# Is it possible some Dinosaurs still existed during the Dark Ages? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 4, 2017, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800 "2017-08-04T20:08:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2017, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/101 "2017-08-06T18:49:55Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > They find new megafauna species all the time. How often do they find new _classes_ of living magafauna that have left no fossil record for 65 million years? You’re damn right I ridicule it. Want to kill a paleontologist? Tell him that there could be living dinosaurs in Brazil and watch him die laughing. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2017, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/102 "2017-08-06T19:05:08Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > How often do they find new _classes_ of living magafauna that have left no fossil record for 65 million years? > > You’re damn right I ridicule it. Want to kill a paleontologist? Tell him that there could be living dinosaurs in Brazil and watch him die laughing. **Colibri** didnt laugh. Dinosaurs, as a _class_, are alive and well. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2017, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/103 "2017-08-06T19:08:32Z")
BTW, mention of the tuatara made me wonder about its post katey fossil history. While very sparce, I see that there [are examples](http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/national/1385084/Tuatara-fossil-forces-ancient-NZ-rethink) from around 19 million years ago and from around 34,000 years ago. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2017, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/104 "2017-08-06T19:12:32Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > But it does deal with probabilities so low that they microscopicly approach absolutes. For instance, we don’t absolutely know that a perpetual motion machine is impossible because there is always a possibility that we got the laws of thermodynamics wrong, right? Or maybe the laws of thermodynamics are one of those absolutes that you say science doesn’t believe in? > > I put believing that there might be dinosaurs today on the same level as believing that you can build a perpetual motion machine. The gap of possibility is just that small. You are confusing two different things: 1) The “laws” that the universe operates under, as we understand them; and 2) Empirical evidence in support of a proposition. There is no law of the universe regarding the extinction of dinosaurs, other than that all life is going to end at some point. A scientist would not say “we have proven that no non-avian dinosaurs exist today”. A scientist would say “there is no evidence that any non-avian dinosaurs exist today”. Those are not the same statements. But feel free to have the last word on this subject if you like. I’m not going to argue this any further. If you really want to, open a thread in GD. ---
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2017, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/105 "2017-08-06T22:03:04Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > That’s not God of the gaps. As I think you know, God of the gaps refers to the insistence that evolution by natural selection is insufficient to explain the fossil record, which contains “gaps”, and thus proves God exists and plays a role in evolution. “God of the gaps” is more general than that, to wit: God lives in whatever “gap” that science cannot yet explain. As the gaps shrink, that same God shrinks. Definitely applies to the fossil record vis-a-vis natural selection, but this is not where the term originated. ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2017, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/106 "2017-08-06T23:11:00Z")
> [@voltaire](#): > > Would small, feathered, warm-blooded ones have perpetuated the myth of dragons and sea-monsters during the Dark Ages? Perhaps the Hobbitses my precious? Nasty chickenses with beak and claw, scratches us and pecks us my precious ---
**Author:** ![Weisshund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba8739/32.png) [@Weisshund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weisshund)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2017, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/107 "2017-08-06T23:18:04Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > You’re damn right I ridicule it. Want to kill a paleontologist? Tell him that there could be living dinosaurs in Brazil and watch him die laughing. Actually there are probably millions of living dinosaurs in Brazil, of the Avian branch. ---
**Author:** ![Cub\_Mistress](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ea666f/32.png) [@Cub\_Mistress](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cub_Mistress)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/108 "2017-08-07T00:01:17Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > 65 million years ago, a big chunk of rock smashed down on what is now known as the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico with enough force that debris from the impact itself rained down as