In 1945 Waldemar Julsrud, a German immigrant and knowledgeable archeologist, discovered clay figurines buried at the foot of El Toro Mountain on the outskirts of Acambaro, Guanajuato, Mexico. Eventually over 33,000 ceramic figurines were found near El Toro as well as Chivo Mountain on the other side of town. Similar artifacts found in the area are identified with the Pre-classical Chupicuaro Culture (800 BC to 200 AD).

The authenticity of Julsrud find was challenged because the huge collection included dinosaurs. Many archeologists believe dinosaurs have been extinct for the past 65 million years and man knowledge of them has been limited to the past 200 years. If this is true, man could not possibly have seen and modeled them 2,500 years ago.

During the years 1945 to 1946,Carlos Perea was Director of Archeology, Acambaro zone, for the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. In a recorded interview he described Julsrud excavations as unauthorized, as were many similar discoveries made by local farmers, but he had no doubt that the finds were authentic. He acknowledged that he examined the figurines, including dinosaurs, from many different sites. He was present when official excavations were conducted by the National Museum and the American Museum of Natural History. They found many figurines, including dinosaurs, which he described in detail.

In 1954 the Mexican government sent four well known archeologists to investigate. A different but nearby site was selected and a meticulous excavation was begun. Six feet down they found numerous examples of similar figurines and concluded that Julsrud find was authentic. However, three weeks later their report declared the collection to be a fraud because of the fantastic representation of man and dinosaur together.

In 1990 an investigation was conducted by Neal Steedy, an independent archeologist who's livelihood depends on contract work from the Mexican government. He arbitrarily selected an excavation site considerably removed from the Julsrud site. Chards were found but no figurines. He commissioned radiocarbon tests for samples from the Julsrud Collection which produced a range of dates from 4000 to 1500 years ago. Then he decided to ignore the results because he claimed the figurines were too soft to last more than 20 years in the ground. He also ignored the fact that many of the acknowledged Chupicuaro pieces are of the same consistency and they survived just fine. Of course, some pieces in the Julsrud collection are beautifully fired. Steedy's effort does more to support Julsrud collection than to refute it. He effectively demonstrates the determination of the establishment to defend evolutionary dogma in the face of the devastating implications of this truly significant find.

Initial report

by Dr Dennis Swift Ph.D.

Waldemar Juisrud, a German hardware merchant in Acambaro, Mexico, was riding his horse on the lower slope of El Toro (The Bull) Mountain on a sunny morning in July, 1944. Suddenly he spotted some partially exposed hewn stones and a ceramic object half buried in the dirt.

Waldemar dismounted and dug out of the ground the hewn stones as well as a few ceramic pieces. Juisrud, who was archaeologically astute, immediately realized that these ceramic pieces were unlike anything that he had seen. He was familiar with Tarascan, Aztec, Toltec, Mayan, Chupicauro, Inca and pre-Incan Indian civilizations. The objects he held in his hand were distinctively different than any other known Indian culture.

Waldemar in 1923 was co-discoverer with Padre Fray Jose Marie Martinez of the Chupicauro culture at a site just eight miles away. When a few ceramic fragments were found at Chupicauro, Julsrud hired diggers to excavate. This discovery brought world wide attention from archaeologists who at first mistakenly defined them as Tarascan, but later they were correctly identified as a whole New Indian culture -the Chupicauro. The Chupicauro civilization flourished from about 500 BC to 500 AD, roughly a thousand years before the Tarascan.

Julsrud at age sixty-nine was on the brink of making a discovery that may prove to be the greatest archaeological discovery ever made. Waldemar hired a Mexican farmer, Odilon Tinajero, to dig in the area where the ceramic figurines were found and bring him any other similar objects. Soon Tinajero had a wheelbarrow full of ceramic pottery that had been excavated on El Toro Mountain.

Tinajero was very careful with the excavation process so as not to break the pieces, and the broken ones were cemented together before being brought to Julsrud.

Among the thousands of artifacts excavated were items that turned Julsrud's mansion into "the museum that scared scientists." Sculpted in various colors of clay were figurines of dinosaurs, various races of people Eskimos, Asians, Africans, bearded Caucasians, Mongols, Polynesians, and objects that had cultural connections with the Egyptians, Sumerians as well as others.

The objects were made of clay and stone varying in size from a few inches long to statues three feet high and dinosaur objects four to five feet long. In the collection, that now numbered over 20,000 not one object could be found to be a duplicate another. Each of the clay pieces had been individually made, without molds, skillfully sculptured, and carefully decorated. In its collection of unequaled size, dinosaur figures numbering several hundred were scientifically identified as representing many species of dinosaurs. Dinosaurs including duck billed Trachodon, Gorgosaurus, horned Monoclonius, Ornitholestes, Titanosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus Paleococincus, Diplodicus, Podokosaurus, Struthiomimos, Plesiosaur, Leviathan, Maiasaura, Rhamphorynchus, Iguanodon, Brachiosaurus, Pteranodon, Dimetrodon, Ichtyornis, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Rhynococephalia and other unknown or yet unidentified Dinosaur species.

These fantastic dinosaur figurines threaten the orthodox concepts and time scales in many fields of studies. Dr. Ivan T. Sanderson was amazed in 1955 to find that there was an accurate representation of its American dinosaur Brachiosaurus almost totally unknown at that time to the general public. Sanderson wrote about this particular Dinosaur in the Julsrud collection. "This figurine is a very fine, jet-black, polished-looking ware. It is about a foot tall. The point is it is an absolutely perfect representation of Brachiosaurus, known only from East Africa and North America. There are a number of outlines of the skeletons in the standard literature but only one fleshed out reconstruction that I have ever seen. This is exactly like it."

In the 1940s and 1950s as the Julsrud collection was amassing, the state of Guanajuato, Mexico was little explored paleontogically and archaeologically and remains so today. But here in the agriculturally rich Valley of Acambaro within the last four thousand years lived a civilization or civilizations that had an intimate "first hand knowledge" of dinosaurs.

In 1999 Dr. Dennis Swift and Dr. Don R. Patton journeyed to Acambaro about 180 miles North of Mexico City to explore its mystery personally. Soon after our arrival in Acambaro it was revealed that the Julsrud collection was locked up in storage and not available to the public. After a couple of days of negotiating with the Mayor, Secretary of Tourism and Director of the Acambaro museum permission was given to view a portion of the collection. The storage area was ceremonially unlocked by the mayor; dim light filtered through the shadows as we peered into the dusty rooms and boxes were piled to the ceilings with artifacts wrapped in newspaper and haphazardly placed in crumbling cardboard containers.

The conference room adjoining the Mayor's office was eventually offered to view the artifacts as two Mexican policemen stood guard watching us armed with AK 47 rifles and pistols. City employees scurried back and forth bringing boxes upstairs as Dr. Swift unwrapped ceramic figurines while Dr. Patton professionally photographed them.

The collection at its largest numbered 33,500 figurines including musical instruments, masks, idols, tools, utensils, statues, human faces of many different nationalities and dinosaurs. The figurines eventually took over the twelve room Julsrud mansion crammed into every corner and lining the floor until Julsrud had to sleep in the bathtub for that was the only place left.

Working at a fast pace, in a six hour period, a little more than eight hundred of the ceramic figurines were unwrapped. Fourteen boxes had been opened and emptied of their contents onto the conference table. Among the items were about seventy-five exquisite dinosaur pieces.

The authors became overnight celebrities in Acambaro being interviewed on radio and TV stations in Mexico. Three major newspapers in the state of Guanajauto made us front page headline news in Mexico. I handed out Dinosaur T-shirts to politicians and suggested we could make Acambaro a tourist attraction with Dinosaurs of Acambaro T-shirts, postcards, and a dinosaur park. People would come from around the world to see the Acambaro collection with dinosaurs.

