The Book of the Great Sea-dragons, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri, [gedolim Taninim] Gedolim Taninim, of Moses. Extinct Monsters of the Ancient Earth. ... Collection of Fossil Organic Remains,...

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I love the way Scott Bruce has scoured so much ancient lore to bring us this treasury of dragon-related information, and I shall turn to it frequently.”― Philip Pullman, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Golden Compass Saint George’s Cathedral in Barcelona depicts the famous dragonslayer encountering a dragon that bears much resemblance to a crocodile. Photo by Antonio Sadurni. Pliny the Elder, et all. Natural History, Book 8, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996): 37–38. Jura Formation', a reconstruction of German Jurassic life, possibly by Nicolas Christian Hohe, [1831]. The lithograph, clearly based on 'Duria Antiquior', was produced to promote the third part of Georg August Goldfuss' publication 'Petrefacta Germaniae', (1826-1844). Archive ref: LDGSL/647. Plesiosaurus battling Temnodontosaurus (Oligostinus), front piece the Book of the Great Sea-Dragons by Thomas Hawkins.

Campbell, Hamish., “Crocodiles Ride Ocean Currents to Travel the High Seas.” University of Queensland News, June 2010. https://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2010/06/crocodiles-ride-ocean-currents-travel-high-seas Brito, Jose C., Fernando Martinex-Freiria, Pablo Sierra, Neftali Sillero, and Pedro Tarroso. “Crocodiles in the Sahara Desert: An Update of Distribution, Habits and Population Status for Conservation Planning in Mauritania.” Public Library of Science 6, no. 2, (February 2011) Galan, Juan Eslava and Rafael Ortega y Sagrista . El Lagarto de la Malena y los Mitos del Dragon. Granada: University of Granada, 1991. Extract fom John Martin's doom-laden frontispiece to Thomas Hawkins' 'The book of the great sea-dragons, Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri ... gedolim taninim, of Moses', (1840). GSL Library collections.Ogden, Daniel. Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Henry De la Beche (1796-1855, GSL memb no.426)wasintended for a career in the military like his father, but after being accused of encouraging ‘a dangerous spirit of Jacobinism’ amongst the other cadets, he was thrown out of the Royal Military College at Marlow in 1811. By 1812 he had moved to Lyme Regis where he met others who encouraged his interest in geology. Amongst his acquaintances were the Anning family who were just establishing their business selling fossils to tourists in the fashionable seaside resort.

The most popular mythological creature in the human imagination, dragons have provoked fear and fascination for their lethal venom and crushing coils, and as avatars of the Antichrist, servants of Satan, couriers of the damned to Hell, portents of disaster, and harbingers of the last days. Here are accounts spanning millennia and continents of these monsters that mark the boundary between the known and the unknown, including: their origins in the deserts of Africa; their struggles with their mortal enemies, elephants, in the jungles of South Asia; their fear of lightning; the world’s first dragon slayer, in an ancient collection of Sanskrit hymns; the colossal sea monster Leviathan; the seven-headed “great red dragon” of the Book of Revelation; the Loch Ness monster; the dragon in Beowulf, who inspired Smaug in Tolkien’s The Hobbit; the dragons in the prophecies of the wizard Merlin; a dragon saved from a centipede in Japan who gifts his human savior a magical bag of rice; the supernatural feathered serpent of ancient Mesoamerica; and a flatulent dragon the size of the Trojan Horse. From the dark halls of the Lonely Mountain to the blue skies of Westeros, we expect dragons to be gigantic, reptilian predators with massive, bat-like wings, who wreak havoc defending the gold they have hoarded in the deep places of the earth. But dragons are full of surprises, as is this book. Louise W. Lippincott. “The Unnatural History of Dragons ” Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 77, no. 334. 1981. 4.Noted geologists and popular science writers crafted engaging narratives about our newly discovered past, sharing and debating controversial ideas like extinction and an earth once dominated by reptiles. John Anderson, George Boulenger and William de Winton. Zoology of Egypt. London: Quaritch Publishing, 1898.

The ruling reptiles both dinosaurs and crocodiles are ultimately the physical embodiement of death, a reshaping of the food chain that strikes man from atop it and places him squarely at the bottom. Man is no match for these primeval beasts. and so his worst fear is an encounter with it. It is telling how the fears of man have changed, today our greatest fear concerning our demise is economic collapse. Our greatest hopes and fears revolve around money, an artificial and unnatural fear imposed from living in an unnatural world. The ancients lived in a natural world and their greatest fear was the dragon, a creature so powerful that should it rise again would end the world of man. Our greatest hopes and fears was our place in the food chain, and so the ancients fear was the dragon, a creature able to end the world of man and usurp our position and threaten us with extinction. Many religions feature dragons such as behemoth and leviathan being the destroyer of our world, these primordial monsters of dinosauria rising once more to claim dominion over man. In the earliest days of man the greatest threat and claimer of lives was the crocodile, now it is automobile accidents. The changing of the hopes and fears of man is no accident, we have evolved past many of our natural fears and unnatural ones have taken their place. Jose Luis Rodriguez Plasencia, “El Lagarto de Calzadilla y otras Historias de Lagartos.” Revista de Folklore 321, 2007. 101. Daniel Ogden. Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 27. Spalding, David A. E., and William A. S. Sarjeant. “Dinosaurs: The Earliest Discoveries.” In The Complete Dinosaur, edited by Brett-Surman M. K., Holtz Thomas R., and Farlow James O., by Walters Bob, 3–23. Indiana University Press, 2012. 7. Owen, Richard. Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World. (London: Euston Grove Press 2010): 11.Contrary to popular belief, crocodiles are capable of surviving in Europe. They can and do survive in extremely cold temperatures. The crocodile will submerge in water, place its snout above the freezing ice, and hibernate until temperatures rise. Reptile expert Dr. Ian Stephen believes crocodiles could, in fact, survive even the cold of British waters. [60] Europe’s climate was also much hotter at the time of these reported crocodile encounters. In fact, it was much warmer than it is today during these periods. The Roman warming period lasted until the third century A.D., followed by another warm period between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, the time period that frames many of the European crocodile encounters previously mentioned. [61] But whether these legends are true or not is secondary to the fact that Europeans considered crocodiles to be dragons. Moreover, their encounters with crocodiles made dragons no mere myth to Europeans, but living, breathing, and deadly creatures. Conclusion Edwards, Ruth B., Kadmos the Phoenician: A Study in Greek Legends and the Mycenean Age (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1979): Duria Antiquior' a reconstruction of the Jurassic life of Dorset, drawn by Henry De la Beche, lithographed by George Scharf and printed by Charles Hullmandel, [1830]. Archive ref: LDGSL/646. Jose C. Brito, et all. “Crocodiles in the Sahara Desert: An Update of Distribution, Habitats and Population Status for Conservation Planning in Mauritania.” Public Library of Science, February 2011. The skull of the Draco-Rex resembles many interpretations of medieval dragons. Photograph from Indianapolis Children’s Museum.