far north as Kentucky. More hot debris from the impact was thrown so high into the atmosphere that it ended up raining fire down all over the globe. Everywhere on earth, there is a layer of carbon corresponding to that date, meaning that the entire earth burned. Not just part of it, not just the area near the impact, the entire earth. > > In other words, it was basically hell on earth. > > Most things died. Not only most things, but most species died. The species that survived had most of their members killed, but managed to have enough survive to maintain viable populations. > > Most of the survivors were small creatures that don’t need a lot of food to survive. Plant eaters (the few that hadn’t been cooked to death) no longer had plants to eat, though some tiny sprouts certainly grew out of the ashes. Anything big enough that it required more than a few tiny sprouts here and there starved to death. The meat eaters (again, those few that hadn’t been cooked to death) at first had a field day. Lots and lots of pre-cooked food everywhere! What a feast. Eventually though, they ran out of dead bodies, and with the surviving plant eaters dying off, the carnivores starved to death as well. > > The largest things that survived were a few variants of crocodiles, which could submerge for reasonably long periods of time to avoid getting roasted in the initial flames. They could also go for long periods of time without eating, which enabled them to survive while other species starved to death. > > Nothing big that flew survived. > > Nothing bigger than a crocodile survived. In fact, few things bigger than a mouse survived. > > Creatures in the ocean fared a bit better, since most of them weren’t burned to death after the impact. A lot of stuff in the ocean ended up dying as well though, which indicates that even after the initial fires died down, the Earth wasn’t a happy place to be, most likely suffering through decades of severe cold caused by sunlight being blocked by stuff thrown up from the impact combined with all kinds of stuff from volcanic eruptions. A rock that big slamming into the earth makes some pretty big shock waves, which cause earthquakes and tsunamis and triggers lots of volcanic eruptions, especially on the other side of the earth from the impact (called the antipodal point) due to the shock waves all converging on that point. > > You almost have to wonder how anything at all survived. It was pretty nasty. thank you for this concise and understandable explanation of events. ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 1:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/109 "2017-08-07T01:30:16Z")
> [@bardos](#): > > I saw a film the other day that showed an island, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, that had dinosaurs still living on it. I once saw a documantary about a large dinosaur who went on a rampage and started knocking down power lines in Tokyo. Then he got into a rather ineffectual fight with a giant ape about who had the right to knock down the lines. The fight was resolved when one of them knocked the other down with a karate kick. ---
**Author:** ![Lucas\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lucas_jackson/32/303_2.png) [@Lucas\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lucas_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/110 "2017-08-07T01:36:04Z")
> [@Weisshund](#): > > Actually there are probably millions of living dinosaurs in Brazil, of the Avian branch. Wait, you’re not suggesting birds are dinosaurs are you? ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/111 "2017-08-07T01:59:47Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > Wait, you’re not suggesting birds are dinosaurs are you? They are dinosaurs. > **[Origin of birds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_birds)** > > The scientific question of within which larger group of animals birds evolved has traditionally been called the "origin of birds". The present scientific consensus is that birds are a group of maniraptoran theropod dinosaurs that originated during the Mesozoic Era. > A close relationship between birds and dinosaurs was first proposed in the nineteenth century after the discovery of the primitive bird Archaeopteryx in Germany. Birds and extinct non-avian dinosaurs share many unique skeletal traits.... Real basic (oversimplified) rule 1. Does it have feet underneath it’s body 2. Does it have feathers or scales If both answers are yes it is a dinosaur. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/112 "2017-08-07T03:48:30Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > If that isn’t clear enough for you, then you seem to be a lost cause for even the most basic level of scientific understanding. This post is not an explanation or defense of your claim; it merely attacks me. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/113 "2017-08-07T07:11:03Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > That would be 5th century CE. Right, my bad. