An excellent point.
It’s long been suggested that Mammoth bones were thought to be bones of humanoid giants in those pre-scientigic days. In fact, it’s been suggested that the nose hole in a mammoth skull could easily be mistaken for an eye orbit, and help gicve rise to the myth of the giant Cyclops. (The theory goes back to at least the 1930s. Willy Ley reported on it in his books, and more recently Adrienne Mayor has brought it up as well, in the first book cited. She bought a plastic model of a Mammoth skeleton and put it together as a “Cyclops” for one photo in her book).
But fossils are sometimes preserved as an articulated assembly, just as in life. If you go to Dinosaur National Monument in Utah you can see an entire shelf of such fossils – including the head and neck of a sauropod, clearly showing it to be a long-necked beast. Ichthyosaurs are often found that way, as have Archaeopteryx. Pterosaurs have been, as well, although more commonly they tend to be pulled into a jumble.
For decay rates to vary for the relevant dating techniques (not Carbon 14 for dinosaurs - I’m sure you know that but our OP probably doesn’t) there would have to be major changes to natural law, some of which would show up, no doubt, when we look back in time astronomically. Naturally, creationists offer no mechanism how this could even happen.
Polycarp’s excellent point about when the stegosaurs went extinct indictates that creationists don’t really understand the commonly accepted evidence. They are arguing from a position of ignorance (or willful stupidity - hard to tell sometimes.)
Oh and…
** Dinosaurs and Man?!? TOGETHER???** On a Plane!
(Sorry, had to get that off my chest. :D)
No more than about 6000 years, of this we can be certain.
Not just ancient peoples. Remember, the statue of the Iguanadon in London (in front of the Natural History Museum?) has a nose horn because a big thumb bone was incorrectly assumed to go there. This was done in the mid-19th century, but I believe I’ve read about more recent mistakes - not suprising, really.
Birds are dinosaurs. So, dinosaurs exist in the modern world. Q.E.D.
Thanks and goodnight everybody! You’ve been great!
It is possible that small numbers of very ancient species did survive into historical times. take the ancient ginko trees-they were planed in Bhuddist temples by the monks, and survive today. or the mammoths-there is evidence that some of them survived on Wrangell island in the artic, until perhaps 10,000 years ago. But dinosaurs? maybe on Skull island.
Mammoths aren’t “very ancient” species. Even the “regular” mammoths were prancing around 13,000 years ago or so, and the Wrangell Island dwarf mammoths survived until about 3,500 years ago-- 10,000 years ago would hardly be called “historical times”.
(emphases added)
Well, it doesn’t look like Fonzie’s coming back to this thread, but I’d like to point out that he’s implying a great catastrophe (say, a flood) happened after the torah was written.
Actually, if they were around that recently, why didn’t Hannibal have a triceratops cavalry? That would’ve been cool.
Hmm…makes you wonder if Stegasauraus is Kosher.
Little knew the Jurassic Park genegineers that their ground-breaking research would give the world a NEW PORN GENRE! 
Fairly intact, articulated skeletons do turn up now and again; even without any specific effort to find them, particularly where sedimentary rocks are being eroded in coastal areas (or if they break along cleavage planes when cliffs collapse). Not by any means an everyday occurrence, but perhaps enough to inspire legends of sea serpents.
Ah, the wonders of the Internet. If you can think of it, someone’s already filmed it, or at least drawn it as hentai.
Actually, human/dinosaur (well, the intelligent evolved dinosaur that might have existed in the more-or-less present if not for the mass extinction 60mya) couplings have been described in the 1984 Harry Harrison novel West of Eden.
Ah, the wonders of the Internet. Someone tells you that it’s already been done a decade before the real emergence of the Internet.
Bambi/Godzilla slash? :eek:
The ancients also quarried limestone in which are found some of the best preserved fossils from the age of the dinosaurs. Commercial limestone quarries still yield some very significant fossils. (While there are very few fossils in marble there are ancient ruins made with marble* that have fossilized ammonite and shell embedded which, the ancients knowing how far below the surface this was, would have led to questions that would have supported and grown the already embellished tales of The Flood.)
*my understanding is that there is a geological debate as to whether marble by definition can contain fossils- that if it does it is instead still limestone- I’m not informed enough on geology to make a judgment, but the case is that the ancients built with stones that contained fossils and thus were likely puzzled at finding still identifiable impressions of shells and oysters and fish preserved in solid rock dug 30 feet from the surface level.
That would make for a rather more optimistic ending to [url=]Bambi Meets Godzilla. 
Or maybe less optimistic . . . depends on your value-system and your take on cervidic psychology . . .
Monster of steel, deer of Kleenex?
Indeed, and without proper scientific discipline, it’s easy for people to just make up fantastic myths about how these things came to be there; case in point being St Hilda of Whitby, Yorkshire, who rid the area of a plague of snakes by cutting off their heads and turning them to stone. Impressive, but the headless stone snakes are in fact ammonite fossils.
POORAUDS
PROPAT
SILSOF
IREGAUMMETH