Dr, Swift accidentally touched off a national scandal as he inquired, "How many boxes do you have in storage?" I was told there are sixty-four and then I muttered to myself, "There were once 33,500 figurines and here there can only be 5,000 to 6,000 at most left." A newspaper reporter overheard the comment and the next week the authors again became front-page news as an investigation was launched into the whereabouts of the artifacts.

Julsrud also stirred up controversy over the collection but its gathering storm on the horizon of history took several years before releasing its full fury on the scientific community. Unconfined by academic restraints or burdened by preconceived ideas, he began to speculate as thousands of figurines were unearthed all baked by the open fire method. The most startling sensational feature of the collection was dinosaurs and humans in close relationship to one another. Waldemar pondered the very real possibility that these artifacts came from a culture much older than the Olmecs, Mayans or Chupicauro.

The collection contained evidence of a culture of vast antiquity. The objects pointed to a woodland setting and that the Acambaro area was once a heavily forested area instead of a dry valley as it is today. Geologists have found that the valley was once filled by a large lake, until about five or six thousand years ago. The site of the caches of ceramic pottery objects was once the beach of the lake. Originally the objects were buried in sand. The fauna, plants, trees, flowers represented the art of this unknown civilization was that of the woodland, lakes, and forest environment.

Julsrud tried to gain the attention of the scientific community but was met with indifference and academic silence. Since archaeologists, paleontologists, historians, and anthropologists chose to ignore him, Julsrud proceeded to publish his own book in Spanish Enigmas Del Pasado. Waldemar in print theorized that the colossal collection of ceramic and stone artifacts had been buried by a people who experienced catastrophes. He conjectured that there had been period of catastrophes that had changed the face of the earth and that there must have been ancient civilizations wiped out by the catastrophes. His most radical suggestion that clashed violently with scientists was that man had existed contemporaneously with the dinosaurs.

Although there was sound evidence that Julsrud was on to something of major scientific importance, he was ridiculed by the authorities when his book was published.

Was there a precursor civilization at Acambaro during the Ice Age as geologists reckon time? In the collection are unmistakable representations of the one humped American camel of the Ice Age, Ice Age horses, as well as of animals resembling rhinoceroses of extinct species. There are many figurines of giant monkeys such as actually existed in South America in the Pleistocene.

During excavations among the figurines were found some teeth. These teeth were taken to Dr. George Gaylord Simpson in 1955, at that time America's leading paleontologist who worked at the American Museum of Natural History. He identified them as the teeth of Equus Conversidans Owen, an extinct horse of the Ice Age. In the Julsrud collection are two figurines of Equus Conversidans Owen. The image of the Ice Age horse is also engraved on ceramic pots in the collection.

In 1947, upon the publication of Julsrud's book, a few newspapers and magazines in Mexico briefly reported on the discovery. But Julsrud could not get any scientists or authorities in Mexico to come and investigate the excavation of the figurines for themselves.

The establishment scientists continued to act as if nothing of significance had happened in Acambaro that would threaten the evolutionary paradigm. Despite their efforts to downplay or explain away Julsrud's discoveries as that of an eccentric kook, the information was slowly leaking out to a wide audience that would take the Julsrud collection seriously and consider it a legitimate find.

The discoveries were now too far disseminated into the literature of the general public for scientists to intellectually suppress them with the cloak of academic silence. The professional archaeologists would have to deal with the irritating problem in Acambaro.

In 1952 Charles C. Dipeso of the Amerind Foundation felt the popular accounts circulating in the newspapers and magazines (such as Fate 3) prevailed upon him to begin an examination of the strange collection. Samples were sent and laboratory tests of them proved nothing." Dipeso thought the tests would dismiss the collection as a hoax because they would demonstrate them to be of modern manufacture.

