Marjorie Taylor Greene post about dinosaurs, dragons and the Bible is fabricated | Fact check
The claim: Image shows Marjorie Taylor Greene post saying dinosaurs were called dragons in the Bible
A June 5 Threads post (direct link, archive link) appears to show a screenshot of a social media post from Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
“Dinosaurs is a relatively young word that, if I recall correctly, started to gain use in the 1800’s. Before that, they called them by their biblical name… Dragons,” reads the supposed post from X, formerly Twitter. “Some of the bones displayed are real, but others are know (sic) forgeries. The land dragons were killed out a couple thousand years ago – maybe a few still hidden somewhere? – but ocean dragons still exist.”
The post was liked 900 times in four days. Other versions of the post were widely shared on X.
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The fabricated post originated as satire and has been circulating online for more than a year. Greene's deputy chief of staff has said Greene didn't make any such post.
Social media ‘post’ has been in circulation for more than a year
There are no reputable reports of such a post coming from Greene, and Nick Dyer, Greene’s deputy chief of staff, told Reuters in March 2023 that no such post was published. Dyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Paste BN.
The fabricated image is more than a year old. The earliest version of this claim appears to have come from a Reddit post in February 2023 that was labeled as satire.
It's an example of what could be called "stolen satire," where stories or posts that are created as satire and presented that way originally are reposted in a way that makes them appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, as was the case here.
While the post is a fabrication, the word “dinosaur” does come from the 1800s. Experts previously told Paste BN that fossils were discovered as early as 1677, but the word itself was introduced by British biologist and paleontologist Richard Owen in the 1840s as “Dinosauria.”
Fact check: Post misleads on photo of Marjorie Taylor Greene in a mask. It's from 2021
Paste BN reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
Our fact-check sources:
- Reuters, March 1, 2023, Marjorie Taylor Greene tweet referring to dinosaurs as dragons is fabricated
- r/WhitePeopleTwitter, accessed June 7, Reddit post
- BBC News, Feb. 26, 2015, Sir Richard Owen: The man who invented the dinosaur
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