The mysterious carving of a dinosaur at Angkor Wat

A stone carving features an animal with plates on its back, surrounded by decorative patterns in a circular frame.
Dinosaur of Angkor Wat. © History Skills

History often leaves behind some puzzles that are just too tempting to ignore, and one of them is etched into the stone walls of a famous medieval Southeast Asian temple.

 

The carving in question has been hailed by believers as evidence of dinosaurs living alongside humans, while doubters see it as an ordinary depiction that has been misread by modern eyes.

 

As a result, it has fueled decades of speculation in various documentaries and internet debates. It has also prompted claims of conspiracy.

 

So, is it real, or just an elaborate hoax?

What we know about the Ta Prohm temple at Angkor Wat

Founded at the height of the Khmer Empire, the Ta Prohm temple, where the carving is currently located, was just one of many temples that made up the larger Angkor Wat complex in the late 1100s.

 

Its original purpose was probably as a Buddhist monastery and university. The temple was specifically dedicated in 1186 to the king, Jayavarman VII’s, mother.

 

His reign saw a frenzy of temple building, and Ta Prohm (originally called Rajavihara) was decorated with a wide array of bas-relief artwork.

 

Over centuries of abandonment after the 15th century, Ta Prohm became covered by thick jungle.

 

Unlike other Angkor sites, it was left largely unrestored in modern times, with large banyan and fig tree roots that grew through its walls.

 

However, more recently, there has been a deliberate choice by conservators to preserve the temple’s romantic "lost city" feel and it even made it a scenic spot for a number of films: mostly notably, the 2001 Tomb Raider movie starring Angelina Jolie. 

For people who walk through Ta Prohm’s stone corridors and courtyards today, there are hundreds of individual carvings that decorate its many pillars and walls, all which are incredible to see first-hand.

 

These include images of familiar animals like monkeys, deer, water buffalo, birds, and reptiles, as well as mythical creatures from Hindu-Buddhist lore.

 

Visitors who take a closer look at the roundels, which is the name given to the small circular medallion carvings on the temple’s columns and doorways, will find that most contain recognizable creatures.

 

However, just inside the temple’s western entrance is the carving that has garnered the most interest, as it shows an animal unlike any known in the region.

 

However, its strange appearance went largely unremarked for centuries while the temple lay under the trees. 

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Finding the dinosaur carving

The “dinosaur” carving of Ta Prohm only gained modern notoriety in the late 20th century.

 

In 1997, a guidebook by Claude Jacques and Michael Freeman drew attention to the odd design, noting the similarity of the carving to a Stegosaurus dinosaur.

 

Two years later, their 1999 book Ancient Angkor again drew attention to the relief and even described it as “a very convincing representation of a stegosaur”.

 

Soon after, tour guides began pointing out the carved “dinosaur” to visitors, and word of mouth spread about the apparent prehistoric beast, that had died out in the Late Jurassic period (approximately 145 million years ago) but had somehow been accurately depicted just one thousand years ago. 

The popularization of Ta Prohm’s “Stegosaurus” accelerated in the 2000s, especially as internet forums and websites that supported Christian young-earth Creationist beliefs seized on the story.

 

After the temple featured in Tomb Raider, Ta Prohm saw another surge of tourism, yet many tour groups tend to walk right past the little carving without noticing it.

 

Those who did seek it out are often astonished. It does raise the question about how an ancient Khmer artisan knew what a stegosaurus looked like and whether he sculpted based upon something he saw with his own eyes.

 

By 2006, young-Earth creationist Don Patton and others were circulating photographs of the carving online, claiming it as evidence that humans and dinosaurs coexisted.

 

In January 2007, the Christian apologetics ministry Answers in Genesis proudly featured an article titled “Evidence of Dinosaurs at Angkor”, which argued that the relief confirms dinosaurs lived in Cambodia just 800 years ago.

 

The tale of the Angkor dinosaur found enthusiastic audiences, and soon the carving was a minor sensation on blogs, travel sites, and even in a Texas creationism museum that displays a replica of the piece. 

A massive tree grows over ancient stone temple ruins, with roots spreading across walls and doorways.
Ruins of the Ta Prohm Temple in Cambodia. © History Skills

What does the carving actually show?

At first glance, the carving in question shows a squat, four-legged creature with a domed, convex back.

 

Along the animal’s back runs a series of roughly semicircular lobed shapes. It is this detail that immediately suggested “Stegosaurus” to modern eyes, as the shapes resemble the iconic plates that line the spine of that genus of dinosaur.

 

The creature is depicted in side profile within a round frame of stone foliage. Its head appears to sport two horn-like protrusions or perhaps floppy ears.

 

The snout is broad, and the tail, curling behind, seems to be short and held low to the ground.

 

The carving is quite small (only about the size of a human hand) and deeply carved, making the animal stand out in relief against a background of swirling plant motifs.

 

Interestingly, its stone surface is smoother and lighter in color than some surrounding carvings, which initially led a few observers to suspect it might have been re-carved or cleaned in recent times.

 

Overall, the mysterious beast appears almost cartoonish: a compact creature adorned with what look like spikes or leaves. 

Despite the superficial resemblance to a Stegosaurus, the anatomical details of the carving do not perfectly match what paleontologists know from actual stegosaurid remains.

 

As such, they have pointed out numerous inconsistencies: 

 

Firstly, the carved animal has a wide, blunt snout and a relatively large head. Real stegosaurs had very small, narrow heads with no horns or external ears, and certainly nothing like the prominent twin bumps seen on the carving.

 

One fringe interpretation tried to explain these bumps as a sort of muzzle or harness, which suggested that the dinosaur had been domesticated.

 

This is an extraordinary claim that is unsupported by evidence. 

A close-up of a stone carving shows an animal with plates on its back, surrounded by circular patterns.
Close up of the dinosaur of Angkor Wat. © History Skills

Also, the neck on the carving is short and merges into the shoulder, whereas a Stegosaurus had a fairly long, thin neck to balance its body.

 

What is more, the creature’s tail in the relief curves down near the leg, almost touching the ground.

 

Dinosaurs like Stegosaurus are now known to have held their tails elevated off the ground for balance, not dragging them low. 

 

The relief shows front and hind limbs of roughly equal thickness and length. In contrast, Stegosaur fossils show that their hind legs were significantly longer and thicker than the forelegs.

 

As a result, the carved creature’s stance does not match the known skeletal structure of a stegosaur. 

 

If the round shapes along the back were intended as bony plates, their arrangement is wrong for a Stegosaurus.

 

The carving shows about a dozen half-rounded bumps in a single row or fused pattern, but a real Stegosaurus had two staggered rows of larger, pointed plates along the spine.

 

Crucially, the Khmer carving shows no sign of the Stegosaurus’s tail spikes (the deadly thagomizer), which were a key part of stegosaur anatomy.

 

The absence of these spikes is important, as even an artist with vague knowledge of a “dinosaur” would presumably include such dramatic features if the intention was to depict a real Stegosaurus. 


What are some alternative explanations?

Mainstream archaeologists and scientists approach the Ta Prohm carving as an example of Khmer art that has been misidentified.

 

They emphasise that decorative motifs and local fauna are the most likely sources of inspiration, rather than dinosaurs.

 

Several conventional explanations have been put forward to identify the animal in the carving: 

 

The simplest explanation is that the carving might not depict an unusual creature at all, but rather a known animal framed by decorative foliage.

 

The “plates” may actually be stylized lotus leaves, palm fronds, or other plant motifs forming a background halo around the creature.

 

Similar leaf-like ornamentation appears in carvings of other animals at Ta Prohm. For example, reliefs of a water buffalo and a bird at the temple have nearly identical scalloped backgrounds, which clearly represent plants, not back plates.