Dipeso must have been the bionic archaeologist, handling objects at speeds that exceed those of superman's. To have achieved this Herculean feat he would have to inspect 133 artifacts per minute steadily. In reality, it would take several days to unpack the massive jumble of intact, broken, and repaired pieces from the boxes. Once the boxed pieces were disentangled and set up with those already on display in the mansion, it would take many more days to even give a cursory examination.

Charles Dipeso said that further investigation revealed that a family living in the Acambaro area made the figurines during "the winter months while their fields lie idle." Dipeso believed his family of hoaxers got their ideas from the local cinema, comic books, newspapers or books from the local library.

It appears that even Dipeso did not truly believe the Julsrud collection was a fake. Before he returned to America to write the articles denouncing the collection, Julsrud stated,. "Mr. Dipeso declared to me that he had been completely convinced of the genuineness of my discovery. He wanted to buy for his museum a certain amount of pieces of Tarascan origin." Julsrud would not sell any of the artifacts but sent Dipeso to another man who dealt in antiquities. That dealer told Dipeso that Julsrud's ceramics came from a man and his three children who lived thirty minutes outside of town near the irrigation plant of Solis. Juisrud said, "Why then didn't Dipeso go there and find out the truth? The obligation of a serious scientist is to investigate himself and not give credence to the first man who tells him something."

In the first place, it was against the archaeological code of ethics and illegal for Dipeso to be acquiring Indian artifacts to take out of the country. Secondly, the black market antiquity dealer who sold Dipeso the artifacts had obvious motivation to make sure that Dipeso didn't buy from Julsrud, so we have no difficulty understanding why the dealer made up the story of the hoaxer family.

Francisco Aguitar Sanchaz, Superintendent of the National Irrigation Plant of Solis said, "That on the basis of four years intimate knowledge of the inhabitants of the entire area and of archaeological activity there, he could positively deny that there was any such ceramic production in the vicinity." The Municipal President of Acambaro, Juan Terrazaz Carranza, issued on July 23, 1952, an official statement No.1109 refuting Dipeso's allegation.

'This Presidency under my direction ordered that an investigation be carried out in this matter, and has arrived at the conclusion that in this municipal area there does not exist any persons who makes these kinds of objects."

There are many other problems associated with Dipeso's spurious allegations. He fails to mention that the ceramic artifacts of varying clay composition and styles had been individually and not mold-made. There were not only ceramic pieces but also stone pieces.

The ceramic collection has unsurpassed variety and beauty that has won the admiration of professional artists. No peasant family could possibly make thousands and thousands of non-duplicated sculptures with such skill and artistic finesse.

The famous Earle Stanley Gardner, whose detective mysteries became the basis for the famous Perry Mason television programs, was a forensic pathologist and attorney who served as district attorney for the city of Los Angeles for over 20. Mr. Gardner examined the collection and voiced the expert opinion of an experienced prosecuting attorney when he said that if a group of fakers had made all the pieces, their style would be recognizable on the whole collection.

"Every criminal, every criminal gang has its own method of operations. Police can often identify a criminal or gang from the method of a crime. It is obvious that no one individual or group could have made the pieces."

Much of Dipeso's report was absolutely unfounded or mere conjecture. What would be the motive for faking the objects? Economically, at 12 cents a figure, for a hoaxer to manufacture the objects, to say nothing of the additional costs to bury them and then dig them up again, Tinajero, a poor Mexican farmer, could never have afforded to make 33,500 figures under these circumstances.

The collection is not only skillfully made but contains dinosaur species that only a highly educated person who had burrowed deep into the recesses of paleontological literature could have known of the rare life forms. Odilon Tinajero had neither the artistic competence or educational background to perpetuate such a hoax. Tinajero left school in the fourth grade and could barely read or write.

Acambaro is a dry, arid, and relatively treeless area, yet all the ceramic objects had been baked in open fires. This would require many truckloads of firewood which is very expensive in Acambaro. It would have been consumed consistently. The smoke rising from the fire could not have possibly gone undetected by the entire community.

