or occasionally Maya, they do not reflect the artistic or stylistic characteristics of any of these cultures. The Aztec and Toltec versions of death heads were nearly always carved in basalt, occasionally were covered with stucco, and were probably all painted. They were usually either attached to walls or altars, or depicted in bas reliefs of deities as ornaments worn on belts. They are comparatively crudely carved, but are more naturalistic than the crystal skulls, particularly in the depiction of the teeth. The Mixtec occasionally fabricated skulls in gold, but these representations are more precisely described as skull-like faces with intact eyes, noses, and ears. The Maya also carved skulls, but in relief on limestone. Often these skulls, depicted in profile, represent days of their calendars.
French and other European buyers imagined they were buying skillful pre-Columbian carvings, partially convinced perhaps by their own fascinated horror with Aztec human sacrifice. But the Aztecs didn't hang crystal skulls around their necks. Instead, they displayed the skulls of sacrificial victims on racks, impaling them horizontally through the sides (the parietal-temporal region), not vertically.
I believe that all of the smaller crystal skulls that constitute the first generation of fakes were made in Mexico around the time they were sold, between 1856 and 1880. This 24-year period may represent the output of a single artisan, or perhaps a single workshop. The larger 1878 Paris skull seems to be some sort of transitional piece, as it follows the vertical drilling of the smaller pieces, but its size precludes it being a bead, or being worn in any way. This skull now resides in the basement laboratories of the Louvre, and the Musée du Quai Branly has begun a program of scientific testing on the piece that will include advanced elemental analysis techniques like particle induced X-ray emission and Raman spectroscopy, so we may know more about its material and age in the near future.

South American Idol?

In the opening scenes of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Indiana Jones is hot on the trail of an extremely valuable golden idol created by an unidentified ancient South American culture. The goddess's image, which Jones deftly snatches from an altar (setting off a series of booby traps that culminate with an enormous boulder nearly crushing our hero), is of a woman in the act of giving birth. The golden figure was modeled on a purportedly Aztec greenstone carving called Tlazolteotl, considered to be a masterpiece by the Dumbarton Oaks Museum in Washington, D.C.

In my research into the object's acquisition history, I discovered that a Chinese dealer in Paris sold the figure in 1883 to a famous French mineralogist, Augustin Damour. His friend, Eugene Boban, advised Damour on the purchase. In examining the artifact's iconography, I found that the birthing position is unknown in documented pre-Columbian artifacts or depictions in codices. I have also used scanning electron microscopy to analyze the manufacture of the idol and have found there is ample evidence of the use of modern rotary cutting tools on the object's surface. In my opinion, the Tlazolteotl idol, like the crystal skulls, is a nineteenth-century fake.

The 1878 Paris skull and the Boban-Tiffany-British Museum skull that appeared in 1881 are perhaps nineteenth-century European inventions. There is no direct tie to Mexico for either of these two larger skulls, except through Boban; they simply appear in Paris long after his initial return from Mexico in 1869. The Mitchell-Hedges skull, which appears after 1934, is a veritable copy of the British Museum skull, with stylistic and technical flourishes that only an accomplished faker would devise. In fact, in 1936 British Museum scholar Adrian Digby first raised the possibility that the Mitchell-Hedges skull could be a copy of the British Museum skull since it showed "a perverted ingenuity such as one would expect to find in a forger." However, Digby, then a young curator, did not suggest it was a modern forgery and also dismissed the possibility that his museum's own crystal skull was a fraud, as early twentieth-century microscopic examination did not reveal the presence of modern tool marks.
The skull that arrived at the Smithsonian 16 years ago represents yet another generation of these hoaxes. According to its anonymous donor, it was purchased in Mexico in 1960, and its size perhaps reflects the exuberance of the time. In comparison with the original nineteenth-century skulls, the Smithsonian skull is enormous; at 31 pounds and nearly 10 inches high, it dwarfs all others. I believe it was probably manufactured in Mexico shortly before it was sold. (The skull is now part of the Smithsonian's national collections and even has its own catalogue number: 409954. At the moment it is stored in a locked cabinet in my office.)
There are now fifth- and probably sixth-generation skulls, and I have been asked to examine quite a number of them. Collectors have brought me skulls purportedly from Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, and even Tibet. Some of these "crystal" skulls have turned out to be glass; a few are made of resin.
British Museum scientist Margaret Sax and I examined the British Museum and Smithsonian skulls under light and scanning electron microscope and conclusively determined that they were carved with relatively modern lapidary equipment, which were unavailable to pre-Columbian Mesoamerican carvers. (A preliminary report on our research is on the British Museum website, www.britishmuseum.ac.uk/compass). So why have crystal skulls had such a long and successful run, and why do some museums continue to exhibit them, despite their lack of archaeological context and obvious iconographic, stylistic, and technical problems? Though the British Museum exhibits its skulls as examples of fakes, others still offer them up as the genuine article. Mexico's national museum, for example, identifies its skulls as the work of Aztec and Mixtec artisans. Perhaps it is because, like the Indiana Jones movies, these macabre objects are reliable crowd-pleasers.
Impressed by their technical excellence and gleaming polish, generations of museum curators and private collectors have been taken in by these objects. But they are too good to be true. If we consider that pre-Columbian lapidaries used stone, bone, wooden, and possibly copper tools with abrasive sand to carve stone, crystal skulls are much too perfectly carved and highly polished to be believed.
Ultimately, the truth behind the skulls may have gone to the grave with Boban, a masterful dealer of many thousands of pre-Columbian artifacts--including at least five different crystal skulls--now safely ensconced in museums worldwide. He managed to confound a great many people for a very long time and has left an intriguing legacy, one that continues to puzzle us a century after his death. Boban confidently sold museums and private collectors some of the most intriguing fakes known, and perhaps many more yet to be recognized. It sounds like a great premise for a movie.

Jane MacLaren Walsh is an anthropologist at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

Meet the Real-Life Vampires of New England and Abroad

The legend of the blood suckers, and the violence heaped upon their corpses, came out of ignorance of contagious disease

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• By Abigail Tucker
• Smithsonian magazine, September 2012, Subscribe

 

At home and abroad, vampire scares usually began when a person died and others in the vicinity began dying, too, usually of the same sickness. (Dod Miller / Getty Images)

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Where to Find Vampires in America

More from Smithsonian.com

• The Great New England Vampire Panic

A little more than a century ago, vampires stalked Rhode Island. Or rather, New England farm families were digging up dead relatives suspected of being vampires and desecrating the bodies in a misguided effort to protect the living. Often these latter-day vampire hunters removed and burned their loved ones’ hearts.
Though the corpses were typically re-buried, modern scholars continue to unearth the stories of real-life “vampires,” whose historic tragedies underlie classics like Dracula as well as Hollywood’s latest guilty pleasures.
The practice of disinterring accused vampires likely began in Eastern Europe, spreading to western countries including France and England in the 1700s, and then to rural New England, where vampire panics were common up through the late 1800s – particularly in Rhode Island.

