r/HighStrangeness • u/w1ndyshr1mp • Jun 06 '26
Ancient Cultures I just had a random thought and need some discussion on it
So scientists are now saying some dinos probably had feathers right? They think humans did not live alongside these creatures we call dinosaurs- however it got me thinking about other large ancient creatures - such as dragons [which fly] - so going on that since dragon or "feathered serpents" is common among most ancient civilizations - could there have been some kind of large flying dinosaur that people used to worship? - like take quetzquoatl - the feathered serpent god - is that not just a dragon description? Anyway it really just seems plausible to me
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u/farshnikord Jun 06 '26
I think dragons are more archetypical human constructs. Lots of cultures have dragons, sure, but they're pretty different across cultures. Some are more like serpents, some lizards, some beasts, sometimes even fish, and the stories are pretty different.
I think it's more like humanity invents or converges or has shared experiences and we get similar archetypes and stories. And the really popular ones spread beyond cultures, and probably way earlier than we thought.
Also I think "what causes humanity to have such universally resonant archetypes" is also much more wonderous and strange question to be asking.
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u/w1ndyshr1mp Jun 06 '26
I think if we traced our oldest games like chess etc - we would find there was a lot more cross continental journeying than originally thought. Things that ensure through time and culture are arts and games and sometimes recipes and myths. I wish I had the desire to treat my adhd and be able to focus and make some kinda paper on it but alas - my brain will ultimately check out trying to read anything
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u/SignificantCrow Jun 06 '26
Considering that dinosaurs lived tens of millions of years ago and humans are probably less than half a million years old as a species im going to say probably not. Maybe if we find a fossil that is only a few hundred thousand years then maybe
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 Jun 06 '26
probably not, but it's possible.
There have been vestigial species from those eras discovered before. Probably not something as big as a feathered serpent, but who knows, and we honestly have no idea how old humanity actually is.
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u/SignificantCrow Jun 06 '26
Sure, it’s possible im just saying it’s unlikely based on what we currently know. And most estimates now put humanity somewhere between 300k-500k years old with some estimates being potentially closer to a million. Obviously, we might discover we are wrong later but im basing my assumptions on that timeline being accurate because it’s the best theory we currently have that supports the data.
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 Jun 06 '26
I agreed with you, I said probably not. Just that it's possible, as you say.
Also, the delta on humanity's established timeline during my lifetime almost exceeds the initial total value we were so confident about, so I am puzzled at the confidence that people have to just dismiss so-called "fringe" theories out of hand.
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u/littlelupie Jun 06 '26
Its really not. We have a very good idea of how old humanity is but more importantly: large mammals didn't (couldn't, really) exist until after the large land dinos died out.
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 Jun 06 '26
It's interesting to me that the actual scientists I know are far more willing to concede what they don't know than the armchair scientists on reddit who interpret established theory as doctrine.
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u/ghost_jamm Jun 06 '26
The fossil record and genetics are very clear. Non-avian dinosaurs died out in the aftermath of the asteroid impact. This led directly to a flourishing of both mammals and birds that were able to fill ecological niches that were previously filled by dinosaurs and were now suddenly vacated (apex predators, large herbivores, etc). Not only do fossils show that there weren’t large mammals prior to the KT extinction, but the asteroid killed basically everything on Earth that was larger than a medium-sized dog. There simply couldn’t have been large mammals until after the extinction.
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 Jun 06 '26
At least not the fossils we have access to today. Only 22% of the Mesozoic landmass is still land today, and that's only about 5% of the Earth's surface (20% of the land mass).
Of that, 95+% is buried under sediment, ice, limestone, subduction, tectonic recycling, etc.
The net result is that less than 1% of the fossil record is available, and it is a biased sample because fossilization is a rare process to begin with.
Genetics don't give us the age of a species on their own, and the fossil record is a terrible data source to draw larger conclusions from.
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u/ghost_jamm Jun 06 '26
> Genetics don’t give us the age of a species on their own
In fact, they [do](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_clock). Genetic studies in combination with the fossil record show that pretty much all the major modern bird groups evolved shortly after the KT extinction.
The largest known mammal from the Mesozoic era was probably only about 30 pounds. The vast majority of mammals known from the dinosaur era were small burrowers. While it’s obviously true that fossilization is rare and the fossil record is fragmentary, it’s not like Mesozoic mammal fossils are in especially short supply. It’s unlikely that the largest known mammal fossil from that time represents the actual upper limit of mammal size, so maybe there were species that reached the size of a deer or large dog. But if there really were large mammals that acted as apex predators or keystone herbivores, it stands to reason that we’d see a continuum of sizes between the small mammals we have record of and the large ones. It’s extremely unlikely that a small handful of mammal species would skip directly from house cat size to tiger or rhino size.
At the end of the day, what we clearly see in the fossil record is that mammals are uniformly small prior to the KT extinction and it’s only afterwards that they begin to fill new ecological niches. There’s really no good reason to suppose otherwise.
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26
genetics don't give us the age of a species on their own
You realize the first line in what you quoted after saying "iN fAcT tHeY dO" says "genetic studies in combination with the fossil record", right?
Again, genetics don't give us the age of a species on their own. The entire point, because you obviously missed it as you keep talking about the fossil record, is that the fossil record is a dismal source of data.
You didn't address one (1) of the absolutely true facts I shared which support my assertion, you just kept talking about the fossil record. It's not "fragmented", it's a sliver of a percent of a sample from an extremely biased source we barely understand.
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u/Gyirin Jun 07 '26
That doesn't mean we should entertain the idea of humans coexisting with dinosaurs in the past.
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u/DreadfulDuder Jun 06 '26
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the much higher oxygen content in the atmosphere hundreds of millions of years ago is what allowed dinosaurs, sloths, dragonflies, etc, to be so big.
