It seems hard to imagine that some ancient engraver just came up with an accurate motif of an
extinct creature unless he had actually seen one. It also seems incongruous to imagine that
someone who wished to fake a geological discovery would carve a brontosaurus on a sword blade
as it would naturally cause too much speculation.
In a similar find, there is a portrayal of a pterosaur-like creature that appears on an ancient
Saxon shield from the Hoo burial site in Sutton. The shield depicts a creature with wings folded
back along its scaly sides and on its handle is a long beak full of teeth, a crest, and there is an
unmistakable tail protruding from the wing tips (fig.106). From all reports a flying reptile known
as the ‘Widfloga’ (far-ranging flyer) was quite well known to the Saxons. The shield is still
displayed at the British Museum in London.
Fig.105 Fig.106
There is also a Mesopotamian cylinder seal dated at 3300 BC that seems to quite accurately
depict an unusually shaped dinosaur known as an Apatosaurus.
An Apatosaurus was a type of Sauropod, a group of dinosaurs with quite an unusual body
shape. The picture on the right is a modern artist’s impression of an Apatosaurus based on a
recovered skeleton, while the image on the left is the Mesopotamian cylinder seal. (fig.107).
Fig.107There are a great many striking similarities between the two depictions with the Mesopotamian
cylinder showing some quite stunning realism. The creature may even have sported a large crest
such as depicted on the seal. Such information cannot be established from the skeletal remains
that are available to us. No fossils or skeletons of the creature were ever found until quite