The Acámbaro figures are about 33,000 small ceramic figurines said to have been found by Waldemar Julsrud in July 1944 in the Mexican city of Acámbaro, Guanajuato. Some people claim the figurines look like dinosaurs and are sometimes called anachronisms because they appear to show events that should not have happened at that time. Some young-Earth creationists have used the figurines as evidence to suggest that dinosaurs and humans lived together, in an effort to challenge scientific dating methods and support a literal reading of the Genesis creation story.

However, there is no known strong proof that the Acámbaro figures are real ancient artifacts. Many people have raised questions about the reasons behind the arguments made to support their authenticity.

History

The Acámbaro figures were discovered by Waldemar Julsrud, a German immigrant and hardware merchant. Dennis Swift, a young-Earth creationist who strongly supports the figures' authenticity, said Julsrud found the figures while riding his horse. He hired a local farmer to dig up the remaining figures, paying him for each one he brought back. Eventually, the farmer and his helpers collected more than 32,000 figures. These included images of supposed dinosaurs and people from various cultures, such as Egyptians, Sumerians, and "bearded Caucasians."

Archaeologist Charles C. Di Peso worked for the Amerind Foundation, an organization focused on protecting Native American culture. Di Peso studied the figures and concluded they were not real. He found that they showed no signs of age, had no dirt inside their crevices, and had no missing pieces despite some being broken. The soil layers around the site showed the artifacts were placed in a recently dug hole filled with mixed layers from the surrounding area. Di Peso also learned that a local family had been making and selling the figures to Julsrud since 1944. These figures were likely inspired by movies shown in Acámbaro’s cinema, local newspapers, comic books, and trips to Mexico City’s Museo Nacional.

Charles Hapgood, a scientist who studied theories about Earth’s shifting poles, became one of the figures’ most well-known supporters.

Today, the figures still attract interest. They have been mentioned in some books that are not based on scientific evidence, such as Atlantis Rising by David Lewis. Another young-Earth creationist, Don Patton, has strongly supported the figures. He suggested new evidence, including the figures’ resemblance to dinosaurs shown in Robert Bakker’s book Dinosaur Heresies.

In 1970, Erle Stanley Gardner published his final travel book, Host With the Big Hat, which included a chapter about the collection. His biographer, Dorothy B. Hughes, wrote that "the story of Acámbaro may be the most important work of his archaeological studies."

Dating

Scientists have tried to determine the age of the Acámbaro figures using a method called thermoluminescence (TL) dating. Early tests, conducted when TL dating was a new technique, suggested the figures were made around 2500 BC. Later tests, however, did not support these results. In 1976, Gary W. Carriveau and Mark C. Han tested twenty Acámbaro figures using TL dating. They discovered the figures were fired at temperatures between 450 and 650 °C (842 and 1,202 °F), which did not match earlier claims that the figures had been fired at lower temperatures. However, all the samples failed a test called the "plateau test," which showed that standard high-temperature TL dating methods could not provide reliable or meaningful dates for the Acámbaro figures. Based on the level of signal regeneration in the samples, the researchers estimated the figures were fired about 30 years before 1969. This estimate, along with the idea that the artifacts were made by an unknown culture, was not accepted by archaeologists and paleontologists.