As to the fossil elephants, the ancient Japanese naturalists for a long time believed, following the explanation in the Chinese Pents'ao, that they were the skeletons of dragon but later in the Yedo period some scholars grew suspicious about its veracity. The questions of dragons had been variously discussed since 1760 till the so-called “skeletons of dragons” found in Japan were proved to be the ossil remains of elephants in 1811.
