Year: 1570 Scientist/artist: A. Ortelius Originally published in: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Now appears in: Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis This excerpt of a map of Iceland shows sea monsters that many believed inhabited the surrounding waters.
		Year: 1741 Scientist/artist: Sven Waxell Originally published in: Bering's Voyages Now appears in: Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis This image shows, from left to right, a fur seal, a sea lion and a "sea cow." Although all three marine mammals have vaguely humanlike faces with haughty expressions, the accuracy of the sea cow is as good a rendition as we are likely to get. Hydrodamalis gigas, a giant relative of the manatee, was hunted to extinction in less than three decades after its discovery. With this animal, the real goof was wiping it off the face of the earth.
		Year: 1872 Scientist/artist: W.E. Webb Originally published in: Buffalo Land Now appears in: Oceans of Kansas by Michael J. Everhart The sea-serpent, snake-like necks on the marine reptiles in this picture have proven implausible. Plesiosaurs might have been able to use their heads as rudders to change direction while swimming, but they couldn't very well swim in a straight line while turning their heads to take in the scenery. But while the curvy necks may have been wrong, the caption accompanying this image about "the sea that once covered the plains" in North America has turned out to be right. Fossil finds of sharks, bony fish, marine reptiles and mollusks have substantiated the hypothesis that a massive, shallow sea once covered the interior of North America.
		Year: 1863 Scientist: Louis Figuier Originally published in: Earth Before the Deluge Now appears in: Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World by Martin J.S. Rudwick Another picture of an ancient reptile sporting a whale-like blowhole is from Figuier's rendition. Not long after Darwin published The Origin of Species, scientists were making an uneasy peace with prehistory. Figuier wrote, "We shall see, in examining the curious series of animals of the ancient world, that the organization and physiological functions go on improving unceasingly, and each of the extinct genera which preceded the appearance of man, present for each organ, modifications which always tend towards greater perfection."
		Year: 1577 Scientist/artist: Jan Wierix Originally published in: Three Beached Whales Now appears in: Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis This 16th-century engraving was actually a pretty good likeness, except for the extra blowhole. Two blowholes emerge from a "nose" that looks like it belongs to a terrestrial mammal. Wierix pictured three stranded whales, several more cetaceans behind them in the ocean and terrified humans fleeing up the beach.
		Year: 1843 Scientist: George Richardson Artist: George Nibbs 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 and Fossil Revolution by Douglas Palmer According to the caption in the original publication, this picture shows "the ichthyosaurus in the act of devouring a fish; the plesiosaurus, which has seized a pterodactyle, or flying reptile, on the wing; together with crocodiles and alligators, which are depicted on the shores. Turtles and tortoises are prowling on the banks, and the waters of this primeval sea are tenanted by corals, shells, crustacea, and fish, appropriate to this peculiar period of the history of nature." Although this image does give the plesiosaur a dragon-like appearance, the scene is much less apocalyptic than other depictions of prehistoric life at the time; this picture looks cheerful, except maybe for the poor creatures becoming meals.
		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 In keeping with the artistic convention of making the prehistoric earth look perpetually apocalyptic, this scene shows moonlight and menacing clouds over a turbulent sea. Using another artistic convention, the scene shows low tide — enabling the reader to see the sea lilies and shells on the sea floor. The reptile is a Nothosaurus. Modern depictions of the animal look less crocodilian, but this image is in keeping with modern interpretations in showing a semiaquatic animal that could live in water or on land.
