Several months ago, my big brother travelled to Cambodia and took tons of photos of the magnificent temple of Angkor Wat. He took tons of picture of carvings. On one wall, it showed three animals (a hoofed animal, as it seems, and some reptile, and another animal that I forgot).
Engraved in the wall of the some reptile was what seemed to a Stegosaurus!. It clearly looked like one, with large plates on its back and a bulky body, and small head.
Is it just that the ancient Cambodians of this time made a carving of a known reptile native to Cambodia, and we today seem to look at this as the form of a dinosaur? I've always heard theories of humans and dinosaurs living together (yes it sounds ridiculous).
But the carving is clearly a stegosaurus. It's really breathtaking, the photo of it that my big brother took, and I have no words for it. Historians, what are your thought?
Note* : Though I'm unable to upload my brother's photo right now, here's another photo of it I found from Google Images.
There's numerous reasons that it's very clearly not a stegosaurus.
You mention a small head, but the animal depicted has a rather large one, with horns at that. It's much more of a rhino or boar head than anything a mildly talented artists would mistake as the stegosaur's tiny head.
The other similar carvings have plenty going on in the background. The spines could just as easily be leaves. Well not just as easily- a lot more easily.
This temple in particular, Ta Prohm, has seen plenty of use by movie crews, and they have been known to alter the temple in unsavory ways against their contract.
In the end, it's just one image. Archaeologists never make any conclusions from single pieces of evidence, particularly when it's a conclusion as denied by every other data as this one.