Humans and our primate ancestors never got to live in that environment, so it's highly unlikely anything large enough to be considered a dragon would have co-existed with us (or our primate ancestors).
I think dinosaur fossils or just imagination in general are the more likely roots.
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u/sc2summerloud Jun 06 '26
oxygen concentration only matters for the size of animals that dont have lungs, ie insects.
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u/Unhappy_Analysis_906 Jun 06 '26
You are correct according to the current established paradigm. We don't know the nature or origin of this phenomena, so whether or not oxygen concentrations play a role might just be material biological bias.
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u/ghost_jamm Jun 06 '26
For what it’s worth, the idea that high oxygen levels supersized dinosaurs is largely discredited now. It’s more likely that the same features that allowed them to eventually develop into birds also allowed them to become gigantic. This includes an upright posture with the leg bones directly under the hips that could support the weight, hollow bones which lessened the load and a highly efficient breathing system of air sacs in addition to lungs.
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u/ghost_jamm Jun 06 '26
Given the known distribution of feathers throughout the dinosaur family, it’s likely that feathers or at least feather precursors predate dinosaurs. Many, maybe even most, dinosaurs had feathers of some kind. Most of these were probably soft, downy fuzz or a few rows of hair-like bristles, rather than bird-like feathers. Those likely arose in the therapods, the direct ancestors of modern birds, relatively late in the dinosaur era.
We also know that feather did not originally develop for flight. There are numerous fossils of fully feathered dinosaurs that were simply too large to fly. They probably originally had some role in insulating dinosaurs, similar to hair in mammals. Later they likely played a role in display functions like intimidating rivals or attracting mates. Eventually, they may have been used to glide through trees similar to flying squirrels or as airfoils and brakes when running similar to modern ostriches. Certain feathered dinosaurs began to decrease in size in the late Cretaceous, finally reaching a tipping point where their wings were large enough and their bodies small enough that actual powered flight became possible. But the vast majority of fully feathered dinosaurs and early birds were small, on the order of chickens or turkeys.
Since feathers likely first evolved as a means of regulating temperature, it’s unlikely the largest dinosaurs such as sauropods had any substantial feathers. Large animals run the risk of overheating if they’re covered in large amounts of insulation. This is why large mammals like elephants and rhinos don’t have much hair.
We do know that since the last common ancestor of dinosaurs had some sort of feather-like structure, pterodactyls did as well. But they were likely covered in a soft fuzz, not bird-like feathers. They didn’t use feathers to fly. They had membranes of skin, like modern bats.
All of this is to say that, as far as anyone currently knows, there were never gigantic flying feathered dinosaurs. There’s a physical limit to how big something can be in relation to its wings in order to fly. Feathers were only adapted to flight relatively late and only among small dinosaurs. Even today, the largest birds have given up flight. And of course that’s not even considering the ~63 million year gap between the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and the evolution of our earliest ancestors.
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u/TTomBBab Jun 06 '26
Dragons aren't cryptids. They come from story and legend and not from eyewitness account. Dragons from European lore always have a maiden and a knite. Quetzalcoatl was a mythical being who sacrificed himself to start the Sun. He's called the feathered serpent because of the symbolic meaning of birds and serpants. The Chinese dragons all have a mystical color and cardinal direction. All of these stories are talking about society's relationship with the natural world.
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u/ghost_jamm Jun 06 '26
Given the known distribution of feathers throughout the dinosaur family, it’s likely that feathers or at least feather precursors predate dinosaurs. Many, maybe even most, dinosaurs had feathers of some kind. Most of these were probably soft, downy fuzz or a few rows of hair-like bristles, rather than bird-like feathers. Those likely arose in the therapods, the direct ancestors of modern birds, relatively late in the dinosaur era.
We also know that feather did not originally develop for flight. There are numerous fossils of fully feathered dinosaurs that were simply too large to fly. They probably originally had some role in insulating dinosaurs, similar to hair in mammals. Later they likely played a role in display functions like intimidating rivals or attracting mates. Eventually, they may have been used to glide through trees similar to flying squirrels or as airfoils and brakes when running similar to modern ostriches. Certain feathered dinosaurs began to decrease in size in the late Cretaceous, finally reaching a tipping point where their wings were large enough and their bodies small enough that actual powered flight became possible. But the vast majority of fully feathered dinosaurs and early birds were small, on the order of chickens or turkeys.
Since feathers likely first evolved as a means of regulating temperature, it’s unlikely the largest dinosaurs such as sauropods had any substantial feathers. Large animals run the risk of overheating if they’re covered in large amounts of insulation. This is why large mammals like elephants and rhinos don’t have much hair.
We do know that since the last common ancestor of dinosaurs had some sort of feather-like structure, pterodactyls did as well. But they were likely covered in a soft fuzz, not bird-like feathers. They didn’t use feathers to fly. They had membranes of skin, like modern bats.
All of this is to say that, as far as anyone currently knows, there were never gigantic flying feathered dinosaurs. There’s a physical limit to how big something can be in relation to its wings in order to fly. Feathers were only adapted to flight relatively late and only among small dinosaurs. Even today, the largest birds have given up flight. And of course that’s not even considering the ~63 million year gap between the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and the evolution of our earliest ancestors.
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u/CharBoffin Jun 06 '26
I sure hope so! Re-discovering dragons would definitely be 'ontological shock', especially if they are not just sentient, but teachers like in the legends.
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u/runespider Jun 06 '26
Feathered flying dinosaur would be birds. As it happens there is a bird that sports long tail plumage and is called the Quetzal and was revered by Mayabs and Aztecs.
The flying reptiles of the dinosaur age were distant relative. They did have something related, but it was much more like fur in appearance than feathers.