		Year: 1799 Scientist: Barthélemy Faujas de Saint Fond Originally published in: Montagne de Saint-Pierre Now appears in: Bursting the Limits of Time by Martin J.S. Rudwick By the late 18th century, Europe's savants had begun wrapping their brains around the concept of an ancient earth that had both predated humans by an unimaginable time span and crawled with strange creatures. The savants also hired capable artists and engravers to render accurate depictions of the fossils they found. The year 1780 marked the discovery of an enormous fossil reptile in underground quarries near the Dutch town of Maastricht. Nineteen years later, Faujas published a description of the reptile. The excavation picture may be a little dramatic, but the illustration of the fossil itself is pretty accurate (the oval-shaped objects with the skull are fossil sea urchins). Faujas's interpretation wasn't quite as accurate as the pictures. He classified it as a giant crocodile. Today, the fossil is identified as a mosasaur, an extinct marine reptile. Considering how little was then known about prehistoric life, Faujas's mistake is pretty forgivable.
		Year: 1662 Scientist: Caspar Schott Originally published in: Physica Curiosa Now appears in: Visual Cultures of Science edited by Luc Pauwels Caspar (also known as Gaspar or Kaspar) Schott was a one-time student and long-time collaborator of the German Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher. Besides editing and defending Kircher's works, Schott published some of his own. This page from the second volume of his Physica Curiosa shows a motley assortment of sea monsters, including a fish resembling a monk (upper left), a marine monster looking suspiciously like a bishop (lower right), and two chimerical creatures with long, fishy tails. Similar depictions appeared in numerous works in the 16th and 17th centuries. Religious tensions of the time might have contributed to the strong resemblance between alleged monsters and clerical figures.
		Year: 1560 Scientist: Conrad Gesner Originally published in: Icones Animalium Now appears in: Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis Gesner was one of the finest naturalists of the 16th century, but he occasionally misfired. In this woodcut, a mother whale and her young look awfully porcine.
		Year: 1558 Scientist: Conrad Gesner Originally published in: De Piscium & Aquatilium Animantum Natura Now appears in: Curious Woodcuts of Fanciful and Real Beasts by Conrad Gesner This "bearded whale" was originally reported by Olaus Magnus. This fanciful depiction might have been inspired by a partial or fleeting view of a real animal.
		Year: 1694 Scientist/artist: Pierre Pomet Originally published in: Histoire Générale des Drogues Now appears in: The Unicorn by Nancy Hathaway Pomet pictured both a sea unicorn (top) and a narwhal (bottom). Unlike the first creature, the second was real, and its horn was often mistaken — or deliberately passed off — as a unicorn horn, believed capable of curing all kinds of diseases and poisonings. As Europe's upper-crust families showed such a fondness for poisoning their own, such antidotes were always in demand. Not long after Pomet's book was published, the narwhal was identified as a "false unicorn."
		Year: 1558 Scientist: Conrad Gesner Originally published in: De Piscium & Aquatilium Animantum Natura Now appears in: Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis, Merchants and Marvels edited by Smith and Findlen and "Foils and Fakes" by Suzanne Magnanini in Marvels & Tales Magazine Hercules battled with a hydra in ancient Greek mythology, and this imaginary animal has suffered from a rotten reputation ever since. Unfortunately, the hydra has a living relative, of sorts: the octopus. Even now, misconceptions persist about the octopus (also called the "devil fish"), and it has been doomed to play the villain in more than one B movie. Although this illustration only shows seven heads, the hydra was sometimes said to have nine, and two new ones would appear whenever one was chopped off. This depiction of a hydra was typical of the time, i.e., a picture copied from another picture — probably taken from a publication about the Apocalypse. Though he published this image, however, Gesner was very skeptical about the creature's existence.
		Year: 1558 Scientist: Conrad Gesner Originally published in: De Piscium & Aquatilium Animantum Natura Now appears in: The Science of Describing by Brian W. Ogilvie Gesner reviewed the work of Olaus Magnus and criticized much of what he saw. But he had his doubts about this illustration, even though he was the one who published it: "Fish don't have feet." He confessed that fins can resemble feet in large fish skeletons, but thought the artist took too many liberties here.
