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Year: 1853 Scientist: Sir Richard Owen Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (engraving of reconstructions) Originally appeared in: Crystal Palace Park, London Now appears in: The Reign of the Dinosaurs by Jean-Guy Michard, Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World by Martin J.S. Rudwick and Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs by Dennis R. Dean Sir Richard Owen, who originally proposed the term Dinosauria, personally supervised the sculpture of these beasts. When the sculptures were complete, he then invited 20 dignitaries to a private viewing where they dined in the belly of a reconstructed Iguanodon. Gideon Mantell, who discovered and named this dinosaur, had been invited to participate in the reconstruction, but withdrew from the project because he disliked the idea of life-size models, and perhaps disliked Richard Owen even more. (As any eight-year-old can tell you, this Iguanodon reconstruction had some mistakes. The horn on its snout was later determined to be a specialized toe, the animal was later found to be primarily bipedal, and the tail wasn't droopy.) | |
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Year: 1853 Scientist: Sir Richard Owen Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (engraving of reconstructions) Originally appeared in: Crystal Palace Park, London Now appears in: Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World by Martin J.S. Rudwick Another offering from the Owen-Hawkins team included this depiction of "giant lizards and pterosauria." Because the earliest dinosaur fossils were fragmentary and vaguely resembled modern lizards, 19th-century paleontologists initially thought of them as big lizards. Yet Hawkins's "lizards" — like the Iguanodon reconstructions — have more of a mammalian pose, standing on four sturdy legs. Owen didn't accept evolution and preferred to show dinosaurs (the dominant life forms of the Mesozoic) resembling the dominant life forms of modern times. That would be mammals. | |
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Year: 1854 Scientist: Sir Richard Owen Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (engraving of reconstructions) Originally appeared in: "Diagram of the Geological Restorations at the Crystal Palace" Now appears in: Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World by Martin J.S. Rudwick Waterhouse Hawkins drew this diagram for a lecture he delivered to the Society of Arts in London, and the picture mapped the planned placement of the ancient reptiles in Crystal Palace Park. The animals were arranged in chronological order — oldest to newest shown from right to left — matched with the rock layers in which their fossils had been found: New Red Sandstone (associated with the Triassic), and Lias and Oolite (associated with the Jurassic). | |
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Year: 1833 Scientist: Gideon Mantell Artist: George Scharf Originally appeared as: "Reptiles restored, the remains of which are to be found in a fossil state in Tilgate Forest, Sussex" (painting) Now appears in: The Dragon Seekers by Christopher McGowan and Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs by Dennis R. Dean Gideon Mantell rightly surmised that some strange fossil teeth he found belonged to an herbivorous reptile. When he saw teeth from an iguana, he wrongly surmised that the ancient reptile was simply a giant version of the modern lizard. At the time of this depiction, Mantell had little reason to think otherwise, but he revised his Iguanodon reconstructions considerably years later, after finding more fossil evidence. | |
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Year: 1678 Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher Originally published in: Mundus Subterraneus Now appears in: Fossils: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by Yvette Gayrard-Valy In his book about the subterranean world, the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher recounted the story of a great dragon slayer who succeeded in killing one of the dangerous beasts near a Swiss village. He also described the living habits of dragons, namely dwelling in underground caves and caverns. (Science historian Paula Findlen described Kircher as "perhaps the last naturalist to believe passionately in the reality of any papal dragon he saw.") This picture closely resembles an earlier illustration produced by a member of the scholarly Italian academy known as the Linceans. Although Western civilization largely abhorred dragons, Eastern cultures took a different view. "Dragon" bones, teeth and horns were used as a panacea by Chinese apothecaries. Dragon parts were believed to cure ailments of the heart and liver, as well as constipation, nightmares and epilepsy. Chinese apothecaries proved invaluable to fossil hunters in later centuries by showing them fossil sites. | |
