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The Acambaro figurines

One of the Acambaro figurines

In July 1945 (although some accounts say 1944), a German immigrant to Mexico, Waldemar Julsrud (1875/6-1952), a hardware merchant, discovered a number of clay figurines at the foot of El Toro Mountain on the outskirts of Acambaro, Guanajuato. Charles Hapgood (1904-1982), the historian of science from Keene College (New Hampshire, USA) who first made the impossible claims about the Piri Re’is map, also promoted claims that the figurines are genuinely ancient artefacts showing extinct animals, including dinosaurs. On the other hand, he was troubled by the near-perfect condition of what are often very delicate objects and the complete absence of any sort of patination that might have developed during centuries (or even millennia) of burial. It has been claimed that radiocarbon dates from organic materials on their surfaces are around 6,500 years old, although neither precise dates nor laboratory numbers are supplied. There is little doubt that the figurines are of recent date; thermoluminescent tests would be sufficient to establish their approximate date of manufacture. This does not prevent fringe writers from complaining that archaeologists have dismissed them as fakes without taking the trouble to examine them.

The authenticity of the artefacts has been questioned, and it has been suggested that many, if not all of them, are modern souvenirs made for the tourist industry. Even if they are genuine, there is debate about what they depict. None of the published examples really resembles any known dinosaur. Instead, it has been suggested that they are stylised representations of living reptiles of the region or are composite fantastical monsters. Thermoluminescent dating would establish whether the objects are of recent manufacture of genuinely ancient, but it has not been carried out on any of them.

This page was last updated on 7 May 2007
Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews