Strange Science: Dinosaurs and Dragons (2024)

Despised in the West and revered in the East, dragons have a long history in human mythology. How did the myth start? No one knows the exact answer, but some myths may have been inspired by living reptiles, and some "dragon" bones probably belonged to animals long extinct — in some cases dinosaurs, in others, fossil mammals. Starting in the early 19th century, scientists began to find a new kind of monster, one that had gone extinct tens of millions of years before the first humans evolved. Because the first fragments found looked lizard-like, paleontologists assumed they had found giant lizards, but more bones revealed animals like nothing on Earth today. Did these terrible lizards ever coexist with people? No. Neither did pterosaurs. Dinosaur fossils just don't turn up in the same rock layers as human remains. Although some creationists claim that medieval dragons were really ruling reptiles of the Mesozoic that survived into modern times, this notion enjoys no support from any credible scientist.

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, was hired to oversee the sculpture of these beasts. When one of the sculptures, Iguanodon, was partially completed, Owen partied with some 20 dignitaries in its belly of a reconstructed. 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
Still appears in: Crystal Palace Park, London (photo by Michon Scott)
Hawkins and Owen's reconstructions can still be seen Crystal Palace, easily accessible through London's public transportation system. After more fossil finds led to a better understanding of dinosaur anatomy and locomotion, scientists and members of the public alike came to regard these statues with something less than admiration, and they fell into disrepair, staying shabby through the 20th century. A refurbishment project undertaken between 2002 and 2007 prettied them up, and they were then listed as buildings of architectural/historical interest.
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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 (mostly 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 and Hawkins 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: 1852
Scientists: Sir Richard Owen and Charles Lyell
Originally appeared in: A Manual of Elementary Geology . . . Third and entirely revised edition
Image provided by: The British Library
Cyclotosaurus was a supersized amphibian genus that lived during the Triassic Period, and modern reconstructions show Cyclotosaurus with splayed limbs, similar to a salamander. But before taxonomists settled on the current name for the genus, Owen dubbed a specimen Labyrinthodon pachygnathus based on fragmentary remains. He also attempted to match the animal to ancient tracks attributed to another genus, Chirotherium, concluding that they were one and the same. And he gave his amphibian a very weird posture. In Owen's reconstruction, reproduced a decade later in Lyell's book, the amphibian's legs are tucked under its body, and its hind legs are so long that it's hard to imagine the animal walking very far before scraping all the skin off its knees. Owen may have employed the same philosophy here that drove his thoughts on dinosaur articulation. A believer in separate creations rather than "transmutation," Owen maintained that the reptiles of the Mesozoic had little to do with the awkward reptiles of his day. Instead, he saw reptiles from the Mesozoic as much more like modern mammals. While there is something to be said for not reconstructing dinosaurs as giant lizards, they didn't have mammalian postures either. Neither did amphibians.

Year: 1866
Scientist: Leopold Hartley Grindon
Originally appeared in: Summer Rambles in Cheshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire
Image provided by: The British Library
In the 1840s and 1850s, confusion reigned in the study of a Triassic amphibian species now classified as Cyclotosaurus. If this illustration is any indication, the confusion only worsened in the 1860s. Before the species acquired its modern name, Victorian comparative anatomist Richard Owen named it Labyrinthodon pachygnathus, forced an unsuitable match between the amphibian's sparse skeletal remains and the tracks of a different species (Chirotherium), and gave the animal weirdly long rear legs. Grindon's knobby monstrosity retains Owen's limb proportions and association with the wrong tracks, but also gives the ancient amphibian rear legs that protrude above the torso like a pair of spider legs.

Year: 1854
Scientist: Sir Richard Owen
Contributing artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Originally published in: Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World
Now appears at: Linda Hall Library Digital Collections
Megalosaurus was the world's first dinosaur — not the first to evolve, but the first to be formally described. Although the "giant's bone" that Robert Plot wrote about in the late 17th century might have belonged to Megalosaurus, the first science paper that recognized the animal as an ancient reptile came in 1824, from the pen of William Buckland. Buckland had only fragments of the ancient beast, and 30 years later, Richard Owen was still working from fragmentary evidence when he pictured the whole animal. In short, Owen saw the dinosaur as quadrupedal, with a mammalian-like stance. The realization that Megalosaurus was bipedal dawned later in the 19th century.