At home and abroad, vampire scares usually began when a person died – often of a contagious disease, and in New England almost always of tuberculosis – and others in the vicinity began dying, too, usually of the same sickness. Ignorant of germs, people surmised that the dead person had come back to drain family members’ blood, and the exhumation and staking, burning, beheading and whatever else followed (practices varied with geography) were an effort to insulate the community against further harm. Often the vampire-hunters were not disappointed when they pried open the graves: many natural signs of decay, like bloating and bleeding from various orifices, looked like evidence of midnight feasts.
Here are a few  “vampires” from America and elsewhere, the real lives behind our modern legends.
Peter Plogojowitz: This Serbian villager and accused bloodsucker was exhumed and staked through the heart a few weeks after his death in 1725. In his book, “Vampires, Burial, and Death,” folklorist Paul Barber treats Plogojowitz as the quintessential European vampire, because his exhumation closely follows the broader pattern of the superstition. Plogojowitz was the first in his village to die of a sickness, and subsequent local deaths were blamed on his late-night predations. A rather gruesome-sounding autopsy revealed what were considered the tell-tale signs of vampirism:
“I did not detect the slightest odor that is otherwise characteristic of the dead, and the body…was completely fresh,” one witness wrote. “The hair and beard… had grown on him; the old skin, which was somewhat whitish, had peeled away, and a new fresh one had emerged under it … Not without astonishment, I saw some fresh blood in his mouth.”
Arnold Paole: In the early 18th century, this rural Serbian broke his neck after a fall from a hay wagon. Like many others before him, he was accused of posthumous vampirism and exhumed after a series of deaths in his village; many of his supposed victims were dug up as well. Austrian military authorities in control of the region investigated the deaths, and their published account was widely circulated. Paole’s case is thus credited with spreading the vampire superstition to Western Europe, where it took hold before reaching the New World.
Nellie Vaughn: Just 19 years old, she was buried in 1889 in West Greenwich, Rhode Island. Today this so-called vampire is almost as famous as Mercy Brown, whose exhumation was covered by international newspapers. Vaughn’s cemetery has frequently been visited, vandalized and her headstone broken. But in his book, “Food for the Dead,” folklorist and vampire scholar Michael Bell presents evidence suggesting that Vaughn’s is a case of mistaken identity, and that her contemporaries never accused or exhumed her. The superstition probably arose in the last half century or so, and may be a result of confusion with Mercy (who died nearby at a similar date and age) and the admittedly creepy epitaph on Vaughn’s tombstone: “I Am Waiting and Watching For You.”
Frederick Ransom: A Dartmouth College student from a well-respected family in South Woodstock, Vermont, he died of tuberculosis in 1817 and is an example of an educated person ensnared in a vampire panic usually associated with misinformed farmers. Ransom’s father had his body exhumed in the hopes of saving the rest of his family: his heart was burned in a blacksmith’s forge. “However, it did not prove a remedy, for mother, sister, and two brothers died afterward,” Ransom’s surviving brother Daniel later wrote. “It has been related to me that there was a tendency in our family to consumption, and that I…would die with it before I was thirty.” Happily, when Daniel Ransom wrote these words he was more than 80 years old.
Bristoe Congdon’s child: A “black” man named Bristoe Congdon and several of his children died of tuberculosis in Rhode Island in the 1800s. “The body of one of the children was exhumed,” one source wrote, “and the vital parts were burned in obedience to the dicta of this shallow and disgusting superstition.” Though it’s not entirely clear whether Congdon was African-American or American Indian, the case was the first that folklorist Michael Bell has found suggesting that the vampire tradition crossed racial lines.
Annie Dennett: She died of consumption at the age of 21 in rural New Hampshire.  In September of 1810, a traveling Freewill Baptist Minister from Vermont named Enoch Hayes Place attended her exhumation, which her family undertook in an effort to save Annie’s father, also sick from tuberculosis. Place’s diary entry is a curious example of the participation of a respected New England minister in a vampire hunt. “They opened the grave and it was a Solemn Sight indeed,” Place wrote. “A young Brother by the name of Adams examined the mouldy Specticle, but found nothing as they Supposed they Should…. There was but a little left except bones.”

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The List of Mythical Creatures

I'll be honest, putting together a complete list of mythical creatures is intimidating, mostly because there are so many. So forgive me if I'm a little slow on putting this list together. Of all of the projects here on Gods-and-Monsters.com, compiling a list of mythical creatures and their stories is going to be one of the toughest. But then again, how could you have a site called "Gods and Monsters" without mentioning myth's most famous beasts?
You might notice that a lot of the monsters listed here are from ancient Greek and Roman origin. As this list of mythical creatures starts to grow the Greek monsters will probably shrink down relatively, but the truth is, Greek monsters are the heart and soul, and in many cases the origin of where our more modern monsters come from. To that degree I'm going to lump all of the mythologies together. I hope you'll explore the areas that you may not be as familiar with along with the creatures you think you know well.
Since certain creatures have so much information about them, I've made more than a single page for a select few of these mythical creatures, including Vampires and Werewolves.
Enjoy...

The Alphabetical List of Mythical Creatures

• Basilisk - A legendary lizard who could kill a man with its stare.


• Bigfoot - A type of Sasquatch native to North American forests.


• Black Dog - An evil spirit dog that stalks city streets at night.


• Black Eyed Beings - They take human form but have black, soulless eyes and emanate a sense of pure evil.


• Bray Road Beast - The nickname for a werewolf-like creature seen multiple times in Wisconsin.


• Centaur - Half-men, half-horse creatures that ran wild and unruly.


• Cerberus - The three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades.


• Charybdis - The whirlpool on one side of the Strait of Messina that swallowed ships that came too close to it.


• Chimera - Part-lion, part-goat, part-snake - all monster.


• Cockatrice - A flying part-rooster/part-snake that could kill with its stare.


• Count Dracula - The most famous vampire in all of legend.


• Cyclops - The one-eyed giant who captured and ate people.


• Cynocephalus - A member of an ancient race of men with the heads of dogs.


• Demon - Maelevolent spirits of Hell who try to take peoples souls.


• Doppelganger - Apparitions of people that occur in impossible situations.


• Dragon - Giant, flying, fire-breathing lizards who often guard treasure.


• Echidna - The snake-woman who became the mother of most Greek monsters.


• Elf - Pointy-eared humanoids who excel in magic and archery.