		Year: 1635 Scientist/artist: Juan Eusebio Nieremberg Originally published in: Historia Naturae Now appears in: The Science of Describing by Brian W. Ogilvie Gesner suspected that the walrus (which he called "rosmarus") was the same as another creature known as "morss piscis." That was an accomplishment, considering how different they looked. This especially fuzzy, scrappy picture was likely made from a dried skin.
		Year: 1734 Scientist: Albertus Seba Artist: J. Fortuÿn (coloration) Originally published in: Thesaurus Now appears in: "A Diverse and Marvelous Collection" by Müsch, Willmann and Rust in Natural History Magazine, April, 2002 issue and A Cabinet of Natural Curiosities by Albertus Seba Amsterdam apothecary Albertus Seba portrayed another hydra in the 18th century. Seba had his doubts about its authenticity, but more than one "respectable eye witness" vouched for the accuracy of the stuffed specimen, so he published this picture of it. Seba's mistake is understandable in light of the fact that most genuine animals were either preserved in spirits or stuffed by the time they reached him.
		Year: 1758 Scientist: Albertus Seba Artist: J. Fortuÿn (coloration) Originally published in: Thesaurus Now appears in: "A Diverse and Marvelous Collection" by Müsch, Willmann and Rust in Natural History Magazine, April, 2002 issue and A Cabinet of Natural Curiosities by Albertus Seba Most of Seba's work was more realistic than the hydra. Though some mythological beasts persisted, during the 17th and 18th centuries, scholars began replacing superficial observation of the natural world with more detailed and careful study. Results included this depiction of a cuttlefish, an octopus relative.
		Year: 1758 Scientist: Albertus Seba Artist: J. Fortuÿn (coloration) Originally published in: Thesaurus Now appears in: Natural Curiosities from the Cabinet of Albertus Seba by Albertus Seba This picture doesn't show any egregious errors, only differences between the 18th century and the current day. Most shells are dextral, meaning if you hold the shell so the spire is up and the aperture is facing you, the aperture will usually be on your right side. In these shells, the aperture is flipped. Seba didn't accidentally flip every shell; printing techniques of the time produced mirror images. What's probably more striking is the artistic representation. This circular arrangement was actually part of a larger ornate page of mollusks. In Seba's day, the line between science and art was pretty fuzzy, but it arguably made the science more entertaining.
		Year: 1605 Scientist: Carolus Clusius Originally published in: Exoticorum Libri Decem Now appears in: Merchants and Marvels edited by Smith and Findlen The trouble with trying to identify exotic species of blowfish from remote regions was that savants had to rely on dried specimens of dubious preservation. Working in the Netherlands, Clusius admitted that he couldn't dissect the fish to see their internal organs. Some of his contemporaries were starting to do just that, recognizing that superficial characteristics didn't tell the whole story. In the case of these blowfish, each woodcut represents what Clusius identified as a distinct species, but they were probably all the same species — preservation problems made them look so different.
		Year: 1853 Scientist: Edward Forbes Originally published in: A History of British Mollusca and Their Shells (Vol. 1) Now appears in: "Deserts on the Sea Floor" by Thomas R. Anderson and Tony Rice in Endeavour Magazine, December, 2006 issue This "sea monster" depiction is probably pretty accurate. It's of a nudibranch, a mollusk without a shell, but with plenty of elaborate protuberances. (Nudibranch loosely translates as "mollusk with a nudie butt.") Forbes's mistake wasn't in the depiction of any particular sea creature. Instead, it was in the assumption that below a certain depth, the sea was pretty much lifeless. In fact, the assumption didn't seem unreasonable at the time — ocean depths saw little light, intense water pressure, and frigid temperatures. The discovery of sea floor vents teeming with life was a long way off. However, dredging the ocean bottom had brought up a variety of exotic sea creatures starting decades before Forbes advanced his lifeless seabed hypothesis.