Year: 1853
Scientist: Sir Richard Owen
Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Still appears in: Crystal Palace Park, London (photo by Michon Scott)
The first-described dinosaur, Megalosaurus, presides over the reconstructions that still stand today in London's Crystal Palace Park. This hulking green creature bears little resemblance to 21st-century reconstructions of the same animal, but it's just as much fun to ogle. Waterhouse Hawkins shared Owen's anti-evolutionist views. It's reasonable to infer that Waterhouse Hawkins had great admiration for Owen, and not unreasonable to wonder if that admiration didn't influence Waterhouse Hawkins's work on a subconscious level. This dinosaur doesn't just reflect Owen's preferred dinosaur posture, it has Owen's eyes. Just look at a picture of Owen.
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Year: 1855
Scientist: Sir Richard Owen
Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Originally published in: The Official Illustrated Guide to the Brighton and South Coast Railways and Their Branches
Now appears in: The Art and Science of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs by Mark Witton and Ellinor Michel
This image, showing Hawkins's workshop, gives a glimpse into the practicalities of his work. Witton and Michel explain that it shows a clay Iguanodon model being cast in plaster with the ultimate aim of replicating the skin texture in the iron-and-concrete version being built in Crystal Palace Park. Hawkins was not paid well on the project, and he had anything but a luxurious studio in which to work, but once the work was done, the project made him a celebrity.
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Year: 1859
Scientist/artist: Samuel Griswold Goodrich
Originally published in: Illustrated Natural History of the Animal Kingdom
Now appears in: The Story of the Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries by Donald R. Prothero
Crystal Palace Park wasn't the only place that this ankylosaur sported spikes on its butt. Hylaeosaurus also appeared with a line of spikes festooning its fanny in print. Here is an illustration published several years after the Crystal Palace Park sculptures made their debut.
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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).

Year: 1854
Scientist: Sir Richard Owen
Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Now appears in: Darwin's Universe: Evolution from A to Z by Richard Milner
Perhaps the best New Year's Eve party anywhere was the one inside the belly of an Iguanodon. Months before the sculpture was unveiled at Crystal Palace Park, it served as the dining room for the Victorian Era's in-crowd geologists. An accurately reconstructed Iguanodon would offer nowhere near enough room for so many esteemed guests, but wholly accurate models were still a ways off in 1853. (In fact, the guests may have cycled in and out, just for toasts, due to limited space.) Hawkins's handmade invitations, with time and place details inscribed on an outstretched pterosaur wing, are irresistible even today.

Year: 1862
Scientist: Sir Richard Owen
Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Now appears in: A dinosaur dinner and relics from "one of the greatest humbugs, frauds and absurdities ever known" (http://blogs.bl.uk/untoldlives/2016/06/relics-from-one-of-the-greatest-humbugs-frauds-and-absurdities-ever-known.html)
Several years after completing the Crystal Palace Park dinosaur sculptures, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins visually and verbally recounted 1853 New Year's Eve party, in a letter to Edward Trimmer of the Royal College of Surgeons. Around the margins of this sketch, Hawkins wrote, "I send you herewith a graphic answer in a miniature sketch of the Iguanodon as he appeared with his brains in and his belly full on the 31 of Decr 1853 . . . I had the pleasure of seeing around me many of the heads of science among whom in the head of the squadron was Professor Owen and the late Professor Ed Forbes with eighteen other friends we were all very jolly to meet the new year 1854." Crowding the brains and belly, the illustrious guests raise their glasses in a toast to the future.
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Year: c. 1854
Scientist: Sir Richard Owen
Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Originally published in: Nelson's View
Now appears in: The Dinosaur Hunters by Dingus and Norell
In the days before cell phones and cameras, Crystal Palace Park visitors who wanted a snapshot of the spectacular dinosaur sculptures could take home this delicately tinted picture in Nelson's View, a souvenir book. Though Owen wouldn't have agreed, this pretty picture shows modern dinosaur descendants: the waterfowl paddling past the lumbering dinosaur sculptures.
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Year: 1856
Scientist/artist: B. Cotta
Originally appeared in: Architectural plan for geological museum entrance
Now appears in: "Lasuén's Pterodactyl: An Early Use of a Pterosaur in Plastic Arts" by Knoll and López-Antoñanzas in Comptes Rendus Palevol
This mid-19th-century plan for a geological museum entrance features Mesozoic fossils greeting the hypothetical visitor, including a plesiosaur whose skull is positioned to look into the visitor's eyes. And the plesiosaur appears to be smiling. Above the door, two Iguanodon skeletons frolic below skeletons of a pterosaur (left) and bat (right). The Iguanodon skeletons are recognizable by their horned snouts, an error not corrected until later discoveries moved the "horn" to the dinosaur's foot. In the end, the Freiberg Mining Academy adopted an entrance without all the fossil adornments. A shame, really. Walking through this museum door would be a blast.
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Year: 1910
Promoter: Carl Hagenbeck
Photographed in: Tierpark Hagenbeck, Hamburg, Germany (photo from January 1917 edition of Travel)
Now appears in: Abominable Science! by Loxton and Prothero
Several decades after Richard Owen and Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins collaborated on their spectacularly wrong dinosaurs in London, exotic-animal dealer Hagenbeck oversaw the construction of a more realistic, life-size, cement Diplodocus in his zoo in Hamburg. Diplodocus and Brontosaurus dazzled natural history buffs on multiple continents, including Africa, where paleontologists began finding impressive dinosaur fossils. Against this backdrop, Hagenbeck speculated in his 1909 book Beasts and Men that maybe, somewhere in the African interior, sauropods weren't entirely extinct. He reported hearing reports of "an immense and wholly unknown animal" in Rhodesia, and legends of "a huge monster, half elephant, half dragon." He was a bit fuzzy about his sources, but his casual speculation nevertheless spawned headlines, including "Brontosaurus Still Lives" in the Washington Post. Mokele Mbembe was born. Over a century later, despite the complete lack of physical evidence to vouch for the animal's existence, many cryptozoologists and creationists still cling to the Mokele Mbembe legend.

