Griffins

Griffins played no specific role in Greek mythology: they were not related to any gods and played no part in the adventures of Greek heroes. Instead, griffins were believed to actually exist in distant Asia. Their basic description did not change over many centuries: they were bird-like creatures with strong, curved beaks but with four legs.

An ancient Greek traveler named Aristeas, after visiting one of the easternmost Scythian tribes in about 675 BCE, wrote down their stories about nomads further to the east, who battled the "lion-sized" griffins with their beaks and lion-claws. When Russian archaeologists discovered the mummified bodies of several of those nomads, preserved in the ice for 2,500 years, some of them had griffin tattoos! So Aristeas did not make griffins up, he heard about them from sources in Scythia.

Much later, the Latin writer Pliny the Elder gave almost the same description of griffins, adding details of their peculiar ears and wings, which had always been shown in illustrations. However, another Latin author noted that these wings did not enable the griffins to fly, but were more like "webbed membranes." Everyone was agreed that griffins lived in a terrible, dry desert.

As we now know, the Gobi desert, including its western extension, which includes the ancient nomad trade routes to the west, is extremely rich in dinosaur fossils, dating back to the Triassic through the Cretaceous period. Even dinosaur eggs and chicks are very common, and the fossils are continually exposed by the violent sandstorms, winds and erosion in a desert where the sparse vegetation does not hide the fossils. By far the most common species of bones, which are clearly visible against the red, crumbly rock formations, are Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus: comparatively small quadruped dinosaurs (approximately the size of lions) with very strong, curved beaks (Psittacosaurus means parrot-beaked dinosaur)! Both species are clearly bird-like in their skeletal structure as well as their nesting and egg-laying habits.

The Klagenfurt Dragon

In Klagenfurt, Austria, a large dragon statue, which is still in the town square today, was sculpted in 1590. It was modeled on the fossil skull of an Ice Age woolly rhinoceros, which had been unearthed in a local quarry in about 1335. It is still on view in Klagenfurt's town hall. This statue is often referred to as the first "paleontological reconstruction."

Chinese Dragons

Certain features of the traditional Chinese dragons, especially the horns, closely resemble the antlers of fossilized Pliocene deer, which have been actively "mined" in northern China for centuries. The mine workers by convention call all fossils "dragon bones," even if they are aware that they came from other species, such as horse- or deer-like mammals.

The Neades of Samos

In 1988, German archaeologists discovered a huge thigh bone, clearly part of one of the extinct giant mammals that once populated the Meditarrenean basin, in a temple of Hera on Samos, a Greek island. The fossil had been brought to the temple by a pious Samian in the 7th century BCE.

The Greeks had a saying "So-and-so shouts louder than the Neades!" These Neades were supposed to be giant animals who lived on Samos in ancient times (in other words, they were thought by the Greeks themselves to have lived once and become extinct).

Samos is so rich in vertebrate fossils that a giant Miocene species of giraffe has been named Samotherium, and fossil exporting became a lively economic enterprise in the late 19th century. Between 1850 and 1924 alone, over 30,000 fossil bones were shipped from Samos to various museums and collectors, including a trove of about 5000 specimens that are now at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

Information from The First Fossil Hunters: Paleontology in Greek and Roman Times, by Adrienne Mayor