Photo: Ancient Native American Petroglyph Near El Paso, Texas. Click to View larger Version
Annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the secretary…..1886 I came across some of the Oakley glyph but.. it was described elsewhere as being four feet by six feet and I didn’t see the portion with the man, beast and reptile.
However, I did began look around in the book and soon found a drawing of a tattoo that looked like a bi-pedal dinosaur. The writer said that it was a fierce wolf-like creature that roamed the mountains.
Still in pursuit of the Oakley Petroglyph, I came upon Picture-Writing Of The American Indians V1 By Garrick Mallery which had a nice reproduction of a portion of the Oakley glyph. Either this was still not the portion described as featuring beasts, reptiles and a man or there just wasn’t anything very exciting there.
Photo: Comparison to Parasaurolophus. Click to View larger Version
On page 116 of that same book there is a very curious ancient petroglyph from the El Paso Texas area. It showed Native Americans on the backs of two creatures that clearly dwarfed them. Two creatures with distinctive horns as we will show.
Some may say that they represent big horned sheep; some may say buffalo. I say that they are more or less the spitting image in terms of profile and scale of parasaurolophus, a “duck-billed” dinosaur. However, the two Native American gentleman are 1)laying prone on the back of one creature and 2)standing upright on the creatures backs; an impossible feat on a bighorned sheep and a dangerous and impossible one on a buffalo. In point of fact, the drawing may even show a stool by which means our rider was able to climb aboard.
The parasaurolophus however, is thought to have been a docile vegetarian and was certainly large enough to accomodate either a prone or a standing Native American on its back. As you know, our section Dinosaurs In Literature, Art and History has been presented to prove that “dinosaurs” did not live millions of years ago but rather within historical time. We have the art, the history and the literature of ancient peoples to prove that.
Of note on this topic is this quote from the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science:
“The duck-billed dinosaurs Parasaurolophus and Kritosaurus and the horned dinosaur Pentaceratops were the most common dinosaurs living in northwestern New Mexico during the Late Cretaceous. An extremely important specimen of Parasaurolophus, discovered in 1995, is on display at the museum”.
El Paso, the location of this petroglyph was from 1680 to 1950 a part of New Mexico-not Texas and the areas are in close proximity to each other.
Photo:Big Horned sheep and parasaurolophus
Parasaurolophus meaning “near crested lizard” in reference to Saurolophus is a genus of ornithopod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of what is now North America, about 76-73 million years ago. It was a herbivore that walked both as a biped and a quadruped. Three species are recognized: P. walkeri (the type species), P. tubicen, and the short-crested P. cyrtocristatus. Remains are known from Alberta (Canada), and New Mexico and Utah (USA). It was first described in 1922 by William Parks from a skull and partial skeleton in Alberta.
Parasaurolophus is a hadrosaurid, part of a diverse family of Cretaceous dinosaurs known for their range of bizarre head adornments. This genus is known for its large, elaborate cranial crest, which at its largest forms a long curved tube projecting upwards and back from the skull. Charonosaurus from China, which may have been its closest relative, had a similar skull and potentially a similar crest. The crest has been much discussed by scientists; the consensus is that major functions included visual recognition of both species and sex, acoustic resonance, and thermoregulation. It is one of the rarer duckbills, known from only a handful of good specimens.
See Also: A Few (of Many) Other Native American Dinosaurs: