The Big Sandy River (Oregon, USA) ‘Stegosaurus’ pictogram

A ‘water panther’ pictogram

Some authors cite a petroglyph from Big Sandy River (Oregon, USA), in which there is an image of what is claimed to be a stegosaurus. Indigenous tradition mentions a ‘water-panther’, an animal with a cat-like face and a saw-tooth back that inhabited streams and lakes. According to Vine Deloria, a Native American writer, there are numerous pictographs of the ‘water-panther’, warning passers-by of the danger.

The authors who quote the story do not show a reproduction of the petroglyph, making the claim impossible to evaluate. This is the sort of claim that tends to appear in lists of anomalies without authority, a technique commonly found among ‘fringe’ authors. Like so much of this material, it is simply repeated from source to source. The fear is that such fanciful stories develop into factoids. However, it is possible to find images of ‘water panthers’. As can be seen from the example reproduced here, they resemble Stegosaurs in only superficial ways.

This page was last updated on 19 August 2007
Written by Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews and James Doeser