21 A steel cube from a mine in Austria
In the autumn of 1885, a workman named Reidl, who worked at a foundry in Schöndorf, near Vöcklabruck (Austria), founded by Isidor Braun (1801-1866) and then run by his sons, broke open a block of brown coal that had been mined at Wolfsegg. The Tertiary coal deposit in which it had been embedded is generally dated to about 60 million years ago. He found a small steel cube embedded inside it; according to the published descriptions, the cube had two rounded faces and a deep groove running around it. It measured 67 × 67 × 47 mm (2.64 × 2.64 × 1.85 inches), weighed 785 g (1.73 pounds) and had a specific gravity of 7.75. Braun’s son took it to the Heimathaus (Museum) in Vöcklabruck. During a lecture to the Naturhistorische Verein (Natural History Society) of Bonn in 1886, the mining engineer Adolf Gurlt (Professor of Geology at the University of Bonn) suggested that it was meteoritic in origin. A cast is kept in the Oberosterreichisches Landesmuseum in Linz, where the original object was exhibited from 1950 to 1958; according to Peter Kolosimo, the original is in Salisbury Museum in the UK, a clumsy error for Salzburg! In 1966-67, the object was analysed by at the Vienna Naturhistorisches Museum, using electron-beam microanalysis, which found no traces of nickel, chromium or cobalt in the iron, suggesting that it is not of meteoric origin, while the lack of sulphur shows that it is not a pyrites. Because of its low magnesium content, Dr Gero Kurat (born 1938) of the Museum and Dr Rudolf Grill (1910-1987) of the Geologische Bundesanstalt of Vienna thought it might be cast iron, the latter suggesting that objects of similar form had been used as ballast in early mining machinery. A further investigation by Hubert Mattlianer, in 1973, concluded that it had been cast using the cire perdue (lost wax) technique.
Images of the object do not show an impressive cubic artefact. Far from the artificial cube with complex features suggested by the written accounts, the photograph shows an object with an irregular shape. Considering that both the original object and a cast are said still to exist, it is curious that the photograph is almost never reproduced. On the other hand, perhaps it is not so curious: what we can see suggests that Adolf Gurlt’s opinion was a reasonable one.
22 A tyrannosaur pictogram from Hava Supai Canyon, Arizona
In
October/November 1924, a Dr Samuel Hubbard (not the well known
entomologist of the same name, 1837-1911), curator of archaeology
for the Oakland (California) Museum of Natural History and
working for the Doheny Scientific Expedition, found pictograms on
the cliff walls of Hava Supai (or Havasupai) Canyon, Arizona.
Most of the pictograms consist of human figures and well known
local fauna, including ibex, horse, deer and birds; remarkably,
though, one depiction is said to resemble a Tyrannosaurus Rex;
according to some accounts, the beast is poised ready to eat a
human, while according to others, fossilised dinosaur footprints
were found nearby, whilst it has also been claimed that the
pictograms are covered by a ferruginous patina. Some accounts
change the details. The expedition is sometimes said to have
taken place in 1894-5 (muddling an account in which E L Doheny,
who funded the expedition, first visited the Canyon) and there
are alleged quotes from Hubbard:
“Taken all in all, the proportions are good… [The dinosaur is] depicted in the attitude in which man would be most likely to see it: reared on its hind legs, balancing with the long tail, either feeding or in fighting position, possibly defending itself against a party of men.”
These sorts of claims are easy to deal with. For a start, the picture of the pictograph says a great deal. Firstly, it is reproduced without context; we are not shown other figures from the same rock-face or others from the canyon, against which it might be possible to evaluate it. Is the picture reproduced the right way up? Even allowing that it is, what does it show? There is an outline that somewhat resembles a Tyrannosaurus, but there are problems with the tail, the length of the neck and the lack of front legs. The idea that Tyrannosaurs dragged their tails along the ground may have been current in the 1920s, but it has not been believed for many years now, so if the pictogram really does show a giant meat-eating dinosaur, we need to explain why it is depicted in an incorrect position. A more economical hypothesis is that the pictogram shows something else that bears a slight resemblance to the way Tyrannosaurs were once thought to have looked. It is certainly not evidence that the artist had seen a living Tyrannosaur.