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 7:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/114 "2017-08-07T07:21:19Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Is it absolutely impossible that there’s a small, neat-extinct population of Aquilops in the Brazilian rainforest? Given that the Brazilian rainforest used to be heavily populated with agriculturalists, and given the success of both terror birds and mammals in the region, and also given that _Aquilops_ didn’t even make it to anywhere _near_ the end of the Cretaceous, I’d safely say yes, it’s impossible. I’d give a _near_-impossible to the continued existence of a terror bird population, BTW, I’m not some sort of absolutist. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/115 "2017-08-07T07:22:31Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > If I had asked you this same question about the coelacanth in 1937, what would you have said? “It’s highly unlikely, but the ocean’s pretty big and quite unexplored” ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/116 "2017-08-07T07:57:00Z")
> [@Go\_Arachnid\_Laser](#): > > I don’t know medieval knights would even notice a dinosaur- they were too busy in their war against [GIANT SNAILS.](https://www.google.es/search?q=knights+giant+snails&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiLs5ij-L_VAhVGuhoKHVu5AL8Q_AUICigB&biw=1536&bih=751) Giant snails… or tiny knights? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/117 "2017-08-07T12:21:00Z")
It’s been pretty plausibly suggested, many times over, that dragon legends might have been inspired, or at least bolstered, by discoveries of fossils. Not only dinosaur fossils, as you’d expect, but of later giant mammals, as well. Willy Ley wrote a number of essays about this in the 1940s and 1950s (which you can find collected in his various books, _The Lungfish, the Dodo, and the Unicorn_, _Dragons in Amber_, _Exotic Zoology_. The teeth of mammoths and mastodons, huge foot bones, wooly rhinoceros horns, and the like were sufficient to give rise to dragon legends. More recently, folklorologist Adrienne Mayor made the same suggestions in _The First Fossil Hunters_ and _Fossil Legends of the First Americans_. There certainly were suggestions of dinosaur survival in Africa – look up _Mokele Mbembe_ for details. If nothing else, the idea gave rise to a pre-CGI Disney fantasy, **Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend** , about an unbearably cute baby brontosaur. Ley (who wrote about this one, too) made the suggestion that surviving dinosaurs might be at the root of the image of the Babylonian _sirrush_, which combines reptilian features with bird-like claws – [Mušḫuššu - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu%C5%A1%E1%B8%ABu%C5%A1%C5%A1u) Fantasy and historical writer L. Sprague de Camp took this idea and ran with it in his novel **The DRagon of the Ishtar Gate** , which posits the survival of large lizards (if not exactly dinosaurs) in Africa. I point out, as well, that Adrienne Mayor suggested that it was finds of ceratopsian fossils (mostly _protoceratops_ and ]I]psitticasaurus\* ) in Asia, with the bird-like beaks and feet, that inspired the legends and images of the griffins. Finally, the idea that dinosaurs might survive in an isolated region in South America (as **Bricker** observed) was wonderfully suggested by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his well-known but I think woefully underappreciated novel _The Lost World_, is which he took the known facts of the plateau of Huanchaca in the Amazon and suggested that ancient species might survive there, going so far as to create his own photomontage of the area. (It turns out to be true that the wildlife of the isolated plateau is, in fact, unique. There was a PBS special about it. Disney used the idea – basing their images on the plateau as depicted in the 1925 film _The Lost World_ – in the film **Up!** ) ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/118 "2017-08-07T13:24:57Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Given that the Brazilian rainforest used to be heavily populated with agriculturalists. . . Huh? I’m about to learn something new. I was unaware that the rainforest was ever heavily populated with agriculturalists. When? What changed? ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/119 "2017-08-07T13:49:54Z")
I would have thought that virtually all extant species have undergone significant evolutionary pressures and consequent changes in the last hundred million years, such that the easy answer to the OP’s question is necessarily “no” once we rule out species that evolved from dinosaurs. Aren’t even things like modern crocodilians significantly changed from their ancestral cousins? Are there any vertebrates alive today that would be considered the same species as an animal alive 100 million years ago? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800/120 "2017-08-07T13:52:38Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Huh? I’m about to learn something new. I was unaware that the rainforest was ever heavily populated with agriculturalists. When? What changed? [Cite](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lost-amazon-cities/). [Cite](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn27945-myth-of-pristine-amazon-rainforest-busted-as-old-cities-reappear/). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-possible-some-dinosaurs-still-existed-during-the-dark-ages/792800.md?page=7)