Perhaps as long as 5,000 years ago, a group of sailors found skulls belonging to a race of hideous giants whom the ancient Greeks named cyclops. Dwelling in their mythical land, entrusting the fate of their crops to their evil gods and devouring any humans they could find, these creatures terrified generations of Europeans. Today, relatives of these monsters can still be found — roaming the African savannas or the Indian jungles, or even eating peanuts from the hands of small children in city zoos. In fact, the ancient Greek sailors found elephant skulls. What they mistook for single eye sockets were the nasal openings for the elephants' trunks. Over the centuries, our understanding of mammals, both living and extinct, has improved considerably. Just the same, scientists have made some mistakes.

		Year: 1616 Author: Thomas Coryate (or Coriate) Originally published in: Thomas Coriate Traveller for the English Wits: Greeting: From the Court of the Grand Mogul, Resident at the Towne of Asmere, in Easterne India Now appears in: The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich Coryate claimed to see two unicorns in his travels to India. As astronomer and science historian Owen Gingerich has observed, this woodcut is trimmed, which suggests that the picture was actually copied from an earlier work (perhaps Conrad Gesner's). One reason unicorns held such fascination for medieval and Renaissance Europeans was that their horns, called alicorns, were thought to protect their owners from poison. Europe's royal families often acquired political power by poisoning their enemies, and some of the upper crust may not have been above testing their concoctions on their own family members.
		Year: 1486 Artist: Erhard Reuwich Originally published in: Perigrinationes ad Terram Sanctam Now appears in: The Unicorn by Nancy Hathaway Unicorn "sightings" occurred throughout the world, but the mythical creature wasn't the same in each description. Not all unicorns resembled white horses with ivory horns. The Chinese unicorn was cow-shaped and scaly, or horse-shaped but with a dragon's head. The Arabian version looked like a rhinoceros but with a more elaborate horn. Some unicorns looked like lions, some were as big as mountains, some were as small as dogs. Some sported turtle shells. Some had a combination of hooves and chicken feet. Gifted with good taste, some ate only sugarcane. This picture shows just three variations — fairly pedestrian versions compared to their exotic cousins. Larger image available
		Year: 1705 Scientist/artist: Nicolaus Witsen Originally published in: Noord en Oost Tartarye Now appears in: The Lore of the Unicorn by Odell Shepard These narwhal skull illustrations have a minor error in that the furrows run clockwise, which they apparently don't do in nature. This small mistake, however, is more than offset by the much bigger mistake the illustration corrects. The adult males of these marine mammals have ivory tusks extending from the left side of the upper jaw. These tusks, often sold as alicorns, had long been believed to be unicorn horns.
		Year: 1663 Discoverer: Otto von Guericke Scientist: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Artist: Nicolaus Seelander Originally published in: Protogaea Now appears in: Fossils: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by Yvette Gayrard-Valy, American Monster by Paul Semonin and Protogaea by Leibniz The savants working with these fossils were apparently so convinced unicorns must be real, they made one where it didn't previously exist. This "unicorn" was pieced together from mammoth and possibly rhinoceros remains found in a gypsum quarry near Quedlinburg. Von Guericke didn't publish a picture in his own book in 1672. Leibniz probably directed Seelander to style his rendering after images appearing in contemporary periodicals. The dotted lines indicate the animal's "missing parts." Misguided as it was, this was likely the first attempt to reconstruct a vertebrate fossil, but the poor thing wasn't even given hind legs. Larger image available
		Century: 12th Originally appeared in: Floor mosaic of church of San Giovanni Evangelista, Ravenna Now appears in: Nature and Its Symbols by Lucia Impelluso and Stephen Sartarelli This is a fairly typical depiction of a unicorn with the possible exception of its cloven-hoofed, rather than horse-hoofed, feet. Although associated with purity and chastity, the unicorn was also said to be wily, and only captured through trickery.
