One possible explanation is that ancient people misinterpreted the fossils of extinct animals, such as dinosaurs, and imagined them as living monsters.
Adrienne Mayor, a classical folklorist and historian of ancient science at Stanford University, has argued that this is how the myth of the griffin, a lion-eagle hybrid, originated. She suggests that people in Central Asia encountered the skeletons of Protoceratops, a dinosaur with a beak and a frill, and gave them a mythical identity.
Similarly, people who found the bones
of Tyrannosaurus rex or other large predators might have envisioned them
as dragons. This could explain why some dragon myths feature details
that resemble paleontological facts, such as the presence of scales,
teeth, and claws....<<<Read More>>>...