Magán, Pascuala Morote. “Las leyendas y su valor didáctico.” In XL Congreso, vol. 400. 2016. 393. (391–403) In 1811, 12-year-old Mary Anning discovered the first complete fossil of an ichthyosaur, a long-extinct marine reptile, in the cliffs near the English seaside town of Lyme Regis. Selling her finds as curios to tourists and to scientists seeking specimens, she would become a significant contributor to paleontology in its early days. By the 1850s, a curious public was attending lectures and viewing panoramic paintings of our world’s distant history. Enthusiasts pored over geological guides and popular science books and magazines. Scientists reconstructed the first models of dinosaurs, and natural history museums displayed fossil specimens. The understanding of the human condition in ancient times is imperative to understanding a world in which dragons exist. The Medieval life was one of limited freedom. Most spent their lives confined to their village. Knowing so little led to a gripping fear of what they did not know, it was a life controlled by fear. Practical fears such as Vikings, bandits and plague, but also impractical terrors such as witches and dragons. In a world controlled by fear those bold enough to confront such horror were revered. Hence the mythical super hero status given to knights and warriors who felled dragons. Civilization and the cement fortresses of the west have removed man from nature, but in the time before, when man lived with nature, being eaten alive by beasts was a very real and serious concern. For the carnivore flesh is the essence of life, including human flesh. Death was an ever present reality, that could be realized at any moment. The carnivore must feed on the flesh of others or perish. The realities of such beasts seems monstrous, and indeed are. A dinosaur, lion or crocodile very much fits the imaging of a monster, it is not deemed a monster however, but only because it is not classified as such. Fear, more specifically fear of the unknown drives man to explore and classify. To know something, to classify, to compartmentalize a species removes its unknown and monstrous element. To ancient peoples a dragon was without doubt a monster. A primordial horror that had tremendous psychological impact upon the residents of the ancient world. Some men could spend their whole lives refusing to venture near a mountain, forest or cave a dragon was said to inhabit. As children even in the modern era we naturally fear the dark, the unknown, that a monster might be lurking around the bend. Our fears subside and dissipate as parents and adults assure us no such things exist, and we grow out of these fears through the persuasion of our elders. In ancient times, people lived in an entirely different reality, one in which parents did not dissuade a fear of the dark or of monstrous beings, because the parents themselves had the same fear. This type of fear is exemplified as late as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when sailors occasionally still refused to venture into uncharted waters, for fear of dragons.

My Book Notes

Scholarly and thrilling. By collecting some of the foundational―and also most surprising―historical sources on these guardians of the ‘boundary between the known and unknown,’ Scott Bruce has created the new indispensableresource for anyone who cares about dragons.”― Adam Gidwitz, New York Times bestselling author of A Tale Dark and Grimm and The Inquisitor’s Tale Despite the logical thesis presented in this paper there are numerous descriptions of dragons that resemble no creature either living or extinct. The subject of dragons is infinitely interpretable. For whatever reason for at least 4,000 years a creature that did not exist was not only considered to exist but was featured prominently in taxonomy. This is where a lesson of mankind is learned, from an origin grows a myth. Truth is turned to fiction and fiction becomes truth. The number of naturalists and historians who describe encounters with dragons pre-eighteenth century is astonishing. Reliable and noted individuals who by in large report truth record witnessing dragons with their own eyes. These are not crocodilian dragons being described, but dinosaur like creatures. Roman senators, Greek aristocrats and renowned scientists all claim to have had eye witness encounters with gigantic dragons, which they effectively describe as living dinosaurs. What drove honest scrupulous men to lie, and why were they driven to lie only when it concerned dragons? Some radical Christian theorists believe this be evidence that dinosaurs and humans co-existed and that their extinction was surprisingly recent. There is however no paleontological evidence to support this theory. What is more probable is that these naturalists were passing off local stories as their own encounters, unaware that they were nothing more than local folklore. This folklore inspired by the surprisingly accurate description of the dinosaur fossils found by the locals. The consequence was that Europe’s best and brightest were stating unequivocally that dragons were a real creature, which only further cemented European belief that great reptilian beasts were still roaming the world.