U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said dinosaurs used to be called “by their biblical name … dragons.”

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is an occasional target for fabricated social media posts relaying things she didn’t say. We’ve previously fact-checked claims that Greene said suspect things about “flimsy circumstantial evidence” in the Jan. 6 investigation, Jesus Christ and bullets, and oxygen supplies on the ill-fated Titanic submersible. 

These posts were altered, and so was a supposed X post from Greene that recently resurfaced online.

“Dinosaurs is a relatively young word that, if I recall correctly, started to gain use in the 1800’s,” the post says. “Before that, they called them by their biblical name …Dragons. Some of the bones displayed are real, but others are know forgeries. The land dragons were killed out a couple thousand years ago (maybe a few still hidden somewhere?), but ocean dragons still exist.”

A June 6 Threads post sharing this image of what looks like an X post from Greene said: “Someone must have told her this, somewhere. She doesn’t read. Is this what they teach in Georgia schools? Church?”

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

(Screengrab from Threads)

We asked Nick Dyer, Greene’s deputy chief of staff, about the post but didn’t immediately hear back. He told Reuters in 2023 that the post was fake. 

We found no evidence on Greene’s X accounts that she ever posted about the origins of dragons and dinosaurs, nor did we discover any news reports commenting on such remarks. 

The image did appear on a meme site and Reddit, where it was clearly marked “satire/fake tweet.”

We rate this post Pants on Fire!