• Frankenstein's Monster - Mary Shelley's patchwork monster built from body parts of the deceased.


• Ghost - Spirits of the dead whose souls remain in the realm of the living.


• Golem - Magically animated human-shaped creatures typically made of solid stone.


• Gorgon - The snake-haired and snake-bodied humanoid that was created in its mother's image. Its stare could turn a person to stone. Medusa became one of these creatures in a later myth.


• Griffin - A creature with the body of a lion, the tail of a snake, and the head and wings of an eagle.


• Grim Reaper - The embodiment of death itself, the Grim Reaper comes to take your soul to the afterlife.


• Hydra - The nine-headed serpent who grew two new heads for every one that was cut off.


• Imp - Small, mischievous creatures who liked to play pranks on people.


• Ladon (Python) - The snake that guarded the golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides.


• Loch Ness Monster - The elusive sea-monster from the Loch Ness in Scotland.


• Manticore - A mythical beast with a lion's body and a human's head.


• Medusa - The disciple of Athena who was turned into a gorgon. She had the hair of snakes and could turn men to stone with her gaze.


• Mermaids - Sea creatures with the head and torso of a woman and the tail of a fish.


• Minotaur - The creature with the head and legs of a bull and the torso of a man, who guarded the exit to The Labyrinth.


• Mothman - A winged creature in the shape of a man with hypnotic red eyes sighted in West Virginia.


• Mutants - A term describing abnormal creatures created by genetic or environmental mutations.


• Nemean Lion - The giant lion with impenetrable hide who becomes the constellation Leo.


• New Jersey Devil - A flying creature with a high-pitched scream and a horse-like head native to the New Jersey Pine Barrens.


• Ogre - An ugly, oversized humanoid creature with great physical strength and little intelligence.


• Orthros - The two-headed monster dog.


• Pegasus - Technically the proper name of Bellerophon's winged horse, which became the general name for winged horses.


• Phoenix - The golden bird who, at the end of its life, burst into flames only to be reborn again.


• Sasquatch - Large, hairy, man-like beasts that live in the woods.


• Satyr - Half-men, half-goats who were wild and lustful. The god Pan was one of these.


• Scylla - The man-eating beast that lived on the opposite side of the Strait of Messina from Charybdis.


• Sea Monsters - The generic term for several breeds of water-based monsters.


• Sea-Goat - The half-goat, half-fish who are the children of Pricus, who becomes the constellation Capricorn.


• Shade - The ghosts of dead people before they are admitted entrance to Hades.


• Shapeshifters - Humans who can willingly take the form of an animal while maintaining their consciousness.


• Sirens - Man-eating beautiful women whose song compels men to them.


• Sphinx - The half-human, half-lion that forces those it meets to answer its riddles, or die.


• Thunderbird - A giant bird that creates storms with its wings.


• Typhon - The fire-breathing giant who challenged Zeus for control of Mount Olympus. Also the father of most Greek monsters.


• Unicorn - A magical horse with a single horn on its forehead.


• Vampire - Legend's most charming bloodsucker gets a whole section of this website all to itself.


• Wendigo - An evil spirit that possesses humans and turns them into cannibals.


• Will-o'-the-wisp - Strange flame-like lights that seem to beckon travelers to follow.


• Werewolf - Human by day, wolf by night.


• Wraith - Evil spirits of the dead who are trapped on Earth.


• Zombie - The living dead who feed on human flesh.

40 Interesting Facts About

Vampires

1. Many scholars argue the word “vampire” is either from the Hungarian vampir or from the Turkish upior, upper, upyr meaning “witch.” Other scholars argue the term derived from the Greek word “to drink” or from the Greek nosophoros meaning “plague carrier.” It may also derive from the Serbian Bamiiup or the Serbo-Crotian pirati. There are many terms for “vampire” found across cultures, suggesting that vampires are embedded in human consciousness.^b
2. A group a vampires has variously been called a clutch, brood, coven, pack, or a clan.^f
3. Probably the most famous vampire of all time, Count Dracula, quoted Deuteronomy 12:23: “The blood is the life.”^f
4. The Muppet vampire, Count von Count from Sesame Street, is based on actual vampire myth. One way to supposedly deter a vampire is to throw seeds (usually mustard) outside a door or place fishing net outside a window. Vampires are compelled to count the seeds or the holes in the net, delaying them until the sun comes up.^b

Celtic for “stone tables,“ dolmens may have been placed over graves to keep vampires from rising

5. Prehistoric stone monuments called “dolmens” have been found over the graves of the dead in northwest Europe. Anthropologists speculate they have been placed over graves to keep vampires from rising.^c
6. A rare disease called porphyria (also called the "vampire" or "Dracula" disease) causes vampire-like symptoms, such as an extreme sensitivity to sunlight and sometimes hairiness. In extreme cases, teeth might be stained reddish brown, and eventually the patient may go mad.^c
7. Documented medical disorders that people accused of being a vampire may have suffered from include haematodipsia, which is a sexual thirst for blood, and hemeralopia or day blindness. Anemia (“bloodlessness”) was often mistaken for a symptom of a vampire attack.^f

Considered a "true" vampire, Elizabeth Bathory supposedly bathed in the blood of young virgins