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Year: 1678 Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher Originally published in: Mundus Subterraneus Now appears in: Athanasius Kircher by Joscelyn Godwin Kircher also included in Mundus Subterraneus this "small" dragon said to be found during the time of Pope Gregory XIII, who died in 1585. The creature was kept in the collection of the naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi, a cousin of the newly elected pope. Unlike some of Kircher's other dragon pictures, this one lacks wings. | |
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Year: 1640 Scientist/artist: Ulisse Aldrovandi Originally published in: Liber Serpentium et Draconum Now appears in: Amazing Rare Things by Attenborough, Owens, Clayton and Alexandratos Aldrovandi did more than collect alleged dragon carcasses, he also published descriptions of them, complete with illustrations. Europeans of Aldrovandi's time believed in several different kinds of dragons, some without legs, some with two legs, some with four legs, even some with eight legs. No one less than Leonardo da Vinci gave serious consideration to how and where a dragon's wings would attach. | |
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Year: 1678 Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher Originally published in: Mundus Subterraneus Now appears in: Dragons, Unicorns, and Sea Serpents by Charles Gould Though the prospect of a dragon usually frightened Europeans, that wasn't always the case. Kircher relayed the story of a man from Lucerne who fell into a cavern while he traveled across Mount Pilate. The cavern had no exit and two dragons. Luckily they left the man alone. After six months, during which he apparently lived on nothing but water, he noticed the dragons fixing to fly away, and attached himself to one dragon's tail, hitching a ride home. After surviving six months of cohabitation with dragons, he dropped dead from resuming his regular diet. Dragons weren't the problem; dairy was. | |
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Year: 1678 Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher Originally published in: Mundus Subterraneus Now appears in: Dragons, Unicorns, and Sea Serpents by Charles Gould Kircher showed yet another dragon, the Dragon of Drachenfeldt, fighting a knight in an underground cavern. This long-necked, bat-winged, donkey-eared, snake-tailed beast looks poised to do some very nasty damage to the knight's ankles. | |
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Year: 1898 Scientist: William Harlow Reed Originally published in: New York Journal and Advertiser Now appears in: Bone Wars by Tom Rea The caption for the top image read, "How the Brontosaurus Giganteus Would Look If it Were Alive and Should Try to Peep into the Eleventh Story of the New York Life Building." The speck under the bottom dinosaur was intended to be a man, meaning this dinosaur's skull would measure an unlikely 3 feet tall. This "Most Colossal Animal Ever on Earth Just Found Out West" was inspired by William Harlow Reed's find of a single sauropod femur. Expecting to find more of the animal, Reed returned to the site with other collectors, but after luckless prospecting, he had to admit that the femur was all there was. Reed was generally a talented collector, but he often raised false hopes about what he could find. He played cards with the University of Wyoming and the Carnegie Museum to see which institution would offer him higher pay. And while collecting fossils for O.C. Marsh, Reed had no qualms about smashing the bones he couldn't collect just to keep them from Cope's collectors. | |
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Year: 1883 Scientist/artist: A. Demarly Originally published in: La Création naturelle et les êtres vivants Now appears in: The Reign of the Dinosaurs by Jean-Guy Michard Another depiction of Iguanodon, also with a horn on its snout, shows the animal in a lizard-like pose. The same pose is applied to Megalosaurus. Because dinosaur skeletons were not fully understood, paleontologists of the time modeled the extinct reptiles after those still living. | |
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Year: 1636 Scientist/artist: Antonio Tempesta Originally published in: Collection of Quadrupeds Now appears in: The Reign of the Dinosaurs by Jean-Guy Michard These creatures look pretty odd today, but these depictions were much more plausible than what was commonly seen at the time. At least they're not fire-breathing dragons! The bottom illustration is of a crocodile. | |
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Year: c. 1791 Scientist/artist: William Bartram Originally appeared in: Travels Now appears in: Voyages of Discovery by Tony Rice © The Natural History Museum, London Eighteenth-century naturalist Bartram wrote of Florida alligators: "They force the water out of their throat which falls from their mouth like a Cataract and a steam or vapour from their Nostrals like smoke." Bartram had a fascination not just for alligagors, but also venomous snakes. | |
