H

Ross, chaplain to Charles I, in turn upheld classical and scriptural authority against the new science in Arcana Microcosmi (1652) and vigorously defended “ancient” writings about the griffin. Skeptics explained the griffin as a misunderstanding of some other animal such as a large bird, like the eagle, while the nineteenth-century antiquary John Timbs, in Arcana of Science and Art (1828-38), attributed the griffin to a misunderstanding of the South American tapir. Griffins’ eggs and claws, in reality ostrich eggs and exotic animal horns, are found in collections of medieval and Renaissance curiosities. More recently, the classical scholar Adrienne Mayor suggested that dinosaur fossils from central Asia gave rise to stories about griffins as guardians of gold treasure. She points out in The First Fossil Hunters (2000) that fossils are frequently associated with gold-bearing ores, and that the living dinosaurs laid eggs in nests and had beaked faces.