8. One of the most famous “true vampires” was Countess Elizabeth Bathory (1560-1614) who was accused of biting the flesh of girls while torturing them and bathing in their blood to retain her youthful beauty. She was by all accounts a very attractive woman.^f
9. Vampire legends may have been based on Vlad of Walachia, also known as Vlad the Impaler (c. 1431-1476). He had a habit of nailing hats to people’s heads, skinning them alive, and impaling them on upright stakes. He also liked to dip bread into the blood of his enemies and eat it. His name, Vlad, means son of the dragon or Dracula, who has been identified as the historical Dracula. Though Vlad the Impaler was murdered in 1476, his tomb is reported empty.^f
10. One of the earliest accounts of vampires is found in an ancient Sumerian and Babylonian myth dating to 4,000 B.C. which describes ekimmu or edimmu (one who is snatched away). The ekimmu is a type of uruku or utukku (a spirit or demon) who was not buried properly and has returned as a vengeful spirit to suck the life out of the living.^a
11. According to the Egyptian text the Pert em Hru (Egyptian Book of the Dead), if the ka (one of the five parts of the soul) does not receive particular offerings, it ventures out of its tomb as a kha to find nourishment, which may include drinking the blood of the living. In addition, the Egyptian goddess Sekhmet was known to drink blood. The ancient fanged goddess Kaliof India also had a powerful desire for blood.^a
12. Chinese vampires were called a ch’iang shih (corpse-hopper) and had red eyes and crooked claws. They were said to have a strong sexual drive that led them to attack women. As they grew stronger, the ch’iang shih gained the ability to fly, grew long white hair, and could also change into a wolf.^a
13. While both vampires and zombies generally belong to the “undead,” there are differences between them depending on the mythology from which they emerged. For example, zombies tend to have a lower IQ than vampires, prefer brains and flesh rather than strictly blood, are immune to garlic, most likely have a reflection in the mirror, are based largely in African myth, move more slowly due to rotting muscles, can enter churches, and are not necessarily afraid of fire or sunlight.^f
14. Vampire hysteria and corpse mutilations to “kill” suspected vampires were so pervasive in Europe during the mid-eighteenth century that some rulers created laws to prevent the unearthing of bodies. In some areas, mass hysteria led to public executions of people believed to be vampires.^b
15. The first full work of fiction about a vampire in English was John Polidori’s influential The Vampyre, which was published incorrectly under Lord Byron’s name. Polidori (1795-1821) was Byron’s doctor and based his vampire on Byron.^f
16. The first vampire movie is supposedly Secrets of House No. 5 in 1912. F.W. Murnau’s silent black-and-white Nosferatu came soon after, in 1922. However, it was Tod Browning’s Dracula—with the erotic, charming, cape- and tuxedo-clad aristocrat played by Bela Lugosi—that became the hallmark of vampire movies and literature.^f
17. A vampire supposedly has control over the animal world and can turn into a bat, rat, owl, moth, fox, or wolf.^c
18. In 2009, a sixteenth-century female skull with a rock wedged in its mouth was found near the remains of plague victims. It was not unusual during that century to shove a rock or brick in the mouth of a suspected vampire to prevent it from feeding on the bodies of other plague victims or attacking the living. Female vampires were also often blamed for spreading the bubonic plague throughout Europe.^d
19. Joseph Sheridan Le Fany’s gothic 1872 novella about a female vampire, “Carmilla,” is considered the prototype for female and lesbian vampires and greatly influenced Bram Stoker’s own Dracula. In the story, Carmilla is eventually discovered as a vampire and, true to folklore remedies, she is staked in her blood-filled coffin, beheaded, and cremated.^f
20. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) remains an enduring influence on vampire mythology and has never gone out of print. Some scholars say it is clearly a Christian allegory; others suggest it contains covert psycho-sexual anxieties reflective of the Victorian era.^k
21. According to several legends, if someone was bitten by a suspected vampire, he or she should drink the ashes of a burned vampire. To prevent an attack, a person should make bread with the blood of vampire and eat it.^f

Without an invitation, vampires in most legends cannot cross a threshold

22. Thresholds have historically held significant symbolic value, and a vampire cannot cross a threshold unless invited. The connection between threshold and vampires seems to be a concept of complicity or allowance. Once a commitment is made to allow evil, evil can re-enter at any time.^b
23. Before Christianity, methods of repelling vampires included garlic, hawthorn branches, rowan trees (later used to make crosses), scattering of seeds, fire, decapitation with a gravedigger’s spade, salt (associated with preservation and purity), iron, bells, a rooster’s crow, peppermint, running water, and burying a suspected vampire at a crossroads. It was also not unusual for a corpse to be buried face down so it would dig down the wrong way and become lost in the earth.^f
24. After the advent of Christianity, methods of repelling vampires began to include holy water, crucifixes, and Eucharist wafers. These methods were usually not fatal to the vampire, and their effectiveness depended on the belief of the user.^f
25. Garlic, a traditional vampire repellent, has been used as a form of protection for over 2,000 years. The ancient Egyptians believed garlic was a gift from God, Roman soldiers thought it gave them courage, sailors believed it protected them from shipwreck, and German miners believed it protected them from evil spirits when they went underground. In several cultures, brides carried garlic under their clothes for protection, and cloves of garlic were used to protect people from a wide range of illnesses. Modern-day scientists found that the oil in garlic, allicin, is a highly effective antibiotic.^k
26. That sunlight can kill vampires seems to be a modern invention, perhaps started by the U.S. government to scare superstitious guerrillas in the Philippines in the 1950s. While sunlight can be used by vampires to kill other vampires, as in Ann Rice’s popular novel Interview with a Vampire, other vampires such as Lord Ruthven and Varney were able to walk in daylight.^f
27. The legend that vampires must sleep in coffins probably arose from reports of gravediggers and morticians who described corpses suddenly sitting up in their graves or coffins. This eerie phenomenon could be caused by the decomposing process.^c
28. According to some legends, a vampire may engage in sex with his former wife, which often led to pregnancy. In fact, this belief may have provided a convenient explanation as to why a widow, who was supposed to be celibate, became pregnant. The resulting child was called a gloglave (pl. glog) in Bulgarian or vampirdzii in Turkish. Rather than being ostracized, the child was considered a hero who had powers to slay a vampire.^f
29. The Twilight book series (Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn) by Stephanie Meyers has also become popular with movie-goers. Meyers admits that she did not research vampire mythology. Indeed, her vampires break tradition in several ways. For example, garlic, holy items, and sunlight do not harm them. Some critics praise the book for capturing teenage feelings of sexual tension and alienation.ⁱ

Hollywood vampires often differ drastically from folklore vampires

30. Hollywood and literary vampires typically deviate from folklore vampires. For example, Hollywood vampires are typically pale, aristocratic, very old, need their native soil, are supernaturally beautiful, and usually need to be bitten to become a vampire. In contrast, folklore vampires (before Bram Stoker) are usually peasants, recently dead, initially appear as shapeless “bags of blood,” do not need their native soil, and are often cremated with or without being staked.^f
31. Folklore vampires can become vampires not only through a bite, but also if they were once a werewolf, practiced sorcery, were excommunicated, committed suicide, were an illegitimate child of parents who were illegitimate, or were still born or died before baptism. In addition, anyone who has eaten the flesh of a sheep killed by a wolf, was a seventh son, was the child of a pregnant woman who was looked upon by a vampire, was a nun who stepped over an unburied body, had teeth when they were born, or had a cat jump on their corpse before being buried could also turn into vampires.^f
32. In vampire folklore, a vampire initially emerges as a soft blurry shape with no bones. He was “bags of blood” with red, glowing eyes and, instead of a nose, had a sharp snout that he sucked blood with. If he could survive for 40 days, he would then develop bones and a body and become much more dangerous and difficult to kill.^f
33. While blood drinking isn’t enough to define a vampire, it is an overwhelming feature. In some cultures, drinking the blood of a victim allowed the drinker to absorb their victim’s strength, take on an animal’s quality, or even make a woman more fecund. The color red is also involved in many vampire rituals.^k
34. In some vampire folktales, vampires can marry and move to another city where they take up jobs suitable for vampires, such as butchers, barbers, and tailors. That they become butchers may be based on the analogy that butchers are a descendants of the “sacrificer.”^c
35. Certain regions in the Balkans believed that fruit, such as pumpkins or watermelons, would become vampires if they were left out longer than 10 days or not consumed by Christmas. Vampire pumpkins or watermelons generally were not feared because they do not have teeth. A drop of blood on a fruit's skin is a sign that it is about to turn into a vampire.^e
36. Mermaids can also be vampires—but instead of sucking blood, they suck out the breath of their victims.^e
37. By the end of the twentieth century, over 300 motion pictures were made about vampires, and over 100 of them featured Dracula. Over 1,000 vampire novels were published, most within the past 25 years.^k
38. The most popular vampire in children’s fiction in recent years had been Bunnicula, the cute little rabbit that lives a happy existence as a vegetarian vampire.^g
39. Some historians argue that Prince Charles is a direct descendant of the Vlad the Impaler, the son of Vlad Dracula.^h
40. The best known recent development of vampire mythology is Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off, Angel. Buffy is interesting because it contemporizes vampirism in the very real, twentieth-century world of a teenager vampire slayer played by Sarah Michelle Gellar and her “Scooby gang.” It is also notable because the show has led to the creation of “Buffy Studies” in academia.

