Mythical Monsters

The core of the book is about dragons: Western, Chinese, and Japanese, although it also covers the Sea-serpent, the Unicorn, and the Chinese Phoenix. Gould hypothesized that the dragon was based on an unknown, very rare animal, a huge reptile with wings, which became extinct in historical times. He also concluded that persistent sea-serpent sightings were also due to an undiscovered surviving prehistoric marine animal. He drew on the then-emerging body of fossil evidence for prehistoric megafauna, from flying lizards to whale-sized aquatic dinosaurs. In context the proposal was not all that outrageous. Darwin had 25 years earlier proposed that humans are part of a huge web of biological relationships over vast realms of time and space. Gould leads off with a discussion of some other 'earth mysteries:' the world-wide flood myth, cultural diffusion, Atlantis, and extensive cryptozoology.