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Year: 1843 Scientist/artist: E. Newman Originally published in: "Note on the Pterodactyle Tribe Considered as Marsupial Bats" in The Zoologist Now appears in: "The Case of the Bat-winged Pterosaur" by Kevin Padian in Dinosaurs Past and Present: Volume II Pterosaurs were contemporaries of dinosaurs. They were not birds, bats or amphibians, but 19th-century artists depicted them as every one of those things. Although Georges Cuvier accurately identified pterosaurs as flying reptiles in 1812, his observations were largely ignored in favor of more fanciful restorations, such as this rat-eared, furry creature. | |
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Year: 1842 Scientist: George Richardson Artist: John Martin Originally published in: Geology for Beginners Now appears in: Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World by Martin J.S. Rudwick According to 19th-century artist John Martin, dinosaurs spent much of their lives engaged in belching contests. Martin, an exceptionally talented artist whose paintings on biblical and classical subjects include The Fall of Babylon, Belshazzar's Feast and Deluge, later turned his efforts to scientific subjects. Unfortunately, he never let the facts get in the way of a good picture. Martin's contemporaries certainly lacked his sense of drama. Then again, he lacked their sense of accuracy. | |
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Year: 1851 Scientist: Franz Unger Artist: Josef Kuwasseg Originally published in: The Primitive World in Its Different Period of Formation Now appears in: Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World by Martin J.S. Rudwick This image shows a lush Cretaceous landscape, and provides another example of Gideon Mantell's iguanodons — again looking like giant lizards, again with their horns misplaced — but likely showing an event that must have happened: boys fighting over a girl. | |
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Year: 1837 Scientist/artist: William Buckland Originally published in: Geology and Minerology Considered with Reference to Natural Theology Now appears in: Making Modern Science by Bowler and Morus Part of the Bridgewater Treatise project, Buckland's book was aimed at reconciling the newest discoveries in geology with religion. In fact, these winsome creatures were part of a larger diagram placing fossil organisms in their geologic context, and not a bad job for the time, except that they look a bit like dragons. | |
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Year: c. 1870 Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins Originally appeared in: Museum of Natural History, Princeton University Now appears in: Dinosaurs Past and Present: Volume I Though paleontologists had given up the image of dinosaurs as oversized lizards decades earlier, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins persisted in depicting them as such in this painting, titled "Jurassic Life of Europe," produced around 1870. | |
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Year: 1868 Scientists: Joseph Leidy and E.D. Cope Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins Originally appeared in: Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia Now appears in: Joseph Leidy: The Last Man Who Knew Everything by Leonard Warren Dinosaurs didn't generally need to hang onto trees for support, but in all fairness, this was a pretty good articulation — and the first relatively complete dinosaur skeleton known to science. (Unfortunately, the skull was missing. Hawkins, pictured standing under the skeleton, mocked up a giant iguana skull, and painted it green for this display.) Although the formidable comparative anatomist Sir Richard Owen maintained that dinosaurs walked on all fours, Joseph Leidy realized that the small size of the hadrosaur's forelimbs suggested that it was bipedal. This articulation, now widely accepted, lent credence to T.H. Huxley's theory that birds evolved from dinosaurs. | |
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Year: 1868 Scientist/artist: E.D. Cope Originally published in: "The Fossil Reptiles of New Jersey" Now appears in: The Dinosaur Papers edited by Weishampel and White After E.D. Cope proudly unveiled a new plesiosaur, Elasmosaurus, his nemesis O.C. Marsh pointed out that Cope had mounted the skull on the wrong end. Elasmosaurus had a long, skinny neck, not a long, whip-like tail. The short-necked, long-tailed version is illustrated here. Standing in a kangaroo-like stance is Cope's first dinosaur discovery, Laelaps. The dinosaur didn't likely support itself on its tail, but the articulation is pretty accurate. Unfortunately for Cope, the name didn't stick; it had already been used to name a spider. Again, Marsh had the last laugh; he named the dinosaur Dryptosaurus in 1877. | |