The Early Earth

Original artwork of Richard Dobbs, used with permission

Fictional narratives and action movies abound with speculation about what it was like to live on the primeval earth. It is a natural thing about which to be curious, especially when we discover tantalizing clues of strange ecosystems and fascinating creatures buried in the crust of the earth. What caused the environment to be so different in the distant past? The first book of the Bible gives us some hints as to how the great Age of Reptiles came into being. Certain scientific experiments seem to fit in well with this picture of Genesis. However, modeling a pre-flood environment is an active area of research, one in which Genesis Park seeks to participate.

• Distinct Biomes on the Early Earth
• The Pre-Flood Atmosphere
• Computer Modeling of a Vapor Canopy
• Ancient Stories of the Primeval World
• The Hyperbaric Biosphere
• The “Miocene Warmness”
• Temperate Climates at the Poles
• Atmospheric Experiments
• Giant Humans
• Long-Lived Humans
• Larger Organisms in the Past

About Genesis Park

The purpose of Genesis Park is to showcase the evidence that dinosaurs and man were created together and have co-existed throughout history.
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Dragon in history

Dragons in History

“The dragons of legend are strangely like actual creatures that have lived in the past. They are much like the great reptiles which inhabited the earth long before man is supposed to have appeared on earth. Dragons were generally evil and destructive. Every country had them in its mythology.” (Knox, Wilson, “Dragon,” The World Book Encyclopedia, vol. 5, 1973, p. 265.) The article on dragons in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1949 edition) noted that dinosaurs were “astonishingly dragonlike,” even though its author assumed that those ancients who believed in dragons did so “without the slightest knowledge” of dinosaurs. The truth is that the fathers of modern paleontology used the terms “dinosaur” and “dragon” interchangeably for quite some time.
Stories of dragons have been handed down for generations in many civilizations. No doubt many of these stories have been exaggerated through the years. But that does not mean they had no original basis in fact. Even some living lizards look like dragons and it is easy to see how a larger variety of such an animal could frighten a community. Have you ever seen an old dinosaur film where they used an iguana in a miniature town set to create the illusion of a great dragon?
In 2004 a fascinating dinosaur skull was donated to the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis by three Sioux City, Iowa, residents who found it during a trip to the Hell Creek Formation in South Dakota. The trio are still excavating the site, looking for more of the dinosaur’s bones. Because of its dragon-like head, horns and teeth, the new species was dubbed Dracorex hogwartsia. This name honors the Harry Potter fictional works, which features the Hogwarts School and recently popularized dragons. The dinosaur’s skull mixes spiky horns, bumps and a long muzzle. But unlike other members of the pachycephalosaur family, which have domed foreheads, this one is flat-headed. Consider some of the ancient stories of dragons, some fictional and some that might be authentic history of dinosaurs.
Written about 2,000 B.C. the famous Epic of Gilgamesh records the slaying of the monster Humbaba in Mesopotamia. Humbaba was the terrifying guardian of the Cedar Forest of Amanus. The powerful Mesopotamian god Enlil placed Humbaba there to kill any human that dared disturb its peace. Humbaba was a giant creature, terrifying to look at. Sometimes he is pictured as a large, humanoid shape covered with scale plates. His powerful legs were like that of a lion, but with the talons of a vulture. His head had bull’s horns and his tail was like a serpent. Alternatively, some sources give Humbaba the form of a dragon that could breathe fire. (Drawing to the left by Fafnirx.)
Daniel was said to kill a dragon in the apocryphal chapters of the Bible. After Alexander the Great invaded India he brought back reports of seeing a great hissing dragon living in a cave. Later Greek rulers supposedly brought dragons alive from Ethiopia. (Gould, Charles,Mythical Monsters, W.H. Allen & Co., London, 1886, pp. 382-383.) Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (“Dinosaur” entry) explains that the historical references to dinosaur bones may extend as far back as the 5th century BC. In fact, some scholars think that the Greek historian Herodotus was referring to fossilized dinosaur skeletons and eggs when he described griffins guarding nests in central Asia. “Dragon bones” mentioned in a 3rd century AD text from China are thought to refer to bones of dinosaurs.
Ancient explorers and historians, like Josephus, told of small flying reptiles in ancient Egypt and Arabia and described their predators, the ibis, stopping their invasion into Egypt. (Epstei+n, Perle S., Monsters: Their Histories, Homes, and Habits, 1973, p.43.) A third century historian Gaius Solinus, discussed the Arabian flying serpents, and stated that “the poison is so quick that death follows before pain can be felt.” (Cobbin, Ingram, Condensed Commentary and Family Exposition on the Whole Bible, 1837, p. 171.) The well-respected Greek researcher Herodotus wrote: “There is a place in Arabia, situated very near the city of Buto, to which I went, on hearing of some winged serpents; and when I arrived there, I saw bones and spines of serpents, in such quantities as it would be impossible to describe. The form of the serpent is like that of the water-snake; but he has wings without feathers, and as like as possible to the wings of a bat.” (Herodotus, Historiae, tr. Henry Clay, 1850, pp. 75-76.) Herodotus has been called “the Father of History” because he was the first historian we know who collected his materials systematically and then tested them for accuracy. John Goertzen noted the Egyptian representation of tail vanes with flying reptiles and concluded that they must have observed pterosaurs or they would not have known to sketch this leaf-shaped tail. He also matched a flying reptile, observed in Egypt and sketched by the outstanding Renaissance scientist Pierre Belon, with the Dimorphodon genus of pterosaur. (Goertzen, J.C., “Shadows of Rhamphorhynchoid Pterosaurs in Ancient Egypt and Nubia,” Cryptozoology, Vol 13, 1998.)