Year: 1910
Scientist: Oliver P. Hay
Artist: Mary Mason Mitchell
Originally published in: "On the Manner of Locomotion of the Dinosaurs, Especially Diplodocus, with Remarks on the Origin of the Birds" in Proceedings of the Washington Academy of Sciences
Now appears in: Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org)
Richard Owen, perhaps for theological reasons, insisted upon a mammalian articulation in dinosaur reconstructions but, decades later, Hay argued that dinosaurs had alligator-like stances and drooping abdomens. One might wonder why dragging bellies wouldn't show up in fossil trackways but, in all fairness, the same question could be asked about dragging tails, which remained a standard part of dinosaur depictions throughout much of the 20th century. To his credit, Hay did surmise that sauropods probably didn't spend their lives standing in lakes, and he recommended that museums clearly distinguish fossil bones from casts in public displays. So, in some ways, he actually was ahead of his time.

Year: c. 1916
Artist: Heinrich Harder
Appears at: Wikipedia (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Diplodocus_Heinrich_Harder.jpg)
Oliver Hay's alligator-like stance for dinosaur reconstructions didn't attract many followers, but Heinrich Harder produced a full-color illustration of a belly-scraping Diplodocus around the middle of the 1910s. Paleontologists continued to promote a tail-dragging dinosaur articulation for several more decades.
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Year: 1936
Scientist: Christian Strunz
Originally published in: "Unsere Donner-Eshse (Diplodocus) in Neuer Haltung" in Natur und Volk
Now appears in: American Dinosaur Abroad by Ilja Nieuwland
Oliver Hay questioned previous articulations of sauropod legs when he endorsed his crawling dinosaurs, but when American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie dispatched Diplodocus plaster casts to heads of state across Europe, German zoologist Gustav Tornier questioned just about everything in its articulation. Like Hay, Tornier advocated a lizard-like leg articulation. Carnegie Museum director William Holland, who had overseen mountings of the original bones and assorted plaster casts, all with upright legs, pushed back. Holland argued that if Diplodocus had splayed its legs out as far as Tornier recommended, the animal's barrel chest would have carved a trough in the ground. In Germany, though, Tornier's interpretation won, at least through the mid-1930s. Christian Strunz published this picture of his small-scale Diplodocus models for Frankfurt's Senckenberg Museum. The matter was largely resolved in 1938 when Roland T. Bird found sauropod trackways demonstrating a relatively narrow gait.

Year: 1910
Scientist: H.N. Hutchinson
Artist: J. Smit
Originally published in: Extinct Monsters and Creatures of Other Days
Image provided by: Biodiversity Heritage Library (some rights reserved)
These cheerful specimens of Diplodocus carnegii enjoy a summertime dip the same way little kids today would, one of them apparently testing the water as the other looks on. Wallowing in the water wasn't a matter of sauropod recreation so much as necessity, paleontologists thought, believing that the animals needed the water's buoyancy to support their massive bodies. But water not only provides buoyancy, it also exerts pressure, and so much pressure in fact would have been too much for a dinosaur thorax. That discovery didn't occur for decades after this picture was published, and water-dwelling dinosaur persisted throughout much of the 20th century. So did dragging tails.

Year: 1910
Scientists: H.N. Hutchinson, Nathan Smith
Artist: J. Smit
Originally published in: Extinct Monsters and Creatures of Other Days
Image provided by: Biodiversity Heritage Library (some rights reserved)
Hutchinson's book captioned this illustration as the "oldest-known dinosaur, Anchisaurus, from North America." Modern reconstructions generally show the animal with a bipedal pose but with its torso roughly parallel to the ground. Smit appears to have covered his bases with possible poses, one dinosaur rearing up and the other in a reptilian pose as it nabs a meal. This was an improvement on the earliest interpretation of Anchisaurus. In fact, "oldest-known dinosaur" referred to the early date of its discovery. Nearly a century before Hutchinson's book was published, the first Anchisaurus specimen was uncovered in the process of opening a well with explosives. Professor Nathan Smith, who examined the skeleton that had been "blown to pieces" then partially recovered, opined that the fragmentary remains could be human. In Smith's defense, the fossil was blasted out of the ground several years before the first recognized dinosaur specimens had even been formally described by William Buckland and Gideon Mantell in Britain. In North America in 1818, a human fossil would have seemed far more plausible than a long-extinct, bipedal reptile.

Year: 1905
Scientist: John Bell Hatcher
Artist: Alice Woodwards
Originally published in: The Weekly Graphic
Now appears at: Independence Day Fossil: Dippy the Star-Spangled Dinosaur (http://www.theguardian.com/science/ blog/2013/jul/04/independence -day-dippy-star-spangled-dinosaur) (Also discussed in Dippy by Barrett, Parry and Chapman)
Early articulations of Diplodocus portrayed the animal alternately as a lawnmower and a reptilian version of a hippo, frequently wallowing in the water. This early sketch of the dinosaur shows it near what appears to be a mudflat. Later sauropod articulations raised the heads, and even later ones raised the tails after paleontologists realized that few signs of tail dragging appeared in dinosaur tracks. As for sauropods spending most of their time in the water, Diplodocus skulls gave scientists a good reason to think the animals might have done that. Diplodocus nostrils sit so high on the skull they are in between the animal's eyes.

Year: 1905
Originally published in: The Star
Now appears in: Dippy by Barrett, Parry and Chapman
At the beginning of the 20th century, Andrew Carnegie was dividing his time between the United States and Scotland, and spending his vast fortune on philanthropic projects. He wasted no time acquiring a Diplodocus skeleton for the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. After John Bell Hatcher completed a meticulous study of the animal, Carnegie posted a picture of the skeleton in his study at Skibo Castle in Scotland. When King Edward VII visited in 1902, he reportedly asked that a similar dinosaur be put on display at the natural history branch of the British Museum (now the Natural History Museum, London). Carnegie passed the request back to his people in Pittsburgh, initially making the fairly unrealistic request that somebody go dig up another Diplodocus skeleton. His underlings explained to him that wouldn't be so easily done, but instead offered a faithful cast of the fossil. Carnegie and the King agreed, and the cast was unveiled to the public in 1905. Interestingly, the cast went on display in London two years before the actual fossil went on display in Pittsburgh. That's because casts — while mimicking the exact shape and size of the fossils they're based on — offer two advantages: They're lightweight and they're less fragile. The Carnegie Museum staff took two extra years to figure out how to mount the original fossils, which had turned from bone into very heavy stone. In London, huge crowds turned out to see the skeleton that would be nicknamed Dippy, and cartoonists took advantage of the situation. In this cartoon, published in May 1905, the caption read, "What may happen to the policeman on night duty in the diplodocus department of the Natural History Museum." Sort of the Edwardian version of Night at the Museum. But it was silly to speculate that this dinosaur would come to life and try to munch on the night guard. Dippy was an herbivore.

