Re: Jurassic Croc Found With Fish Like Tail

[Adrienne Mayor <afmayor@aol.com>]

This new discovery in Oregon of a Jurassic croc with a fish-tail and  
needle-like teeth is an exciting find for anyone interested in Native  
American traditions and artistic images of water serpents with fish- 
tails and needle teeth, and long bodies covered in scutes or scales  
and with fin or paddle-like appendages.

These notable features of the Jurassic crocodile (needle teeth,  
forked fish-tail, scales or scutes) are also the distinctive  
characteristics of water monster representations among the Kiowa,  
Sioux, the Pomo of northern California, and other tribes.

The 6-8 ft long croc skeleton in Oregon was fairly well preserved and  
weathering visibly out of rock, so in theory a similar fossil could  
have been noticed by untrained Indian observers in the past. The  
artist's illustration of the croc by Jon Hughes for the NARG has a  
remarkable resemblance to the Kiowa artist Silverhorn's sketch of a  
water monster with scales or scutes, long narrow head with needle  
teeth and a forked fish-tail, in the Smithsonian, drawn in 1891-94 to  
illustrate the Kiowa legends of water serpents. Hughes illustration  
of the croc also  matches the way the Pomo Indians describe and  
depict a fish-tailed, needle-toothed water monster called Bagil, and  
some other northern California traditional water serpent images.

For the Kiowa images see p 193, Fig. 57, in Mayor, "Fossil Legends of  
the First Americans" (Princeton, 2005).

If anyone would like to have jpgs of these Kiowa images or wants to  
contact an archaeologist/anthropologist working for the NPS in  
Northern California who is an expert on Native American images of  
fish-tailed water serpents, please email me off list.

Adrienne Mayor
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPST/Mayor.html



On Mar 20, 2007, at 10:15 AM, Richard W. Travsky wrote:

An ancient sea-going crocodile has surfaced from the rocks of Crook  
County in eastern Oregon. Really.

It's discovery by the North American Research Group (NARG), whose  
members were digging for Jurassic-age mollusks known as ammonites, is  
another confirmation that the Blue Mountains consist of rocks that  
traveled from somewhere in the Far East, says retired University of  
Oregon geologist William Orr, who was called in to examine the find  
for the state.

The remains - about 50 percent of a 6- to 8-foot reptile, including  
long, needlepoint teeth - were found imbedded in Jurassic rock on  
private property in the Snowshoe Formation of the Izee Terrane south  
of Dayville, Ore.
...
"This taxon was a crocodile-like creature but had a fish tail," said  
Orr, a NARG adviser and director of the Thomas Condon State Museum of  
Fossils at the University of Oregon.
...
The remains of the crocodile, believed to be from the species  
Thalattosuchia and member of the Metriorhynchids group, now belong to  
the state, Orr said.
...