Ta Prohm is a Buddhist temple complex in Ankhor, the ancient capital of the Kmer Empire in what is now Cambodia. It was built in the 12th century and flourished until the 15th century, when it was abandoned. The buildings of Ta Prohm feature many reliefs carved in stone that depict people, animals, deities, and mythological creatures. One of these carvings, shown above, appears to be of a stegosaurus!
Well, a stegosaurus is what it looks like to modern eyes, due to the row of plates that grow out of the animal's back. But is this a case of seeing something that isn't there? The head is too large for a stegosaurus, and it doesn't have a thagomizer. There has been plenty of speculation about what the artist meant to portray hundreds of years ago. Is there a mythological animal that looked like this? Did the Kmer people reconstruct fossils long before Western scientists? Some see it as proof that humans and dinosaurs existed together. Read about the Ta Prohm stegosaurus at Amusing Planet. The last picture in the article will make it clear why the carving looks the way it does.
(Image credit: Harald Hoyer)