An Argument for the Chinese Dragon Taking Inspiration from Sauropod Fossils

As one of those insufferable people with an interest in both paleontology and world mythology, I'm fascinated by the origins of mythical creatures, and I really believe fossil finds inspired or at least fueled monster legends around the world. I got to reading about the origins of the Chinese dragon and realized that it actually has quite a bit in common with sauropods. I decided to write an essay elaborating on this and breaking down a Han Dynasty scholar's account of folk descriptions of dragons to show some possible similarities with sauropod skeletons.

It's okay if you think I'm full of beans. All this is just wild conjecture. Maybe someday we'll find some good evidence one way or the other.

An Argument for the Chinese Dragon Taking Inspiration from Sauropod Fossils

The Chinese dragon 龍 long is an unusual mythological creature that does not appear to be a clear chimera of extant animals in the manner of other mythical beasts such as the gryphon (lion and eagle), the cockatrice (snake and rooster) or Makara (deer or elephant and fish or dolphin). The form of the long was solidified very early in Chinese history and has not deviated from the base ancient design in over 7000 years.

This remarkable consistency in describing and depicting the long from a very ancient date, coupled with the presence of sauropod remains throughout China, makes it plausible that the Chinese concept of the dragon was heavily influenced by ancient discoveries of articulated sauropod remains. Some of the oldest descriptions of long incorporate multiple features that fit sauropod skeletal anatomy, further lending support to this idea.

 

In this essay, I am not addressing the possibility that the long was inspired by finds of individual fossil bones and bone fragments, used in traditional Chinese medicine under the label 龙骨 longgu “dragon bones”. Mark Witton has written a great blog post that goes into detail about why this connection is unlikely (among other reasons, most longgu are actually from prehistoric mammals). Rather, I am putting forward points in favor of a very specific type of dinosaur – the sauropod – giving rise to the serpentine Chinese dragon of myth.

My first exposure to this idea came from this news article about the description of Qijianglong, a sauropod which had an unusually long neck even by sauropod standards. China appears to have been a hotspot for very long-necked sauropods, judging from other finds such as Mamenchisaurus and Xinjiangtitan. One of the authors on the study, Tetsuto Miyashita, said in an interview:

"China is home to the ancient myths of dragons. I wonder if the ancient Chinese stumbled upon a skeleton of a long-necked dinosaur like Qijianglong and pictured that mythical creature."

As a paleoartist with a lifelong love of dinosaurs, a fascination with East Asian cultures and history, and a tendency to go on wild research binges, my curiosity was piqued. I decided to look into the very earliest writings and depictions of Chinese dragons to see if it was plausible that they could have been fanciful reconstructions of sauropods.

In Witton’s blog post, he states (correctly) that it would be very unlikely for the ancient Chinese to use the same sort of fossil excavation and preparation techniques that we employ in modern times . It would certainly be erroneous to imagine the Neolithic Chinese admiring fully cleaned, re-articulated, mounted skeletons in a museum the way we do today, and from there making inferences about what the animals were like when they were alive. But I am unconvinced that the ancient Chinese never encountered well-preserved, articulated dinosaur fossils.

Sauropod fossils, in particular, are enormous and do not weather easily even after being exposed to the surface. In the American West in the 1800s, people were using sauropod vertebrae as furniture, and Bone Cabin Quarry in Wyoming is named after an entire cabin built from dinosaur bones by a local sheepherder. A sauropod skeleton could have persisted on the surface for a good many years after becoming exposed, giving people plenty of time to see it.

In fact, we have very good folkloric evidence for cultures basing mythical creatures off fossils in North America, especially in the areas surrounding the Badlands where large tetrapod fossils are very easily found exposed on the surface. Indigenous tribes of central North America living in areas where Pteranodon and Mosasaurus are found have legends of giant birds and serpents that did battle with one another. The Lakota Sioux, living amongst the Eocene bonebeds of the Dakotas, found the sturdy bones of the brontothere Megacerops and incorporated their interpretation of the creature into their thunder beast legends. Far from simply finding some bone fragments and deciding they must have come from some manner of imaginative monster, these are examples of mythology taking concrete cues from the physiology of extinct animals.