 

In the case of the “stegosaur” carving, if one interprets the lobed shapes as vegetation, the remaining animal figure could be something far less outlandish than a dinosaur. 

A leading candidate for the real animal behind the carving is a rhinoceros. The carved creature’s bulky body, big head, and wide snout correspond well with a rhinoceros’s appearance.

 

While the relief lacks an obvious nose horn, scholars note that the region was once home to the Javan rhinoceros (a now-extinct species in Cambodia) which has a much smaller, less conspicuous horn than the African rhino.

 

It’s possible the artist depicted a rhino without a pronounced horn, or that any horn detail weathered away over time. If one mentally “subtracts” the leafy backdrop, a rhino wading in vegetation is a plausible reading of the image. 

 

Others have suggested the carving could portray a wild boar or a young water buffalo, both of which are common animals in Cambodia.

 

The short legs and general proportions are consistent with a boar, and boars were frequently depicted in Khmer art.

A stone panel displays three circular carvings with animals in detailed patterns.
Surrounding carvings of the dinosaur at Angkor Wat. © History Skills

Some observers note a resemblance to large lizards. The arched back and curling tail are seen in reptiles like the monitor lizard or even a chameleon.

 

A chameleon’s head has helmet-like ridges that could be likened to the carving’s head bumps.

 

Khmer art does include reptiles, and a dragon or lizard motif intertwined with foliage is another possibility to explain the carving. 

 

It is also worth considering that the carving might not represent a real animal at all, but a mythical creature or composite.

 

Elsewhere in Ta Prohm, carvings exist of fantastical beasts. For instance, in the same section of the temple there is a creature that appears to be a dog or lion with a human-like head.

 

Given the Khmer penchant for mythological figures, the “dinosaur” could be a stylized creature from legend or imagination, carved alongside real animals.

 

The mix of real and mythical in temple art means one ambiguous figure is not entirely out of place. 

 

Notably, the scholarly consensus does not conclude definitively which specific animal (if any) the Ta Prohm creature is.

 

There is no firm academic consensus, since archaeologists largely agree only that a non-dinosaur explanation is far more credible.

 

The carving has attracted little serious research in professional circles, perhaps because its mystery is propelled more by internet speculation than by archaeological importance.


Is it real, or a hoax?

One lingering question is whether the Ta Prohm “dinosaur” carving is truly an original 12th-century artifact or a modern alteration.

 

Early on, skeptics noted that the carving looks cleaner and less weathered than surrounding reliefs, which have led to rumors that it was a contemporary hoax: perhaps created as a prank by someone during recent restoration work or by a film crew visiting the temple.

 

However, a closer examination of the evidence strongly favors the carving’s authenticity.

 

Crucially, references to the “stegosaur” relief appeared in the books mentioned earlier by Jacques and Freeman, which clearly illustrate and discuss the carving.

 

This means the carving was known and photographed at least a few years prior to any major Hollywood excursions to Ta Prohm.

 

Moreover, the French archaeological teams that managed Angkor’s temples would likely have noticed a fresh carving had one suddenly appeared on a prominent doorway. 

Experts who have inspected the site report that the depth and style of the carving are consistent with other Khmer-era work.

 

Although its surface patina is lighter, there are remnants of weathering and lichen that indicate it is not brand new.

 

The lighter appearance could be the result of cleaning, since visitors often touch or make casts of carvings, that tend to wear them down, rather than an indicator of recent origin.

 

Finally, Ta Prohm has undergone minimal modern restoration, so the likelihood of any new carving being added by conservators is very low.

 

In the absence of any concrete evidence of a hoax, scholars generally accept that the carving was part of the original temple decoration or added in historical times (perhaps during a later phase of the temple’s use), not a product of modern mischief.

 

The mystery, therefore, lies in interpretation rather than authenticity: the carving is genuine, but what it represents is up for debate.