Dinosaur Files

Did dinosaurs die out long before American artists were born?

Modern artist paint dinosaurs they have never seen. Why couldn't a cave painter do the same thing if he wanted too? The idea that no cave paintings exist because they died before the caveman does not hold water.

Public Comments

1. Dinosaurs were the dominant vertebrate animals of the terrestrial ecosystems for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period (about 230 million years ago) to the end of the Cretaceous period (65 million years ago). DNA evidence indicates that modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, So as you can see it was millions of years later that man came on the scene. He could have painted them if he had seen the bones, and was smart enough to connect the bones to a body structure. That may have been asking too much, because the first humas were not very bright. They were slightly more advanced than the other animals. This is my help from Washington, D.C. United States of America.
2. I agree with the first post, and if you want to argue the existence of dinosaurs alongside man then maybe you should go to the biology section. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that supports the claim that dinosaurs existed millions of years prior to the first homo sapiens. I have seen however, some creationist point to the theory that dinosaurs existed with man and they take two common evidences the Ica stones from Peru and some firgurines found in Mexico. These artifacts are fake. The Ica stone were made by a local man who sold them to tourists, he later confessed the fabrication and made one in front a camera. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ica_stones Man never walked with dinosaurs, this is an erroneous claim and there would be evidence to support this. There should be evidence that man hunted them, ate them, used their body parts, rode them, or whatever else creationists claim. But usually every evidence the have introduced have been fakes, hoaxes, and sometimes plain lies.
3. Yeah, the first two posts hit it right on the money on the science part. Humans were not around when dinosaurs lived. Also, cave paintings have never depicted dinosaurs, they usually show great beasts resembling buffalo or other mammels being hunted by man. They also sometimes had religious messages, but never showed dinosaurs. Modern artists are highly influenced by primitive art also, so some of them may use their style. The early humans depicted animals that are now extinct, so maybe some modern artists make up animals that do not exist, or depict ones that are also extict... like dinosaurs.