Charles Gould cites the historian Gesner as saying that, “In 1543, a kind of dragon appeared near Styria, within the confines of Germany, which had feet like lizards, and wings after the fashion of a bat, with an incurable bite… He refers to a description by Scaliger (Scaliger, lib. III. Miscellaneous cap. i, “Winged Serpents,” p. 182.) of a species of serpent four feet long, and as thick as a man’s arm, with cartilaginous wings pendent from the sides.  He also mentions Brodeus, of a winged dragon which was brought to Francis, the invincible King of the Gauls, by a countryman who had killed it with a mattock near Sanctones, and which was stated to have been seen by many men of approved reputation, who though it had migrated from transmarine regions by the assistance of the wind. Cardan (De Natura Rerum, lib VII, cap. 29.) states that whilst he resided in Paris he saw five winged dragons in the WilliamMuseum; these were biped, and possessed of wings so slender that it was hardly possible that they could fly with them. Cardan doubted their having been fabricated, since they had been sent in vessels at different times, and yet all presented the same remarkable form. Bellonius states that he had seen whole carcases [sic] of winged dragons, carefully prepared, which he considered to be of the same kind as those which fly out of Arabia into Egypt; they were thick about the belly, had two feet, and two wings, whole like those of a bat, and a snake’s tail.” (Gould, Charles, Mythical Monsters, W.H. Allen & Co., London, 1886, pp. 136-138.) The Italian historian Aldrovandus also claimed to have received in the year 1551 a “true dried Aethiopian dragon” a watercolor of which appears to the right. At first glance, one is tempted agree with Gould that the wings are ridiculously small. But perhaps in transporting from Ethiopia the wings broke off or dried to dust and thus had to be added from the artist’s imagination.
The first century Greek historian Strabo, who traveled and researched extensively throughout the Mediterranean and Near East, wrote a treatise on geography. He explained that in India “there are reptiles two cubits long with membranous wings like bats, and that they too fly by night, discharging drops of urine, or also of sweat, which putrefy the skin of anyone who is not on his guard;” (Strabo, Geography: Book XV: “On India,” Chap. 1, No. 37, AD 17, pp. 97-98.) Strabos account may have been based in part on the earlier work of Megasthenes (ca 350 – 290 BC) who traveled to India and states that there are “snakes (ophies) with wings, and that their visitations occur not during the daytime but by night, and that they emit urine which at once produces a festering wound on any body on which it may happen to drop.” (Aelianus, Greek Natural History:On Animals, 3rd century AD, 16.41.)
The Chinese have many stories of dragons. Some ornamental pictures of dragons are shaped remarkably like dinosaurs. Marco Polo wrote of his travels to the province of Karajan and reported on huge serpents, which at the fore part have two short legs, each with three claws. “The jaws are wide enough to swallow a man, the teeth are large and sharp, and their whole appearance is so formidable that neither man, nor any kind of animal can approach them without terror.” (Polo, Marco, The Travels of Marco Polo, 1961, pp. 158-159.) Books even tell of Chinese families raising dragons to use their blood for medicines and highly prizing their eggs. (DeVisser, Marinus Willem, The Dragon in China & Japan, 1969.) To the top right are pictures of a fossilized dinosaur egg compared to a chicken egg and a Protoceratops dinosaur eggs that is double-yoked. It is interesting that the twelve signs of the Chinese zodiac are all animals–eleven of which are still alive today. But is the twelfth, the dragon merely a legend or is it based on a real animal– the dinosaur? It doesn’t seem logical that the ancient Chinese, when constructing their zodiac, would include one mythical animal with eleven real animals. ”The interpretation of dinosaurs as dragons goes back more than two thousand years in Chinese culture. They were regarded as sacred, as a symbol of power…” (Zhiming, Doug, Dinosaurs From China, 1988, p. 9.) Shown here are dragons that were cast in red gold and embossed during the Tang Dynasty (618-906 AD). Notice the long neck and tail, the frills, and the lithe stance.
St. John of Damascus, an eastern monk who wrote in the 8th century, gives a sober account of dragons, insisting that they are mere reptiles and did not have magical powers. He quotes of the Roman historian Dio who chronicled the Roman empire in the second century. It seems Regulus, a Roman consul, fought against Carthage, when a dragon suddenly crept up and settled behind the wall of the Roman army. The Romans killed it, skinned it and sent the hide to the Roman Senate. Dio claimed the hide was measured by order of the senate and found to be one hundred and twenty feet long. It seems unlikely that either Dio or the pious St. John would support an outright fabrication involving a Roman consul and the Senate.
“Among Serpents, we find some that are furnished with Wings. Herodotus who saw those Serpents, says they had great Resemblance to those which the Greeks and Latins call’d Hydra; their Wings are not compos’d of Feathers like the Wings of Birds, but rather like to those of Batts; they love sweet smells, and frequent such Trees as bear Spices. These were the fiery Serpents that made so great a Destruction in the Camp of Israel…The brazen Serpent was a Figure of the flying Serpent, Saraph, which Moses fixed upon an erected Pole: That there were such, is most evident. Herodotus who had seen of those Serpents, says they very much resembled those which the Greeks and Latins called Hydra: He went on purpose to the City of Brutus to see those flying Animals, that had been devour’d by the Ibidian Birds.” (Owen, Charles, An Essay Towards a Natural History of Serpents, 1742, pp. 191-193.)
In medieval times, the Scandinavians described swimming dragons and the Vikings placed dragons on the front of their ships to scare off the sea monsters. The one pictured to the right is based upon the 1734 sighting by Hans Egede. As a missionary to Greenland, Egede was known as a meticulous recorder of the natural world. Numerous such stories have been recorded from the age of sailing ships (1500-1900 A.D.). The familiar story of Beowulf and the legend of Saint George slaying a dragon, which are well-known in the annals of English literature, likely have some basis in fact. Indeed the “dragon” pictured to the left is the dinosaur Baryonyx, whose skeleton has been found in England. Dragons were even described in reputable zoological treatises published during the Middle Ages. For example, the great Swiss naturalist and medical doctor Konrad Gesner published a four-volume encyclopedia from 1516-1565 entitled Historiae Animalium. He mentioned dragons as “very rare but still living creatures.” (p.224)
The city of Nerluc in France was renamed in honor of the killing of a “dragon” there. (Picture from Taylor, Paul, The Great Dinosaur Mystery, 1989, p. 40.) This animal was said to be bigger than an ox and had long, sharp, pointed horns on its head. Was this a surviving Triceratops? The story is told of a tenth century Irishman who encountered a large clawed beast having “iron on its tail which pointed backwards.” It had a head similar to a horse. It also had thick legs and strong claws. Could this have been a remaining Stegosaurus? (Ham, K., The Great Dinosaur Mystery Solved, 1999, p.33