There is no reason to think otherwise for the ancient Chinese. In fact, they were primed for significant fossil discoveries because from a very ancient date, China had organized, complex societies capable of coordinated civil engineering projects. Adrienne Mayor describes an incident where “dragon bones” (i.e. fossils) were found during digging for a canal in the second century BC.

A very old historical account in Chinese history is the tale of the Great Flood when the Yellow River and Yangtze River overflowed—this flooding event has been geographically dated to about 2200 BC. Chinese society was so sophisticated at the time that central authorities were able to organize civil engineers on projects to alleviate the flooding, including constructing systems of dams and dikes and networks of canals. The ancient Chinese would not have merely stumbled upon fossils weathering out of the ground—they would have found them in reasonably good condition during routine excavation projects, and if they found something enormous that did not at all resemble any animal they knew, it would have been all too easy for them to conclude it was a mythic beast.

So how do sauropods specifically factor into all this? There are several other extinct animal groups with long necks found in China—plesiosaurs, for example. And I do believe fossil discoveries of various extinct groups reinforced the concept of the dragon in ancient China. But the very oldest writings on long give them multiple unusual characteristics that, when taken together, could represent a description of a sauropod skeleton.

Of course, the caveat here is that trying to conclude what ancient people were thinking when they wrote or drew something is nigh impossible. But it is also important to keep in mind that up until very recently, perceptions of the natural world and how animals relate to each other had nothing at all to do with phylogeny, genetics, or evolutionary theory. An individual in China in 2000 BC would not look at a sauropod skeleton and say to herself “clearly this was a hitherto-unknown, highly-derived branch of Archosauria, judging from details in the hip structure and examination of the cranial fenestrae”. She would more likely say something like “such a large and majestic beast could only have been a divine creature”. And if you look at the following evidence with such an approach in mind, I think I may have a case here.

One of the very oldest writings on dragons comes from Eastern Han scholar Wang Fu, who lived around the second century AD. Regarding the physiology of dragons, he writes:

The people paint the dragon's shape with a horse's head and a snake's tail. Further, there are expressions such as 'three joints' and 'nine resemblances' (of the dragon), to wit: from head to shoulder, from shoulder to breast, and from breast to tail. These are the joints; as to the nine resemblances, they are the following: his antlers resemble those of a stag, his head that of a camel, his eyes those of a demon, his neck that of a snake, his belly that of a clam (shen, 蜃), his scales those of a carp, his claws those of an eagle, his soles those of a tiger, his ears those of a cow. Upon his head, he has a thing like a broad eminence (a big lump), called ch’ih muh (尺木). If a dragon has no ch’ih muh, he cannot ascend to the sky.

This English translation was given by Marinus Willem de Visser in his 1913 book The Dragon in China and Japan, and I think it’s a pretty good one (with some exceptions, mentioned below). I find this description compelling because Wang Fu appears to be describing folkloric knowledge of the dragon—he is not expounding his own or another scholar’s religious beliefs, but recording common knowledge among the common folk, knowledge which may very well have been passed down orally for centuries before Wang Fu committed it to text.

The date at which this text was written is also crucial. Wang Fu lived at the time when Buddhism was being introduced to China, but this description of the dragon does not bear any of the flowery abstractions or complex mythos imbued upon the dragon by later Buddhist interpretation. To get at the possible origins of the Chinese dragon, one must look at early sources not heavily influenced by all the lore and mythic concepts brought to China by Buddhism. And I find this particular description very interesting because it seems to be describing a creature with multiple points in common with a sauropod as seen through the hypothetical eyes of the ancient Chinese. I will discuss these points below.