		Year: 1534 Scientist/artist: Andrea Alciati Originally published in: Emblematum Libellus Now appears in: Cultures of Natural History edited by Jardine, Secord and Spary This was quite a robust and thoughtful fox, considering it could hold and contemplate a human head. In fact, this woodcut appeared in a book about emblems, so this fox depiction was probably not meant to be taken literally. Not long after Alciati published his book, the famous naturalist Conrad Gesner published an encyclopedia of four-footed beasts, and the lengthy chapter on the fox not only pictured and described the animal, but enumerated its uses to people, and recounted just about every fox legend ever told. Larger image available
		Year: 1658 Scientist/artists: Conrad Gesner and Edward Topsell Published in: Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes Now appears in: Topsell's Histories of Beasts edited by Malcolm South Topsell devoted over 40 pages of his Historie to man's best friend, and demonstrated that dogs were as loved in the 17th century as they are today. Besides tales of courage and loyalty, he passed tips for how humans could keep dogs healthy, such as, "If you give unto a dog every seventh day or twice in seven days broth or pottage in which ivy is boiled, this will preserve him sound without any other medicine." He also listed ways dogs could keep people healthy, pointing out, for example, that the "hair of a black dog eases the falling sickness." Larger image available
		Year: 1788 Scientists: Juan-Bautista Bru and Georges Cuvier Originally published in: Squelette trouvé au Paraguay (Reprinted in Ossemens Fossiles in 1812) Now appears in: Fossils: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by Yvette Gayrard-Valy and Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World by Martin J.S. Rudwick This was one of the first fossil articulations in the world (using bones from one animal, that is), and it was, in fact, not a bad job. Shortly after this elephant-sized skeleton was unearthed, it was mounted in a position suggestive of a giant sloth, and Cuvier classified it in the same order. Although Cuvier recognized that the world had once been inhabited by animals quite different from those still living, he did not recognize that they evolved. Mummified ibises from Egypt, looking like those still living, convinced Cuvier that organisms didn't change.
		Year: 1802 Scientist: Rembrandt Peale Artist: Alexander Anderson Originally published in: Mammoth of New York exhibition announcement Now appears in: American Monster by Paul Semonin It looks like early American scientists had a little trouble figuring out just where to put the tusks, though this rendering may have more to do with the artist's faulty memory than the articulator's bad judgment. Peale turned the tusks upside down, however, in later articulations. Larger image available
		Century: 18th Scientist/artist: Unnamed Swedish soldier Now appears in: Fossil Revolution by Douglas Palmer To the now-anonymous Swedish soldier who trekked across Siberia in 1722, a mammoth apparently looked an ox with braided horns and clawed feet. Over the next century, a much clearer picture of the mammoth emerged from the mists of deep time.
		Year: 1877 Scientist/artist: Ernst Haeckel Originally published in: Anthropogénie ou Histoire de l'Evolution Humaine Now appears in: Human Origins: The Search for Our Beginnings by Herbert Thomas and I Have Landed by Stephen Jay Gould German zoologist Ernst Haeckel claimed that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," or that an animal's embryological development repeats the stages of its ancestral evolution. This picture comparing embryos was intended to support that view. In early stages, vertebrate embryos look similar, but not nearly so similar as Haeckel claimed. (In the first edition of one of Haeckel's books, an identical woodcut was accidentally duplicated for three different types of embryos, a blunder that dogged Haeckel for years.) Though embryologists recognized problems with this depiction when it was published, and Darwinian evolutionists abandoned the ontogeny-phylogeny link early in the 20th century, Haeckel's drawings still managed to populate many biology textbooks.
		Year: 1903 Scientist/artist: Ernst Haeckel Originally published in: Anthropogénie (5th edition) Now appears in: The Tragic Sense of Life by Robert J. Richards Haeckel came under fire for this embryo comparison, for excluding the limb buds of the echidna embryo. Nevertheless, this depiction was a substantial improvement over versions that had appeared in earlier works. As graphic techniques improved, so did the embryo renditions. Larger image available
		Year: 1874 Scientist/artist: Ernst Haeckel Originally published in: Anthropogénie Now appears in: The Tragic Sense of Life by Robert J. Richards (Also discussed in God — or Gorilla: Images of Evolution in the Jazz Age by Constance Areson Clark) Another way in which Haeckel gave 20th-century paleontologists and evolutionary biologists heartburn was by publishing this tree of the ancestry of humans. The thick trunk culminating in the human species suggests that evolution's only aim was in making us. In fact, this was one of many diagrams Haeckel published, and his view of evolution was much less anthropocentric than this diagram implied. Larger image available
		Year: 1875 Scientist/artist: Ernst Haeckel Originally published in: The History of Creation Now appears in: God — or Gorilla: Images of Evolution in the Jazz Age by Constance Areson Clark Also less widely reproduced than Haeckel's human-centered tree diagram, this fernlike diagram of amniotes has been cited as a more accurate view of the diversity of life. Larger image available
		Year: 1886 Scientist/artist: William Gunning Originally published in: Life History of Our Planet Now appears in: Dinosaur Plots by Leonard Krishtalka This is a depiction of life in the Eocene epoch, roughly 45 million years ago. The largest animal to the left is a Uintatherium. The velvet antlers are a mistaken addition, but the many bony protrusions, surprisingly, are not.
