The Acámbaro Figures
Thousands of clay figurines dug up in Mexico included dinosaurs, which some said proved people lived alongside them.
What was reported
In 1944 Waldemar Julsrud, a German merchant living in Acámbaro, said he had found clay figurines near the foot of El Toro hill. He paid local farmers to bring him more, and eventually collected over 30,000 figures of people, animals and creatures that looked like dinosaurs.
Creationists and believers in lost civilisations have pointed to them as evidence that humans saw living dinosaurs.
Explanations offered
Archaeologists who studied them found none of the wear or soil deposits expected on ancient objects, and some of the dinosaurs resemble illustrations from books of the time. A local family was reported to have made figurines to sell. Most scholars consider them a 20th-century hoax.
- When
- Found from 1944
- Where
- Acámbaro, Guanajuato, Mexico
- Witnesses
- Waldemar Julsrud, a German merchant
- Status
- Hoax
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.