The Griffins of the Gobi
Ancient Greeks wrote that griffins guarded gold in the deserts of Central Asia. A historian suggested the legend began with dinosaur skeletons sticking out of the rocks.
What was reported
The griffin of ancient legend had a lion's body and an eagle's beak, and Greek writers said griffins lived in the deserts of Central Asia, guarding gold and laying eggs in nests on the ground.
In the Gobi Desert, at places like the Flaming Cliffs, explorers from 1923 found skeletons of Protoceratops, a dinosaur with a beak and a bony frill, along with nests of fossil eggs. In 2000, the historian Adrienne Mayor argued that ancient gold prospectors had seen such fossils and that they inspired the griffin.
Explanations offered
The idea is popular, but some palaeontologists point out that the fossil sites are far from ancient gold sources, and that griffins appear in Near Eastern art before Greek accounts of Central Asia. It's an attractive theory, not a proven one.
- When
- Theory of 2000; fossils found since 1923
- Where
- Flaming Cliffs (Bayanzag), Ömnögovi, Mongolia
- Witnesses
- Fossil hunters and a historian
- Status
- Disputed
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.
More from Ömnögovi