		Year: 1658 Scientist: Willem Piso Originally published in: De Indiae Utriusque Now appears in: Matters of Exchange by Harold J. Cook This "tiger" was based on an earlier, slightly more accurate drawing of the real beast. In making the woodcut, the artist Piso employed put the tiger's stripes into the shadows of the animal's muscles. In the original drawing, the tiger's head didn't quite match the shape of the real cat's, but this woodcut changed the shape even more.
		Year: 1616 Scientist: Ulisse Aldrovandi Originally published in: De Quadrupedibus Solidipedibus Now appears in: Amazing Rare Things by Attenborough, Owens, Clayton and Alexandratos Europeans might have been surprised to learn of a donkey-like animal with black and white stripes. This zebra appears equally surprised, and looks reproachfully at the reader, as if to ask who played the prank of striping his coat. For a depiction of an unfamiliar animal native to a different continent, however, this picture wasn't too bad.
		Year: c. 1475 Scientist/artist: Vincent of Beauvais Originally published in: Mirror of History Now appears in: Beasts: Factual and Fantastic by Elizabeth Morrison © J. Paul Getty Museum Believe it or not, this was supposed to be an elephant. It's a safe guess that the illustrator of this medieval manuscript hadn't seen the actual animal, at least not with a clear head. But he might have seen an elephant tusk, and confused it with the animal's trunk. This dog-like creature appeared in an illustration of "the wonders of India" and to the 15th-century European mind, India was the epitome of exotic locales.
		Year: 1573-1585 Scientist: Ambroise Paré Originally published in: Des Monstres Now appears in: On Monsters and Marvels by Ambroise Paré, translated by Janis Pallister, and The Great Naturalists edited by Robert Huxley This rather unfriendly looking elephant was a pretty good depiction for its time. Paré didn't describe the elephant with complete accuracy, but some of his observations rival those of today: "They surpass in largeness all other four-footed animals; nevertheless . . . they can be so readily tamed that they remain the most gentle and tractable of all beasts; one can teach them, and they understand how to carry out several charges." This illustration also appeared in Conrad Gesner's work, and Paré likely borrowed it from there.
		Year: 1582 Scientist: Pliny the Elder Originally published in: Naturalis Historia Now appears in: Renaissance Beasts edited by Erica Fudge This woodcut pair in Pliny's book showed pretty accurate views of the giant animal. Even though he lived in Antiquity, Pliny remained enormously influential during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and with good reason. Elephants were a more common site in Antiquity than in the two millennia that followed. So while Renaissance greats Gesner and Aldrovandi had probably never seen an elephant, Pliny probably had. Yet Pliny might not have approved of this illustration — he disliked illustrations in general. And with or without illustrations, he passed along odd information about pachyderms. Just one example: one elephant wrote a happy note (in Latin!) in the sand describing its glee over the defeat of the Celts. Larger image available
		Year: 1403 Explorer: Marco Polo Originally published in: Livre de Merveilles Now appears in: The Book of Fabulous Beasts by Joseph Nigg This elephant appeared in the same picture as a unicorn. Polo apparently recalled both animals from his travels. The illustrator apparently grasped the prehensile nature of the elephant's trunk, and in this picture, the end of the trunk looks almost like a human hand. The feet, meanwhile, look like giant paws.
		Year: 1486 Artist: Erhard Reuwich Originally published in: Peregrinationes in Terram Sanctam Now appears in: Tall Blondes: A Book About Giraffes by Lynn Sherr Unfortunately for European education of the time, this was supposed to be a giraffe. Reuwich apparently tried to depict the animal from memory and remembered an antelope better. Given how unusual giraffes are, and how few 15th-century Europeans saw one, this illustration may have been regarded as far more plausible than the real thing. In Reuwich's day, woodcuts weren't exactly copyrighted, and the same picture could easily appear in multiple books. This image also appeared in works by Conrad Gesner and Edward Topsell. Larger image available
		Year: 1559 Scientist/artist: Melchoir Luorgius Published in: Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes Now appears in: Tall Blondes: A Book About Giraffes by Lynn Sherr Originally made in the 16th century, this woodcut later appeared in the book Edward Topsell published in 1607, along with Reuwich's antelope-like giraffe. This depiction was much closer to the mark, although — given the tiny human for scale — this giraffe appears closer in size to a typical Jurassic sauropod than a modern giraffe. Larger image available
		Year: 1551 Artist: Pierre Belon Originally published in: Histoire Naturelle des Estranges Poissons Now appears in: The Great Naturalists edited by Robert Huxley Though still not perfect, Belon's 16th-century rendition of a giraffe was more accurate. The neck is too short, but the head looks more like a giraffe's, and this picture hints at the correct color patterns. Larger image available
		Year: 1551 Scientist: Conrad Gesner Originally published in: Historia Animalium Now appears in: Eating Right in the Renaissance by Ken Albala This wild boar illustration wasn't too bad. At the time it was published, however, Europeans held some nutritional notions that would strike a modern reader as strange. One idea was that eating an animal's brains would make you smarter. Another was that the ideal food to consume would be most like yourself. That would be humans. It doesn't appear anybody took that advice seriously enough to actually feast on human flesh. But pork was considered the next best thing.
