Michael Morris said:For instance, Griffons (and many other ancient mythical beasts) may have their origins in vastly misinterpreted dinosaurs.
Hmm. Or given that they're a lion/eagle cross, they may have their origins in vastly misinterpreted lions and eagles. Occam's razor and all that.
Has anyone ever thought about have neandertal *be* the orcs of their campaign? It's an interesting thought.
I've had Neanderthals as one of the races in my campaign, but not specifically as an orc replacement (at least not in the "disposable bad guys that it's OK to slaughter en masse" niche - generally I don't have that niche in my games). I've also used extinct critters as monsters - no need to go as far back as the dinosaurs, there's millions of years of cool stuff between then and now that's just close enough to known animals for players to visualize but weird enough to be interesting.
An interesting recent fictional take on Neanderthals is Robert J. Sawyer's "Neanderthal Parallax", a trilogy about contact with an alternate reality where our ancestors died out and Neanderthals rose to prominence.