Land of the Lost

 

How goes it, Earthlings? Today we're going to start a two part discussion about a very unusual trend in cryptozoology, that of the living dinosaur.

So what is a "living dinosaur", exactly? Well, at it's simplest, it's the idea that a resident reptile (or species of reptiles) from a bygone age has somehow remained undetected until modern times. A good example of this in practice would be the popular hypothesis that the Loch Ness Monster is supposedly a plesiosaur (or family of them) and survived the mass extinction event because it was able to camp out underwater for long enough. Any creature that could prove the idea in and of itself would basically be considered one of the Holy Grails of cryptozoology, as the discovery of the possibility of a dinosaur surviving through to modern times would basically open up the creature catalog of the entire fossil record to possible discovery. Think kind of like the Ark of the Covenant, minus this.

Anyways, where did this idea even come from and get started? Good question. Actually, the idea itself started getting circulated quite early, as the identification and reconstruction of dinosaurs started all sorts of imaginations as to the similarities between them and the hitherto firmly-in-the-camp-of-the-mythical dragons of legend. Once that germ of an idea began to spread, combined with the occasional "living fossil" finds such as the coelacanth and our reconstructed records of forgotten fauna expanded, it became easier and easier to justify the inclusion of "dinosaurs" as a viable hypothesis to explain sightings of unusual or mysterious creatures. Bigfoot, Champ, Ron Paul...all became possible examples of something unexpectedly surviving until modern times.

So, if the theory is so widespread, why don't we have any examples of it actually occurring? Well, nature, mostly. You see, the theory in and of itself is kind of a reach, even for cryptozoologists. See, if we look through the fossil record, you can damn well find almost anything that you can imagine, so one can always use it as an alternative hypothesis. Also, the likelihood of even a small herd of dinosaurs surviving undetected while still being able to have enough food to continue to flourish in incredibly small, even in the (few) areas that have little to no human habitation/traffic. Lastly, even if one of these wonder-herds did exist, nobody seems to take into account the fact that these things would have had thousands of years to evolve into completely new creatures. But still, the idea is an attractive one at least at the romantic level, so it persists to this day.

Aaaand that's it for today. Friday I'll go into specific famous and not-so famous examples of supposedly still-living dinosaurs. Take it easy!