		Year: 1682 Scientist/artist: Hiob Ludolf Originally published in: New History of Ethiopia Now appears in: American Monster by Paul Semonin This ferocious version of a hippopotamus was called the behemoth, "the largest of God's creatures." In all fairness, the real hippo does have large teeth in its lower jaw, and it can be aggressive, although the real animal doesn't look quite this scary.
		Year: 1667 Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher Originally published in: China Illustrata Seventeenth-century German Jesuit polymath Kircher described an equally weird hippopotamus in his book about China, describing the "marine horse" as "completely deformed and horrible to look at."
		Year: 1694 Scientist/artist: Pierre Pomet Originally published in: Histoire Générale des Drogues Now appears in: From Private to Public by Marco Beretta Far more accurate than Kircher's hippo, though still a little fanciful, Pomet's hippo appeared just a few decades later. The creature next to it is pretty recognizable as a seahorse. Larger image available
		Year: 1515 Artist: Albrecht Dürer Originally published in: Dürer's leaflet and Cosmographia Universalis by Sebastian Münster Now appears in: The Pope's Elephant by Silvio Bedini, Nature's Artist by Victoria Salley and Merchants and Marvels edited by Smith and Findlen In the early 16th century, King Manuel I of Portugal gave several spectacular gifts plucked from the far reaches of his empire to Pope Leo X. One of those gifts was a rhinoceros, upon which this woodcut is based. Sadly, the ship carrying the rhino to Rome sank, and the animal perished. (Some people even blamed the rhino for the sunken ship, claiming it threw its weight around until the vessel capsized.) Its body was later recovered and its hide stuffed for display. Although this woodcut shows an unusually stout rhino with griffin-like legs and an ornate hide, it's really not a bad likeness. The reason its skin looks like armor may be that the animal described really had been outfitted with its own protective suit. Dürer, who did not personally see the rhino, actively marketed his depiction in the form of leaflets with sensational text describing this "deadly enemy of the elephant" exuberantly goring the proboscidian at every opportunity. Dürer's much-admired picture appeared in later works by Ambroise Paré and Conrad Gesner, among others.
		Year: 1515 Originally published in: Giovanni Giacomo Penni's pamphlet The Form, Nature and Habits of the Rhinoceros Now appears in: The Pope's Elephant by Silvio Bedini Dürer's rendition of the rhino may have had a few weaknesses, but it was far superior to the picture in the pamphlet published in Rome the same year. The artist behind this woodcut is unknown, but the author of the pamphlet's poetry was Giovanni Giacomo Penni. He apparently had seen neither an actual rhino, nor Dürer's woodcut.
		Year: 1751-1780 Scientist/artist: Diderot and D'Alembert (engraving modeled after Oudry) Originally published in: Encyclopédie Now appears in: Clara's Grand Tour by Glynis Ridley Two centuries after Dürer's engraving, a more accurate one appeared in Diderot and D'Alembert's encyclopedia and Buffon's Natural History. Unlike the 16th-century rhino, this depiction was based on a specific animal, Clara, who took a tour through the best courts and cities of Europe. One contemporary account described her as a wonderful animal who could plow the ground with her horn. Another described her as a "hideous animal of the female gender." Clara was a generally placid, good-natured animal, but her charm was hardly enhanced by the moisturizer used on her thick skin: smelly fish oil.
		Year: 1651 Scientist: Johannes Faber Originally published in: Thesaurus Now appears in: The Eye of the Lynx by David Freedberg Naturalist Faber had his doubts about the New World creature known as the "Mexican dog," but he portrayed it like this anyway, largely because he (mis)trusted his source for the illustration. This picture was based on copy by Nardo Antonio Recchi of an original by Francisco Hernández, made in the 16th century.
