FIDDLER CRABS IN THE GRAND CANYON?

For a very long time Creationist fringies have been desperately trying to prove that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. In 1980 Beierle’s book “Man, Dinosaur, and History” identified this petroglyph from a canyon wall on the Havasupai Reservation in Arizona as a dinosaur proving that people must have coexisted with dinosaurs in order to have seen one to make the picture of.

Original Fig.99, p.84, from Beierle, Man, Dinosaur and History, 1980, 

 photograph Ed Natziger.

Retouched for clarity, Fig.99, p.84, from Beierle, Man, Dinosaur and History, 1980, 

 photograph Ed Natziger.

Retouched by Peter Faris, 4/1/2022.

Beierle’s caption for his figure 99 states “Photo by Ed Nafziger, science teacher from Kent, Washington. Believed to be a dinosaur carved on the canyon walls of Havasupai Indian Reservation in Arizona.” (Beierle 1980:84) And on the next page Beierle further explained “Carvings on the canyon walls of the Havasupai Indian Reservation located in northwest Arizona picture not only modern-day animals but animals that appear to be dinosaurs. The Havasupai Indians have said that these canyon wall carvings were not made by them, but were already on the walls when their ancestors arrived.” (Beierle 1980:85)

 

Ink drawing of so-called dinosaur petroglyph. Image from Phil Senter.

Then in 2012 Phil Senter totally debunked that nonsense. “Bighorn sheep in most southwestern rock art are drawn with a distinct neck and with the horns obviously arising from the head (Figure 6), whereas in HD2 the horns seem to arise directly from a neck that is barely there. However, bighorn sheep drawn with horns directly arising from a neck that is just barely there are characteristic of southwestern rock art of the late Pueblo III period (Turner, 1971). Alternately, it is possible that the long ‘horns’ are ears, and that the animal is a rabbit. Either way, these two possibilities show that there is no need to invoke a dinosaur to explain this petroglyph. Also, the petroglyph does not resemble any specific, known kind of dinosaur.” (Senter 2012:8)

 

Male fiddler crab. Internet file, public domain.

Now I have a great deal of respect, even admiration, for Phil Senter, and I would hate to be seen as attacking him in any way, but Phil, you are just wrong. Not as wrong as Beierle to be sure, his identification is 65 million years off base, while yours at least is in the correct time frame. No, your error is just in your designation of the creature that Beierle so embarrassingly misidentified as a rabbit or desert bighorn sheep. This petroglyph from the Havasupai Reservation in Havasu Canyon at the Grand Canyon is very obviously a picture of a Fiddler Crab.

Male fiddler crabs display with their one enlarged claw, called a cheliped, for territorial retention, mating display, and, rarely, for fighting. Now you ask “how could a fiddler crab be there on the Havasupai Reservation in Havasu Canyon at the Grand Canyon?”  There are a couple of possibilities here: 1. There might well be an undiscovered species of large freshwater Fiddler Crab living there in the Colorado River and its tributaries, or 2. It is known the Native Americans of the southwest highly prized seashells and a Fiddler Crab shell might have been traded here from the Baja and was so highly prized that it was portrayed as the petroglyph in question.

Map of Grand Canyon and Supai. Internet file, public domain.

Either of these possibilities is actually very easy to picture as a possibility. I can see a happy group of residents in Supai sitting around a fire with a small dish of melted butter chowing down on cracked crab to celebrate this April Fool’s Day.

NOTE: Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Beierle, F.P., 1980. Man, Dinosaur, and History, Perfect Printing, Prosser, Washington.

Senter, Phil, 2012, More ‘dinosaur’ and ‘pterosaur’ rock art that isn’t, Palaeontologia Electronica, Vol. 15, Issue 2:22A, 14p:palaeo-electronica.org/content/2021-issue-2-articles/275-rock-art-dinosaurs