		Year: 1709 Scientists/artists: Athanasius Kircher and Filippo Buonanni Originally published in: Musæum Kircherianum Now appears in: The Ecstatic Journey by Ingrid D. Rowland The 17th-century German Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher established a fabulous museum in Rome, filled with antiquities, speaking tubes, odd animals and fossils. Some of these "wonders" were too fantastic to be true. (Kircher believed every story he ever heard about someone catching a dragon — assuming that someone was a pope.) But much of what he collected was absolutely real. These fish carcasses and shark teeth must have looked outlandish to the visitors to Kircher's museum, but fish like these swim in the sea today. After Kircher died, Buonanni took over his collection and published a catalog in the early 18th century. These images from the catalog show some 18th-century progress in accurately depicting sea life.
		Year: 1667 Scientist/artist: Niels Stensen Originally published in: Canis Carchariae Dissectum Caput Now appears in: Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis and Fossils: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by Yvette Gayrard-Valy Strange as it looks by today's standards, this picture of a dissected head of a giant white shark actually marked significant progress in marine biology. For years, fossilized shark teeth were believed to be tongues of serpents turned to stone by St. Paul, and hence were named glossopetrae, or "tongue stones." Niels Stensen correctly identified tongue stones as shark teeth.
		Year: 1514 Scientist/artist: Albrecht Dürer Originally appeared in: Arion Now appears in: Nature and Its Symbols by Lucia Impelluso, translated by Stephen Sartarelli According to the Greek legend, the gifted singer Arion was tossed overboard by sailors who wanted to steal his stuff. By the time he was thrown into the sea, however, he had bewitched a dolphin who came to his rescue. This dolphin sports more protuberances than any seen in nature, but in fairness to Dürer, who was known for his realism, the fact that he was illustrating a legend may have given him a greater sense of artistic license.
		Year: 1868 Originally published in: Harper's Weekly Now appears in: Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis This "wonderful fish" described in Harper's Weekly was later identified as a basking shark, and the depiction is reasonably accurate if you ignore the legs. The shark had partially decomposed by the time it was described, and that may have lead to the assumption that it was a sea monster with legs. The colossal size is no mistake. Basking sharks are among the largest fish alive today, and can measure up to 40 feet.
		Year: 1802 Scientist/artist: Pierre Denys de Montfort Originally published in: Historie Naturalle Générale et Particulière des Mollusques Now appears in: Sketches of Creation by Alexander Winchell and Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis Denys de Montfort bragged that if this representation were swallowed, he would next represent a cephalopod embracing the Straits of Gibraltar. Seventy years later, Alexander Winchell did two admirable things: He called Denys de Montfort's depiction a sailor's yarn, but also suggested, "the unexplored depths of the ocean conceal the forms of octopods that far surpass in magnitude any of the species known to science." Winchell was right on both counts.
		Year: 1573-1585 Scientist: Ambroise Paré Originally published in: Des Monstres Now appears in: Similar depictions appear in Monsters of the Sea by Richard Ellis and On Monsters and Marvels by Ambroise Paré, translated by Janis Pallister Called a both sea eagle and a flying fish, this was probably a "Jenny Haniver," a forgery made by mutilating a ray to resemble a winged sea monster with a human head. The trick worked, and Ambroise Paré recounted a second-hand tale of how a live specimen was presented to the lords of the city of Quioze. The origin of the name "Jenny Haniver" is unknown, but the first known illustration of one dates from the 16th century.
		Year: 1854 Scientist: Japetus Steenstrup Now appears in: The Search for the Giant Squid by Richard Ellis In the 16th century, two naturalists, Rondelet and Pierre Belon, produced descriptions of animals they termed the Sea Monk, or monk-fish. Centuries later, a very talented naturalist, Japetus Steenstrup, gave a presentation in which he compared Rondelet's illustration (on the left) and Belon's illustration (on the right) to the likeness of a squid captured in 1853. He also took into consideration a 16th-century description of the Sea Monk by Conrad Gesner. Steenstrup made an amazing deduction: "Could we, given these bits of information of how the Monk was conceived at that time, come so near to it that we could recognize to which of nature's creatures it should most probably be assigned? The Sea Monk is firstly a cephalopod."