		Year: 1658 Scientist/artists: Conrad Gesner and Edward Topsell Published in: Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes Now appears in: Topsell's Histories of Beasts edited by Malcolm South The gulon, or glutton, was likely based on the wolverine. The creature was believed to be so gluttonous that it would eat its fill, pull its body between two branches to clear its guts, and go back for more. Here the creature is seen copiously depositing tokens of its esteem around the carcasses it has eaten. Topsell believed that many beasts existed to give moral instruction to man, and the gulon was a shining example. "It may be that God has ordained such a creature in those countries where it is found to express the abominable gluttony of the men there, so that they may know their deformed nature," he explained. No prisoner of political correctness, he continued, "Such are the men in Muscovia, in Lithuania, and most shameful of all in Tartaria." Larger image available
		Year: 1642 Scientist/artist: Ulisse Aldrovandi Originally published in: Monstrorum Historiae Now appears in: Visual Cultures of Science edited by Luc Pauwels An amateur collector claimed to have found a deer whose antlers looked eerily like foliage. Aldrovandi later published this picture of the deer, foliage intact. Science historian Francesco Panese has observed, however, that Aldrovandi's readers didn't necessarily believe they were seeing an accurate depiction. Larger image available
		Year: 1677 Scientist: Leibniz Originally published in: Journal des Sçavants Now appears in: Visual Cultures of Science edited by Luc Pauwels Leibniz explained that this deer had been shackled for charging passers by and, as a result, developed odd protrusions. He likened it to prisoners remarking upon stories that "teach us that great sadness or anxiety can cause the color of a prisoner's hair to change overnight." More specifically, "its aqueous humour could no longer be dissipated once the animal was attached as it usually is by the heat that such animals generate by means of their charges, leaps and runs." Larger image available
		Year: 1826 Scientist: Buffon Originally published in: Oeuvres complètes de Buffon ed. M.A. Richard Now appears in: Buffon by Jacques Roger This image, published decades after Buffon's death, shows three odd-looking mammals from faraway lands: the Saharan fox, the Syrian hyrax, and Madagascar's aye-aye. This fox's ears are so big, they apparently must be a mistake. They are oversized in this picture, but only just. Saharan foxes actually sport disproportionately large ears help the animal dissipate heat. Likewise, the aye-aye looks like a mistake, too, but the real animal looks no less strange. The animal's elongated middle finger (used for fishing grubs out of tree limbs) prompted comedian and lemur enthusiast John Cleese to tell one modern specimen, "Being born with your very own chopstick was very clever."
		Year: 1551 Scientist: Conrad Gesner Originally published in: Historia Animalium Now appears in: Curious Woodcuts of Fanciful and Real Beasts by Conrad Gesner "No one in medieval Europe ever saw a lion or an elephant or a panther," remarked Odell Shepard in his book on unicorn legends. This picture lends a little credence to that assertion. Although felines are generally fit animals, this one looks like a steroid user.
		Year: 1668 Scientists/artists: Athanasius Kircher and Agapitus de Bernardinis Originally appeared in: Mosaic from the Temple of Fortune Now appears in: Athanasius Kircher by Joscelyn Godwin This detail is from an engraving, based on a first-century mosaic, that focused on activities surrounding the annual rising of the Nile. Included in the artwork were some odd looking mammals not easily related to real species. Easier to relate to the real world are the spears stuck into them.
		Year: 1709 Scientists/artists: Athanasius Kircher and Filippo Buonanni Originally appeared in: Musæum Kircherianum Now appears in: The Ecstatic Journey by Ingrid D. Rowland Although its head is a little small, this armadillo is pretty recognizable. What's more intriguing about this depiction is the explanation for the animal's strange appearance. By Jesuit scholar Kircher devoted considerable time and energy to discussing the logistics of Noah's Ark, but by the time Kircher composed his various works, the discovery of the New World had presented a serious problem. So many previously unknown creatures threatened to sink Noah's boat. Kircher found a few workarounds: spontaneous generation for lowly creatures like bugs, adaptation for creatures ending up in strange environments, and hybrids. The armadillo, Kircher supposed, was a cross between turtle and a porcupine.
		Year: 1607 Scientist: Edward Topsell Originally published in: Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes Now appears in: The Book of Fabulous Beasts by Joseph Nigg Topsell, who published much of Gesner's work, supplemented Gesner's woodcuts and descriptions with additional creatures. This "gorgon," appearing on the title page of the 1607 edition of Topsell's book, more closely resembles another mythical beast: the catoblepas. Like the basilisk, this animal was believed to have a lethal stare. Larger image available

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Narrative text and graphic design © by Michon Scott - Updated May 8, 2009