Professor Ramon Rivera of Acambaro High School's history faculty launched a month long investigation, interviewing people of all ages and occupations. Professor Rivera had a vast knowledge of the history of the area and close contacts with the inhabitants of Acambaro.

Rivera filed this report,

In 1954, the storm of controversy surrounding the Julsrud collection reached such a crescendo of interest that official archaeologists of the Mexican Government decided to investigate. Dr Eduardo Noquera, director of Pre-Hispanic Monuments of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologiae Historia, was the lead investigator. Dr. Noguera was accompanied by Rafael Orellana, Ponciano Salazar, and Antonio Pompa y Pompa of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologiciae Historia, upon arrival they inspected the collection and proceeded to El Toro Hill to select undisturbed sites for excavation.

Dr. Noguera supervised the dig at a site that he and the other prominent Mexican archaeologists selected. After several hours of digging many figures were discovered. The archeologists declared that the pieces gave every sign of antiquity and of having been buried a long time ago. The figurines were dug up in the presence of a number of witnesses which included people from the local schools and members of the Chamber of Commerce. Immediately the archeologists congratulated Juisrud on his remarkable discoveries. Two of the archeologists promised to write about the discovery in a scientific journal.

Noquera realized that the dinosaur figurines posed a problem that could ruin his professional career. The archeologists simply faced a dilemma to either tell the truth, that regardless of what anybody may think they had chosen a site and dug up dinosaur figures or to hide the truth in some alternative explanation.

Noquera went back to Mexico City and three weeks later submitted a report with his subordinates that the collection must be a hoax because of the life forms involved - dinosaurs. Dr. Noquera wrote,

Julsrud was gravely disappointed that in a span of a few weeks, the archaeologists first vindicated the collection and then cleverly maneuvered to deny their own discoveries. Juisrud, undaunted by all the academic goofy dust sprinkled over the collection by rigid orthodox scientist's to make it go away, pressed on in his efforts to convince the skeptics.

Eventually, an eminent scholar arrived on the scene in Acambaro who would expose the contentions of Julsrud's opponents with a series of arguments and facts that would prove to be indisputable. In the summer of 1955 Charles Hapgood, the Professor of History and Anthropology at Keene State College of the University of New Hampshire, spent several months in Acambaro and conducted a very detailed investigation of the collection. Charles Hapgood had already distinguished himself as the author of a number of books including "Earth's Shifting Crust" (1958), "Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings" (1966), and "The Path of the Pole" (1970).

In 1968 Charles Hapgood returned to Acambaro accompanied by Earle Stanley Gardner of Perry Mason fame. Mr. Gardner was not only trained in criminology but was also an investigator of archaeological problems. He was supremely impressed with the vastness and the variety of the collection. It was quite clear that Mr. Gardner considered the fake theory completely false, outrageous and deceptive!

The radiocarbon dates of up to 4,500 B.C for Carbon on the ceramics would make the collection the oldest in the Western Hemisphere.

In 1972, Arthur Young submitted two of the figurines to Dr. Froelich Rainey, the director of the Pennsylvania Museum for Thermoluminescent Dating. The Masca lab had obtained thermoluminescent dates of up to 2,700 B.C. In a letter dated September 13, 1972, addressed to Mr. Young, Dr Rainey said:

"...Now after we have had years of experimentation both here and at the lab at Oxford, we have no doubt about the dependability of the thermoluminescent method. We may have errors of up to 5-10% in absolute dating, but we are no longer concerned about unexpected bugs that might put the whole system in doubt. I should also point out, that we were so concerned about the extraordinarily ancient dates of these figures, that Mark Han in our lab made an average of 18 runs on each one of the four samples. Hence, there is a very substantial bit of research in these particular pieces... All in all the lab stands on these dates for the Julsrud material, whatever that means in terms of archeological dating in Mexico, or in terms of 'fakes verse's authentic' pieces."

