Dragons, giants, monsters, that sort of thing. They weren't entirely wrong.

Pretty sure they used to think elephant skulls were cyclops' skulls...

The earliest known english-language account of a dinosaur bone is in Robert Plot’s 1677 The natural history of Oxford-shire: being an essay toward the natural history of England. This is how he explains what we now know as a megalosaurus thighbone:

There happily came to Oxford while I was writing of this, a living Elephant to be shown publickly at the ACT, An. 1676, with whose Bones . I compared ours; and found those of the Elephant not only of a different Shape, but also incomparably different to ours, though the Beast were very young and not half grown. If then they are neither the Bones of Horses, Oxen, nor Elephants, as I am strongly persuaded they are not . It remains, that (notwithstanding their extravagant Magnitude) they must have been the bones of Men or Women: Nor doth any thing hinder but they may have been so, provided it be clearly made out, that there have been Men and Women of proportionable Stature in all Ages of the World, down even to our own Days

The whole account is pretty interesting. He speculates about the origin of the bones and their medicinal uses and discusses the particulars of a few giants.

Dragons

Specific theologies believe dinosaur bones were planted in the earth by satan to affront God.

I would assume it's along the lines of "hey I found something....."

Followed by "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT???"

[off topic]

Fun historical novel set just after the death of Alexander the Great.

The gryphon's Skull by Harry Turtledove.

Two peace loving traders just want to travel the Med and make a little money, but things keep happening. And BTW, they've found a gryphon's skull.

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-gryphon-s-skull-harry-turtledove/e21a50075c822e97

fossils aren't super easy to find and if you saw one you would think it just a rock. Not really sure how much is found above ground to. I mean if it looked immpressive enough maybe you sell it to a freak show or circus which I think something like them have been around for a long time.

Our Sweet Lord was practicing creature design in hot lava (I kid you not!)

I have to think they weren't particularly common. If I were completely ignorant and happened to stumble across a giant fossilized femur sticking out if a rock or at some sort of traveling circus, I'd probably guess giant. If I were somewhat familiar with living creatures I'd probably guess elephant/mammoth.

I was under the impression the some Christians thought they were proof that giants existed, a la David and Goliath.

@LadyButterfly@reddthat.com @nostupidquestions@lemmy.worldThere's an eccentric hypothesis I thought of: maybe people used the fossils alongside the surrounding stones for buildings, without ever noticing the fossil. This makes me wonder how many ancient constructions, from simple huts all the way to entire castles and fortresses, contain fossils as stones. And this doesn't even seem to be limited to fossils: if we jump to Neolithic onwards, then fast-forward all the way to contemporaneity, some of the artifacts from back then (e.g. figurines such as Venus figurines, clay tablets, vases, papyri, petroglyphs, etc) likely ended up as part of buildings. Maybe those artifacts ended up unwillingly torn apart and ground by heavy machinery (e.g. backhoes, other earthmoving machinery, mining machinery and drilling machinery for petroleum wells, although these often involves prospecting, etc). The artifact doesn't even need to be that old: I once saw a news story about someone who used a "hammer" for decades before discovering it was actually a WWII grenade.