Dinosaur of Ta Prohm

Common card · No. 258334

The "dinosaur of Ta Prohm" is a bas-relief in the Khmer Empire temple-monastery of Ta Prohm. Numerous reliefs of various animals are present in the temple; the "dinosaur" is one of its more ambiguous artworks. The relief first gained modern notoriety in the late 1990s when the lobe-like features running down the animal's back were compared to the back plates of stegosaurian dinosaurs. The relief has since become a popular piece of "evidence" for the fringe belief that non-avian dinosaurs once coexisted with humans. There is no academic consensus on what animal is depicted. The supposed back plates are likely stylized background foliage, present in many of the other reliefs at the temple. Other than this feature, the animal bears little resemblance to stegosaurs and instead possesses marked anatomical differences, such as in the proportions and features of its head and in its lack of a thagomizer (tail spikes). Some of its anatomical features have been compared to chameleons and rhinoceroses...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Harald Hoyer from Schwerin, Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0