'Since Native American art is of spiritual significance and holds significant religious content, images can also depict magical and mythical subject matter,' said Smith, who was not involved with the study. These long figures are usually accompanied by tiny 'attendants,' including people, birds and four-legged creatures, such as hoofed animals, canines, felines, badgers and bears.Īmateurs discovered the painting in 1928, and soon after talk of the 'winged monster' - a pterosaur, a Cretaceous flying reptile - arose.īut for researchers today, the painted area clearly shows separate images, not a single image of a pterosaur.īenjamin Smith, a professor of world rock art at the University of Western Australia, stressed that humans knew little about dinosaurs and other extinct animals until the 1800's, long after the Fremont culture people painted Black Dragon Canyon. Other Fremont rock paintings - known as Barrier Canyon style - show abstract humanlike figures with elongated bodies and round heads. The rock paintings belong to the agrarian Fremont culture (circa A.D. It is not a pterodactyl,' said co-lead researcher Paul Bahn, a freelance archaeologist. Now, using cutting-edge technology, researchers suggest the red paintings show five separate images, including a tall figure, a small figure, a sheep, a dog and a serpent-like figure. An article by Laura Geggel on LiveScience - Winged Monster' Rock Art Finally Deciphered - reports on the mystery surrounding the ancient rock paintings of Utah's Black Dragon Canyon.įor decades, researchers and creationists have debated whether the vibrant red pictographs are images of humans and animals, or rather, depictions of a large winged monster, possibly a pterosaur.

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