Monge-Nájera, J. (2020). Evaluation of the hypothesis of the Monster of Troy vase as the earliest artistic record of a vertebrate fossil. Uniciencia, 34(1), 147-151. https://doi.org/10.15359/ru.34-1.9
Monge-Nájera, J. (2020). Evaluation of the hypothesis of the Monster of Troy vase as the earliest artistic record of a vertebrate fossil. Uniciencia, 34(1), 147-151. https://doi.org/10.15359/ru.34-1.9
Monge-Nájera, J. (2020). Evaluation of the hypothesis of the Monster of Troy vase as the earliest artistic record of a vertebrate fossil. Uniciencia, 34(1), 147-151. https://doi.org/10.15359/ru.34-1.9
Monge-Nájera, J. (2020). Evaluation of the hypothesis of the Monster of Troy vase as the earliest artistic record of a vertebrate fossil. Uniciencia, 34(1), 147-151. https://doi.org/10.15359/ru.34-1.9
Abstract
It has been proposed that the Monster of Troy, depicted in a 6th Century BC Corinthian vase, is the earliest artistic record of a vertebrate fossil, possibly a Miocene giraffe (Samotherium sp.). I analyzed the giraffe hypothesis under four approaches: a double-blind random design in which 78 biologists compared the vase skull with Samotherium and several reptiles; an informed survey of 30 students who critically assessed the hypothesis; a computerized image comparison; and a morphological comparison. All of them rejected the giraffe hypothesis. Eye and teeth types unambiguously discard a fossil or living mammal as the model, which more probably was an extant carnivorous reptile.
Keywords
monster of troy; archaeology; Corinthian vase; fossil; Samotherium
Subject
Social Sciences, Anthropology
Copyright:
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