“Three Joints” – This is an interesting passage because the meaning is not really evident. The term “three joints” might more accurately be translated “three sections”, perhaps referring to the three major divisions of a dragon’s body. The term “breast” here also could be more accurately translated as “waist”—in which case we have an animal whose major physiological junctures are the shoulders and the hips. That could really be said of all tetrapods except snakes, so its usefulness and relevance here is debatable, but perhaps the most striking features of an articulated sauropod skeleton – after you get past its immense length, of course – are its massive chest bones (scapulae, coracoids, etc.) and hip bones. A sauropod could very well be said to resemble a serpent divided into three sections.

Antlers like a stag – One of the features of Chinese dragons that I’ve always found the most interesting and peculiar is their antlers. How cervid antlers ended up on an obviously otherwise reptilian creature is anyone’s guess. Or is it?

It’s often difficult to see from the usual side view of sauropod skulls, but they (along with all other dinosaurs) have a pair of holes in the upper back of their skull called supratemporal fenestrae. To someone who has no idea what a dinosaur is supposed to look like, these fenestrae might seem superficially reminiscent of the hollows in deer skulls where antlers grow.

Head like a horse/camel – Sauropods have a skull unlike anything alive today, but I can see how they might potentially be described as horse-like or camel-like. Many sauropod skulls are long, with broad snouts and forward-oriented teeth designed for stripping vegetation from branches that are reminiscent of the incisors of horses and camels. It’s interesting that more ancient depictions of Chinese dragons do show them with horse-like heads, and it was only in the first millennium AD that their heads began to take on more of the crocodilian shape seen so prevalently today.

Eyes of a demon – “Demon” could also be translated as “spirit”, which in Chinese mythos basically has the connotation of any supernatural being. It would be easy to say the dragon has the eyes of a spirit because it is a spiritual creature. But it’s also vaguely possible that sauropod skulls were found that still contained scleral rings inside the orbital fenestrae. And if you aren’t familiar with scleral rings, you might easily mistake them for some sort of freaky-looking eye.

Neck of a snake – This one’s pretty self-evident. Moving on.

Belly of a clam – The English translation here is a little misleading because Wang Fu isn’t merely talking about your garden-variety, put-it-in-a-chowder clam. He’s referencing 蜃 shen, a type of mollusk that classically also referred to a type of transforming dragon, and which was strongly associated with funerals in ancient China.

Exactly what clams would have to do with funerals is anyone’s guess… or at least it was until 1987, when a Neolithic burial was discovered in Xishuipo. The decedent was flanked by dozens of clam shells arranged in the likeness of two animals: a long-tailed, big-headed quadruped that is likely a tiger, and a serpentine creature with clawed feet and a horse-shaped head that simply cannot be anything other than a dragon. This burial has been dated to approximately 5000 BC, which means the overall shape and image of the Chinese dragon are at least that old. And it also means that clams, dragons and burials had been intimately associated with each other for thousands of years before shen starts appearing in the literature.

Scales of a carp – This is one object in the list that I believe was the product of pure imagination. Preserved sauropod skin texture is vanishingly rare, and it’s highly unlikely the ancient Chinese would have found any of it, let alone noticed it, during excavation projects. There’s also the very obvious fact that sauropods do not have fish-like scales—their skin was pebbly and their scales did not overlap.

However, carp occupy a peculiar place in East Asian mythology. There is a long-running legend that states that carp which successfully climb a particular waterfall named the Dragon Gate will turn into dragons. The imagery of plucky carp persevering up waterfalls served as a cultural idiom symbolizing rising in the social ranks through hard work and dedication. But it also explains why Chinese dragons are depicted with large, carp-like scales, as well as long whiskers that are like a fancy version of carp barbels. Not really related to sauropods at all, but still fun.

Claws of an eagle and soles of a tiger – I lumped these together because they both refer to a dragon’s feet (“soles” could probably be better translated as just “paws”). Take one look at a sauropod’s feet and the resemblance is obvious. Sauropods had massive curved claws on their hind feet, and often one large claw on their front feet. They had robust metacarpals and phalanges, and if you didn’t know they were supposed to be reptiles, their feet could very well look like the large paws of a tiger.

(It is also interesting to note that the very oldest Chinese dragons are always depicted with three claws—the same number of claws most sauropods have on their hind feet.)

Ears like a cow – This one is definitely not supported by fossil evidence. All dinosaurs, in all likelihood, did not have pinnae (external ear flaps) like mammals do. Crocodilians don’t have them. Birds don’t have them. Reptiles in general don’t have them. Therefore, it’s a very safe bet that dinosaurs didn’t have them, either.

I’m not going to say I found some sort of esoteric connection between cows and dragons in the deep mythos, because I haven’t. It’s my feeling that dragons were just given cow ears because it was already established that they had horse/camel heads, and horses and camels have large ears, so obviously dragons did too. Again, not everything about dragons had to have been based on physical evidence—there’s always room for imagination when you’re reconstructing a mythical creature.

Chimu on the head – I have to admit that this is one of the items in the list that really tipped me off as to the sauropod connection. 尺木 chimu literally translates to “foot-long wood”, which doesn’t do a great job of interpreting what this “eminence” is supposed to be. Wang Fu describes it as resembling a 博山爐 boshanlu, a type of incense burner shaped vaguely like a teardrop (supposed to represent a mountain). So what Wang Fu is saying is that dragons basically have a mountain on their heads, that, judging from the name chimu, is about a foot long and reminiscent of wood.

Many sauropod groups had enlarged nasal openings on the tops of their skulls that created hump-like structures on their foreheads. If you were trying to compare a sauropod skull to a horse skull, that element would be a pretty obvious difference. It would make sense to describe a sauropod skull as “horse-shaped with a mountain on the head”. The fact that Wang Fu alludes to chimu-less dragons may also suggest that sauropod skulls had been found without the upper bone that forms that nasal space, as well as sauropods which lack the enlarged nasal openings. It must also be remembered that fossil bone can have an appearance and texture reminiscent of smooth wood, to the point where fossil bone has often been mistaken for petrified wood. So describing a sauropod’s nasal cavity as a lump bounded by a long piece of woodlike material would not be too far from the mark.

I know my case is far from watertight, but given that ancient people frequently came in contact with fossils and attempted to work them into their world views, as well as the many intriguing similarities between sauropods and some of the oldest written descriptions we have of Chinese dragons, there may be a connection.

It has been pointed out by opponents of the idea of fossils influencing mythology that most mythical creatures are amalgamations of real animals, and it has been said that dragons in general are nothing more than a combination of animals their creators feared and regarded as dangerous. But that line of thought simply doesn’t hold up for the Chinese dragon, who in pre-Buddhist days was always depicted as benevolent and the symbol of a righteous king or emperor. This idea is also weakened for the Chinese dragon by the fact that some of its component parts come from completely inoffensive animals such as the carp and the clam (unless the ancient Chinese had some sort of irrational fear of clams that we don’t know about).

I also find it curious that most mythical chimeras are a combination of two or three creatures at the maximum. Consider the serpent-human naga, or the Greek Chimera itself (lion, goat, and snake). I find it hard to believe that a mythmaker would go to the trouble of combining traits of a dozen different animals when he could just slap wings on a bull and call it a day.

Obviously, matching supposed dragon traits with sauropod traits is not definitive evidence that the latter influenced the former. Unless we somehow find a millennia-old record of somebody finding an articulated sauropod skeleton, I’m not sure we can ever concretely trace the origins of the Chinese dragon. But the long has a very distinctive form that has stayed consistent over thousands of years and cannot be easily explained as a simple combination of living animals. That, combined with the fact that large, long-necked sauropods are known from all over China, leads me to believe that there could indeed be a connection.