by Dr. Dennis Swift

The claim has been made that only Waldamar Julsrud's excavations ever produced the distinctive ceramic objects that make up this collection. Why haven't other excavations found Julsrud type ceramics and dinosaur figurines? In August of 1999, Dr. Dennis Swift and Dr. Don Patton ventured back to Acambaro to seek answers to such questions. By chance while having dinner at a local Acambaro restaurant we met Ernesto Narrvete Marines. In the 1970's Ernesto was commander of the Federal Police for the Celaya zone of Guanajuanto, which includes the Acambaro area. Ernesto received a tip one night in 1978 that illegal excavations were taking place on Chivo (goat) Mountain and that the artifacts were being traded for pistols, rifles, machine guns as well as other weapons on the black market. Commander Ernesto Marines, who was trained at Scotland Yard, conducted a thorough investigation. The investigation revealed that artifacts dug up on Chivo Mountain were being taken to the border at Laredo, Texas and traded for arms, which was a Federal crime.

When Ernesto apprehended Jaime Aquirre and Raul Hernandez on Chivo Countain had in their possession 3,300 Julsrud type pottery figurines. The commander catalogued the collection as evidence and told us that he personally observed nine dinosaur figurines. Ernesto drew a sketch for us of the dinosaurs he had seen in the collection. These illegally excavated artifacts were handed over to Dr. Luis Moto, Mayor of Acambaro in 1978-1979, and kept in City Hall.

While in Acambaro the authors were introduced to Dr. J. Antonio Villia Hennejon who has a medical practice in Guadalajara and Acambaro, Mexico. Dr. Herrejon personally excavated ceramic artifacts on Bull Mountain and Goat Mountain from 1950 to 1955.

Dr. Herrejon insisted that the ground he dug in was hard packed with no loose soil. This was confirmed in personal conservation with other participants in such excavations who remain in Acambaro; i.e. Porfirio Martinez Espinoseo, who accompanied us to Goat mountain and showed us where in his youth he had excavated hundreds of ceramic artifacts. Twice Dr. Herrejon accompanied Julsrud on burros to an area below Goat Mountain, near a lake. There he said on terrain that was overgrown with grass and cactus, they dug up many ceramic pottery pieces including enough dinosaur figurines to fill two bags to be carried back on a burro.

Antonio Herrejon recalled that in the 1940's and early 1950's virtually nothing was known about dinosaurs in Mexico. They had no books, pamphlets, matchbox covers, movies or other information about dinosaurs. Herrejon postulated that the only dinosaur skeleton on display in Mexico in the 1940's was that of a brontosaurus at the Chupa railroad station in Mexico City.

Dr. Herrejon was intimately aware of the details and of the immensity of the Julsrud collection (33,700 ceramic pieces). He said it was simply astonishing that not one piece was a duplicate of another. They were all individually distinct. Others who closely examined the collection have also observed this fact. Antonio commented, "If there was a fabrication who was its artist?" No single artist could make 33,700 figurines, all different in style. If there was a hoax then there must have been many artists. How could such a conspiracy be kept silent all these years? Surely someone would have known about such activities.

Dr. Swift inquired of Dr. Herrejon as to the condition of the artifacts when they were excavated. Antonio said that they were encrusted with dirt and other materials (patina). During Easter week of 1951 Antonio spent two days with Julsrud cleaning the dirt and patina off recently excavated ceramic pieces.

Herrejon and Julsrud did not realize that the absence of patina on the objects would later erupt into accusations that they could not be old or authentic. Julsrud ignorantly commenced the cleaning of all the artifacts back in the 1940's. The job was completed by Tinejero and his helpers.

However, there are many eyewitnesses who saw Julsrud's excavating of the ceramic pieces and confirm that the artifacts had patina and dirt on them.

In the process of handling of several hundred pieces of the Julsrud collection, the authors have observed pieces that still have dirt embedded in the crevices as well as some patina on the surface.