		Year: 1642 Scientist/artist: Ulisse Aldrovandi Originally published in: Monstrorum Historia Now appears in: Cabinets of Curiosities by Patrick Mauriès An amazingly prolific Renaissance man, Aldrovandi sometimes exhibited what the 18th-century naturalist Buffon would later describe as "a tendency towards credulity." Of the stingray, Aldrovandi observed, "They love music, the dance and witty remarks." Exactly how stingrays exhibited their affection for these niceties is unknown.
		Year: 1613 Scientist/artist: Ulisse Aldrovandi Originally published in: De Piscibus Now appears in: The Great Naturalists edited by Robert Huxley Aldrovandi sometimes combined impressive realism (a recognizable shark) with puzzling chimera. The fish on the bottom has a mammal-like face with a saw protruding from the head, dragon-like scales, fishy fins and flippers.
		Year: 1554-1555 Scientist/artist: Guillaume Rondelet Originally published in: Libri de Piscibus Marinis Now appears in: Matters of Exchange by Howard J. Cook Guillaume Rondelet was one of the most highly regarded naturalists of his day, and his book on marine fishes became famous. Although ornate, this ray didn't appear to possess the same cultural graces as the one Aldrovandi described. Rondelet worked closely with local fishermen who brought him specimens, and he even built tanks and piped water into them to better observe the fish.
		Century: 17th Now appears in: The Discovery of Time edited by Stuart McCready Taken from a 17th-century collection of fossil illustrations, this looks like a cross between a dolphin and a plant.
		Year: 1734 Scientist/artist: Hans Egede Originally published in: Full and Particular Relation of my Voyage to Greenland, as a Missionary, in the year 1734 Now appears in: Dragons, Unicorns, and Sea Serpents by Charles Gould Egede wrote, "On the 6th of July 1734, when off the south coast of Greenland, a sea-monster appeared to us, whose head, when raised, was on level with our main-top. Its snout was long and sharp, and it blew water almost like a whale; it has large broad paws; its body was covered with scales; its skin was rough and uneven; in other respects it was as a serpent; and when it dived, its tail, which was raised in the air, appeared to be a whole ship's length from its body."
		Century: 10th Scientist/artist: Richard Fournival Originally appeared in: Bestiaire d'Amour of Richard Fournival Now appears in: The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams Here two sailors cook their dinner on the back of a whale so big that they have mistaken it for an island and landed on it. Descriptions of island-sized whales were common in Classical times as well as the Middle Ages.
		Century: 13th Originally appeared in: Beastiary now housed in the Bodleian Library, Oxford Now appears in: Nature and Its Symbols by Lucia Impelluso and Stephen Sartarelli One legend about whales circulated by medieval Europeans was that the cetaceans could simply open their mouths and emit a sweet fragrance (sweet to fish, anyway). The hapless fish would swim right into the trap. Never missing a moral of the story, the storytellers pointed out that faithless pleasure-seekers would be trapped by the devil in similar fashion.
		Year: 1558 Scientist: Conrad Gesner Originally published in: De Piscium & Aquatilium Animantum Natura Now appears in: Curious Woodcuts of Fanciful and Real Beasts by Conrad Gesner Like other whale depictions from Gesner's era, this may have been based on a glimpse of the real creature, perhaps a small cetacean.
		Year: 1560 Scientist: Conrad Gesner Originally published in: Nomenclator Aquatilium Animantium Now appears in: Curious Woodcuts of Fanciful and Real Beasts by Conrad Gesner In Gesner's time, besides the diminutive fish we know today (left), many Europeans believed in a different kind of "seahorse" (left). These pictures are obviously not on the same scale.

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Narrative text and graphic design © by Michon Scott - Updated April 11, 2008