Ulysses Aldrovandus is considered by many to be the father of modern natural history. He traveled extensively, collected thousands of animals and plants, and created the first ever natural history museum.  His impressive collections are still on display at the Bologna University (the world’s oldest university) where they attest to his scholarship. His credentials give credence to an incident that Aldrovandus personally reported concerning a dragon. The dragon was first seen on May 13, 1572, hissing like a snake. He had been hiding on the small estate of Master Petronius. At 5:00 PM, the dragon was caught on a public roadway by a herdsman named Baptista, near the hedge of a private farm, a mile from the remote city outskirts of Bologna. Baptista was following his ox cart home when he noticed the oxen suddenly come to a stop. He kicked them and shouted at them, but they refused to move and went down on their knees rather than move forward. At this point, the herdsman noticed a hissing sound and was startled to see this strange little dragon ahead of him.Trembling he struck it on the head with his rod and killed it. (Aldrovandus, Ulysses, The Natural History of Serpents and Dragons, 1640, p.402.) Aldrovandus surmised that dragon was a juvenile, judging by the incompletely developed claws and teeth.The corpse had only two feet and moved both by slithering like a snake and by using its feet, he believed. (There are small two-legged lizards that do this today.) Aldrovandus mounted the specimen and displayed it for some time. He also had a watercolor painting of the creature made (see upper left).
In medieval times, scientifically minded authors produced volumes called “bestiaries,” a compilation of known (and sometimes imaginary) animals accompanied by a moralizing explanation and fascinating pictures. One such volume is the Aberdeen Bestiary, written in the early 1500s and preserved in the library of Henry VIII. Along with the newt, the salamander, and various kinds of snakes is the description and depiction of the dragon: “The dragon is bigger than all other snakes or all other living things on earth. For this reason, the Greeks call it dracon, from this is derived its Latin name draco. The dragon, it is said, is often drawn forth from caves into the open air, causing the air to become turbulent. The dragon has a crest, a small mouth, and narrow blow-holes through which it breathes and puts forth its tongue. Its strength lies not in its teeth but in its tail, and it kills with a blow rather than a bite. It is free from poison. They say that it does not need poison to kill things, because it kills anything around which it wraps its tail. From the dragon not even the elephant, with its huge size, is safe. For lurking on paths along which elephants are accustomed to pass, the dragon knots its tail around their legs and kills them by suffocation. Dragons are born in Ethiopia and India, where it is hot all year round.” Flavious Philostratus, the third century historian provided this sober account: “The whole of India is girt with dragons of enormous size; for not only the marshes are full of them, but the mountains as well, and there is not a single ridge without one. Now the marsh kind are sluggish in their habits and are thirty cubits long, and they have no crest standing up on their heads.” (Philostratus, Flavius, The Life of Apollonius of Tyanna, 170 AD.) Pliny the Elder also referenced large dragons in India in his Natural History.
The 16th century Italian explorer Pigafetta, in a report of the kingdom of Congo, described the province of Bemba, which he defines as “on the sea coast from the river Ambrize, until the river Coanza towards the south,” and says of serpents, “There are also certain other creatures which, being as big as rams, have wings like dragons, with long tails, and long chaps, and divers rows of teeth, and feed upon raw flesh.  Their colour is blue and green, their skin painted like scales, and they have two feet but no more. The Pagan negroes used to worship them as gods, and to this day you may see divers of them that are kept for a marvel.  And because they are very rare, the chief lords there curiously preserve them, and suffer the people to worship them, which tendeth greatly to their profits by reason of the gifts and oblations which the people offer unto them.” (Pigafetta, Filippo, The Harleian Collections of Travels, vol. ii, 1745, p. 457.)
The Anglo Saxon Chronicle gives a dire entry for the year 793.  (In those days it was common to take glowing, flying dragon activity as an omen of evil to come.) “This year came dreadful fore-warnings over the land of the Northumbrians, terrifying the people most woefully: these were immense sheets of light rushing through the air, and whirlwinds, and fiery, dragons flying across the firmament.” Reliable witness reports of “flying dragons” (pterosaur-like creatures) in Europe are recorded around 1649. (Thorpe, B. Ed., The Anglo Saxon Chronicle, 1861, p.48.)
The woods around Penllyn Castle, Glamorgan, had the reputation of being frequented by winged serpents, and these were the terror of old and young alike. An aged inhabitant of Penllyn, who died a few years ago, said that in his boyhood the winged serpents were described as very beautiful. They were coiled when in repose, and “looked as if they were covered with jewels of all sorts. Some of them had crests sparkling with all the colours of the rainbow”. When disturbed they glided swiftly, “sparkling all over,” to their hiding places. When angry, they “flew over people’s heads, with outspread wings, bright, and sometimes with eyes too, like the feathers in a peacock’s tail”. He said it was “no old story invented to frighten children”, but a real fact. His father and uncle had killed some of them, for they were as bad as foxes for poultry. The old man attributed the extinction of the winged serpents to the fact that they were “terrors in the farmyards and coverts.” (Trevelyan, Marie, 1909, Folk-Lore and Folk Stories of Wales, p. 168-169.)
An example of an ancient dragon story is given to the right (click to enlarge and read some text.) The prolific 17th century writer Athanasius Kircher’s record tells how the noble man, Christopher Schorerum, prefect of the entire territory, “wrote a true history summarizing there all, for by that way, he was able to confirm the truth of the things experienced, and indeed the things truly seen by the eye, written in his own words: “On a warm night in 1619, while contemplating the serenity of the heavens, I saw a shining dragon of great size in front of Mt. Pilatus, coming from the opposite side of the lake [or 'hollow'], a cave that is named Flue [Hogarth-near Lucerne] moving rapidly in an agitated way, seen flying across; It was of a large size, with a long tail, a long neck, a reptile’s head, and ferocious gaping jaws. As it flew it was like iron struck in a forge when pressed together that scatters sparks. At first I thought it was a meteor from what I saw. But after I diligently observed it alone, I understood it was indeed a dragon from the motion of the limbs of the entire body.” From the writings of a respected clergyman, in fact a dragon truely exists in nature it is amply established.” (Kircher, Athanasius, Mundus Subterraneus, 1664, tr. by Hogarth, “Dragons,” 1979, pp. 179-180.) Such bioluminescent nocturnal flying creatures are known in some regions still today. (See the Ropen page.) Might they not be the basis for the “fiery dragon” lore from ancient civilizations around the world?
