I’ve always thought it was peculiar that there’s no historical record of any dinosaur fossils pre Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Didn’t Thomas Jefferson find some bones and begin collecting?
The stories of Dragons may have originated from the discovery of fearful looking fossils.
There were.
The Chinese called them “dragon bones.”
A study of a dinosaur femur in 1676 determined that it was from a large, unidentified animal, then went off the tracks suggesting that it came from a giant or a Titan.
So there were dinosaur fossils, but they were mostly un-identified as such.
“I’ve always thought it was peculiar that there’s no historical record of any dinosaur fossils pre Darwin’s theory of evolution.”
Sure there was... They just didn’t have a clue what they were, or had yet invented the definition of “Dinosaur”. Before that they were most likely considered “Dragon” fossils. And dragons go way back...
Well, it isn’t true. The oldest attributable find is in the late 1600s, and in the 1830s and 1840s there were a number of finds of bones and tracks. They just were attributed to different things, like giant iguanas, or the tracks of mythical ravens.
I’ve always thought it was peculiar that there’s no historical record of any dinosaur fossils pre Darwin’s theory of evolution.
—
There were lots but the bones were put down to dragons and pre-flood animals. The ancient Greeks found lots of them, but again they were mythological creatures and dragons. The bones were used for ‘medicinal’ purposes. China also. AIR