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Year: c. 310 Originally appeared in: Piazza Armerina, Sicily Now appears in: The First Fossil Hunters by Adrienne Mayor (Photo by Barbara Mayor) In the seventh century B.C., ancient Greeks made contact with Saka-Scythian nomads who prospected for gold in the Gobi Desert. One of the legends that the Greeks gleaned from this contact was of the griffin — a lion-sized, four-legged, winged animal with a "cruel sharp beak" — that ferociously guarded its hoard of gold. (A more cautious account suggested that griffins didn't guard gold but simply lived near it, and carefully protected their young from all intruders.) This Roman mosaic shows a griffin drawn to a trap whose unfortunate bait is a man. Where did this legend come from? Twentieth-century excavations in the Gobi have unearthed Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus skeletons, both beaked dinosaurs, from the same regions where the nomads prospected. It's quite possible that gold seekers found these fossils eroding out of the desert sands and, making astute observations about their skeletal structures, speculated on the appearance of the live animal. If so, their guesses about griffins protecting their young proved correct — a 21st-century find in Liaoning, China revealed an adult Psittacosaurus apparently guarding 34 juveniles. | |
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Year: 1673 Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher Originally published in: Arca Noë Now appears in: Athanasius Kircher by Joscelyn Godwin This Baroque depiction of a griffin (or gryphon) appeared in Arca Noë (Noah's Ark). The book was dedicated to Charles II of Spain, who was just 12 years old at the time. Among mythical beasts like griffins, mermaids and unicorns, Kircher included more pedestrian animals like elephants, lions and dogs. Kircher actually harbored doubts about the existence of griffins, but he had heard reports of them from China. | |
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Century: 14th Originally appeared in: Statuto e Registro dei Cambiavalute (Rule and Register of Currency Exchange) Perugia Now appears in: Nature and Its Symbols by Lucia Impelluso and Stephen Sartarelli Griffins weren't considered all bad. In fact, their impressive combination of characteristics (eagle-like strength and lion-like vigilance) made them attractive as mascots, particularly for those who managed money. Feet firmly planted on a treasure chest, this griffin is clearly doing its job. | |
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Year: 1617 Scientist/artist: Michael Maier Originally published in: Atlanta Fugiens Now appears in: The Body of the Artisan by Pamela H. Smith This picture of a salamander in fire reflected the common belief that the animals were unharmed by fire, or could be reborn within it. | |
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Year: c. 1720 Scientist/artist: Henri Abraham Chatelain Originally published in: Decorative Images of People and Animals, with a Map of Southern Africa This picture shows a "Grand Lezard du Cap" from southern Africa. Although fanciful, this frilly, tense creature is not too far-fetched. Other animals pictured in Chatelain's map looked like real animals, including zebras, a rhino, and a chameleon. | |
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Year: 1497 Originally published in: Hortus Sanitatis Now appears in: Mysteries of the Middle Ages by Thomas Cahill and The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams Among the objects believed to cure disease were "stones" from the bodies of animals, including draconites, taken from the head of a dragon. Hortus Sanitatis, which listed the valued stones, included this woodcut of a man slaying a diminutive beast. One might expect that draconites, coming from an animal that didn't actually exist, would be prized more than something from an animal as pedestrian as a mountain goat, but mountain goats won. | |
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Year: 1593 Scientist/artist: Adam Lonitzer Originally published in: Herbal Now appears in: "Wonderful Secrets of Nature" by Kathleen Crowther-Heyck in Isis June 2003 issue Both arguably very distant relatives of dinosaurs, storks and snakes featured in Renaissance and Reformation literature that combined a little observation with heavy doses of moralizing. Lonitzer's book pointed out the multifaceted utility of these birds. For one, storks would toss a baby bird out of the nest once a year "so that the masters of the place under which they nest and breed may have the feathers as a tribute and tax, or as a tithe." Even better, storks hated snakes, and therefore kept them away from us. As if snakes weren't loathsome enough already, this little snake sported a crest on its head, reminiscent of the proud peacock. Nobody should forget, Lonitzer's readers knew, who tempted Eve into eating that apple. | |
Narrative text and graphic design © by Michon Scott - Updated May 3, 2008