John Harris was a scientific man that edited the first encyclopedia. He gives a singularly account of the capture of a dragon: “We have, in an ancient author, a very large and circumstantial account of the taking of a dragon on the frontiers of Ethiopia, which was one and twenty feet in length, and was carried to Ptolemy Philadelphus, who every bountifully rewarded such as ran the hazard of procuring him this beast.” (Harris, John, Collection of Voyages, vol. i, London, 1764, p. 474.) But this pales in comparison to  the account St. Ambrose gives of dragons “seen in the neighbourhood of the Ganges nearly seventy cubits in length.” (Ambrose, De Moribus Brachmanorum, 1668.) It was one of this size that Alexander and his army saw in a cave. “Its terrible hissing made a strong impression on the Macedonians, who, with all their courage, could not help being frighted at so horrid a spectacle.” (Aelian, De Animal, lib. XV, cap. 21.) 
Gould sought to dispel supernatural notions and give a sober account of the dragon. “The dragon is nothing more than a serpent of enormous size; and they formerly distinguished three sorts of them in the Indies. Viz. such as were in the mountains, such as were bred in the caves or in the flat country, and such as were found in fens and marshes. The first is the largest of all, and are covered with scales as resplendent as polished gold.  These have a kind of beard hanging from their lower jaw, their eyebrows large, and very exactly arched; their aspect the most frightful that can be imagined, and their cry loud and shrill… their crests of a bright yellow, and a protuberance on their heads of the colour of a burning coal. Those of the flat country differ from the former in nothing but in having their scales of a silver colour, and in their frequenting rivers, to which the former never come. Those that live in marshes and fens are of a dark colour, approaching to a black, move slowly, have no crest, or any rising upon their heads.” (Gould, Charles, Mythical Monsters, W.H. Allen & Co., London, 1886, p. 140.)
On April 26, 1890 the Tombstone Epitaph (a local Arizona newspaper) reported that two cowboys had discovered and shot down a creature – described as a “winged dragon” – which resembled a pterodactyl, only MUCH larger. The cowboys said its wingspan was 160 feet, and that its body was more than four feet wide and 92 feet long. The cowboys supposedly cut off the end of the wing to prove the existence of the creature. The paper’s description of the animal fits the Quetzelcoatlus, whose fossils were found in Texas. (Gish, Dinosaurs by Design, 1992, p. 16.) Could this be thunderbird or Wakinyan, the jagged-winged, fierce-toothed flying creature of Sioux American Indian legend? This thunderbird supposedly lived in a cave on the top of the Olympic Mountains and feasted on seafood. Different from the eagle (Wanbli) or hawk (Cetan) the Wakinyan was said to be huge, carrying off children, and was named because of its association with thunder and lightning–supposedly being struck by lightning and seen to fall to the ground during a storm. (Geis, Darlene, Dinosaurs & Other Prehistoric Animals, 1959, p. 9.) It was further distinguished by its piercing cry and thunderous beating wings (Lame Deer’s 1969 interview).
The seventeenth century Bible scholar Samuel Bochart penned an in-depth study of the animals in the Bible. He describes how winged serpents are not only a thing of the Old Testament but were still alive in his day: “If on your travels you encounter the serpent with wings who circles and hurls himself at you, the flying snake, hide yourself because of its reputation. Lie down when the snake appears and guard yourself in alarm for that snake’s manner is to go away calm, considering it a victory… There are winged and flying serpents that can be found who are venomous, who snort, and are savage and kill with pain worse than fire…” (Bochart, Samuel, Hierozoicon: sive De animalibus S. Scripturae, Vol. 2, 1794.)
Evolutionary Zoologist Desmond Morris wrote, “In the world of fantastic animals, the dragon is unique. No other imaginary creature has appeared in such a rich variety of forms. It is as though there was once a whole family of different dragon species that really existed, before they mysteriously became extinct. Indeed, as recently as the seventeenth century, scholars wrote of dragons as though they were scientific fact, their anatomy and natural history being recorded in painstaking detail. The naturalist Edward Topsell, for instance, writing in 1608, considered them to be reptilian and closely related to serpents: ‘There are divers sorts of Dragons, distinguished partlie by their Countries, partlie by their quantitie and magnitude, and partlie by the different forme of their externall partes.’ Unlike Shakespeare, who spoke of ‘the dragon more feared than seen,’ Topsell was convinced that they had been observed by many people: ‘Neither have we in Europe only heard of Dragons and never seen them, but also in our own country there have (by the testimony of sundry writers) divers been discovered and killed.’” (from the forward to Dr. Karl Shuker’s Dragons: A Natural History, 1995, p.8.)
Evolutionist Adrienne Mayor spent considerable time researching the possibility that Native Americans dug up dinosaur fossils. But some of the reports she received make a lot more sense if these early Americans interacted with actual dinosaurs, not yet extinct. There is no evidence for sophisticated Ancient Paleontologists. An old Assiniboine story tells of a war party that “traveled a long distance to unfamiliar lands and [saw] some large lizards. The warriors held a council and discussed what they knew about those strange creatures. They decided that those big lizards were bad medicine and should be left alone. However, one warrior who wanted more war honors said that he was not afraid of those animals and would kill one. He took his lance [a very old weapon used before horses] and charged one of the large lizard type animals and tried to kill it. But he had trouble sticking his lance in the creature’s hide and during the battle he himself was killed and eaten.” (Mayor, Fossil Legends of the First Americans, 2005, p. 294.) This story conjures up credible visions of the scaly hide of a great reptile, something Native Americans would not know from mere skeletons. It was once thought that Woolly Mammoths had flourished in North America prior to the arrival of humans. But the discovery of sites where many mammoths were killed and butchered has established the co-existence of men and mammoths. Perhaps similar evidence involving dinosaurs will be forthcoming.
The atheistic astronomer Carl Sagan once remarked: “The pervasiveness of dragon myths in the folk legends of many cultures is probably no accident” (Sagan, Carl, The Dragons of Eden, New York: Random House, 1977, p. 149). Indeed he felt compelled to address the similarity to the great reptiles of the Jurassic era and “explain them away.” How could Sagan do this? Peter Dickinson stated, “Carl Sagan tried to account for the spread and consistency of dragon legends by saying that they are fossil memories of the time of the dinosaurs, come down to us through a general mammalian memory inherited from the early mammals, our ancestors, who had to compete with the great predatory lizards.” (Dickinson, Peter, The Flight of Dragons, New York: Harper and Row, 1979, p. 127). Thus Carl Sagan believed that we evolved not merely our physical bodies, but also memories “uploaded” from our mammalian ancestors!