Waldemar Julsrud, 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. Julsrud, 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.

Charles Hapgood notes that "Julsrud was a shrewd businessman and he now made a deal with Tinajero that is very important for our story. He told Tinajero that he would pay him one peso (worth about 12 cents) for each complete piece he brought in." (1)

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 seared 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 of 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 paleontologically 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. Don R. Patton and myself, journeyed to Acambaro about 180 miles North of Mexico City to explore its mystery for ourselves.

Soon after our arrival in Acambaro it was revealed to us 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 we were given permission 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.

We were officially given the city's conference room 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 I 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.

In a six hour period we were able to unwrap a little more than eight hundred of the ceramic figurines. Working at a fast pace meant that the fourteen boxes had been opened and emptied of their contents onto the conference table. Among the items were about seventy-five exquisite dinosaur pieces.

There was an absolutely astonishing moment of breathless magnitude as one object was unwrapped and there before us was an Iguanodon dinosaur figurine.

In the 1940s and 1950s the Iguanodon was completely unknown. No hoaxer could have known of the Iguanodon existence much less made a model, for it wasn't until 1978 of 1979 that skeletons of adult Iguanodons were found with nests and babies. (2)

Dr. Patton and I became overnight celebrities in Acambaro being interviewed on radio and TV stations in Mexico. Three major newspapers in the state of Guanajuato 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.

I accidentally touched off a national scandal as I 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 me and the next week we once 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.

Finally in 1950 an American newspaperman, Lowel Harmer, ventured to Acambaro to inspect the collection. Harmer went to the site of El Toro mountain and photographed Julsrud and the digging while some dinosaur figurines were being extracted from under the Maquey roots in a new excavation. He reported, "Anyone would feel that these great saurians could only be created by long gone artists who knew them well." (3)

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.

William W. Russell, a Los Angeles newspaperman was soon on the scene. Russell himself photographed the excavations. Freshly dug pits produced objects, with roots entwining them. (4) The objects must have been in the ground for many years for tree roots to grow around them at a depth of five or six feet beneath the earth. Russell reported that he judged from the evidence the objects to be very old.

The discoveries were now to 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 (4)) 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.

The figurines could not be falsified merely because of the life forms representing Mesozoic reptiles. Dipeso in June of 1952 arrived in Acambaro to examine the collection owned by Julsrud. Taking no more than four hours he claimed to have viewed 32,000 items in the mansion. In fact, he asserted his examination was very precise and thorough to the extent that he detected the figurines depressions forming eyes, mouth, scales to be sharp and new. No dirt was packed in any of the crevices. (5)

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. Julsrud 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 years. 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."

Charles Dipeso insisted in his insinuations that the collection was an elaborate hoax; the diggers making pits, burying the objects, and later digging them up. Dipeso finished his 1953 report with resounding confidence, "Our investigation proved conclusively that the figurines are not prehistoric and were not made by a superior prehistoric race that associated with dinosaurs." (6)

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.

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