Year: 1908
Originally appeared as: "Diner du Diplodocus"
Now appears in: American Dinosaur Abroad by Ilja Nieuwland
In the early 20th century, industrialist-turned-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie handed out plaster casts of a dinosaur named in his honor: Diplodocus carnegii. The Natural History Museum, London, got the first, but Paris wasn't far behind. The cast was unveiled at a crowded event on June 15, 1908. That evening, some of the luminaries involved in the mounting of the skeleton enjoyed a posh dinner. Though not as elaborate as a party inside a dinosaur sculpture, the scientists found themselves immortalized in this clever keepsake. This commemorative menu includes scientist pictures, and their names repeated in the dish names. At the top of the menu is the star of the evening: the dinosaur. Not only does Diplodocus carnegii drag its tail, but it drags that tail in a U-turn. The U shape wasn't driven by science but by logistics in the Paris museum. Though there are plenty of sauropod genera that are bigger and more massive, Diplodocus dinosaurs are long, especially in their tails. Trying to fit the long dinosaur into an already crowded fossil hall, one of the dinner attendees, Marcellin Boule, made a "light modification" to the tail. He curved it around at the end so it wouldn't tickle its neighbor Iguanodon. That logistical tweak made it into the menu illustration.
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Year: 1905
Scientists: Barnum Brown and Henry Fairfield Osborn
Artist: William Diller Matthew
Published in: "Tyrannosaurus and Other Cretaceous Carnivorous Dinosaurs" in Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History
Osborn authored the official description of T. rex a few years after Barnum Brown found it. Matthew's illustration employed the useful convention of showing a human for scale. Overall, the depiction in pretty good, except for the kangaroo-like stance that has since been overturned. And the caption of this image included an interesting caveat: "The association of the small forearm is probably incorrect." Skepticism about such tiny forearms is understandable, but repeated finds have shown that the tyrant lizard's forearms really were that diminutive.
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Year: 1936
Scientist: Ernst Stromer
Originally published in: Abhandlungen der Königlichen Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
Now appears in: Paleontology: An Illustrated History by David Bainbridge
Plenty of fossils originally thought to be lizardlike had turned out to be bipedal by the time Stromer described Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, so his mistake in giving this creature an upright, bipedal stance is understandable. More recent finds have shown this odd dinosaur to have a quadrupedal stance and possibly webbed toes. It might have been the rare dinosaurian swimmer. Stromer's specimen was one of the many fossils destroyed in WWII bombings.
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Year: 1891
Scientist: O.C. Marsh
Originally published in: "Restoration of Stegosaurus" in American Journal of Science
Now appears in: The Dinosaur Papers edited by Weishampel and White
In 1891, Marsh published reconstructions of Brontosaurus, Triceratops, and Stegosaurus — genera that still count among the best-known dinosaurs today. (He would also reprint the reconstructions in book form several years later.) Compared to paleontologists' current understanding of Stegosaurus, the flaws in Marsh's 1891 reconstruction are subtle, such as a dragging tail, and plates lined up in a single row. Today, the general consensus is that the plates were situated in two alternating rows, but even now, paleontologists aren't sure of the plates' function. They might have helped regulate temperature, made Stegosaurus look bigger (and therefore like more trouble to potential predators), or perhaps attracted sweethearts. The 1891 reconstruction apparently did not reflect Marsh's first take on the dinosaur. He initially thought the stegosaur might be a big turtle-like animal with its plates lying flat and overlapping each other to cover its back. Marsh discarded that idea based on better evidence, but the shingle-plate Stegosaurus reconstruction lived on.
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Year: 1893
Scientist: O.C. Marsh
Artist: J. Smit
Now appears in: "A Reevaluation of the Plate Arrangement on Stegosaurus stenops by Stephen Czerkas in Dinosaurs Past and Present: Volume II
In 1893, Smit fleshed out Marsh's skeletal reconstruction of Stegosaurus. Complete with skin, eyes, and a Mesozoic background, this stegosaur looks more interesting and even more approachable than the bare bones. Unfortunately, it retains the single row of plates, and adds a mistaken splayed-leg, crocodilian posture.
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Year: 1914
Scientist: Charles Gilmore
Artist: Frank Bond
Originally published in: Osteology of the armored Dinosauria in the United States National Museum, with special reference to the genus Stegosaurus
Now appears in: Paper Dinosaurs from the Linda Hall Library (http://www.lindahall.org/ events_exhib/exhibit/exhibits/ dino/gil1914.shtml)
Whereas O.C. Marsh overturned his own first interpretation of Stegosaurus — armored with a pavement of flat-lying protective plates — Charles Gilmore stuck with the idea, publishing on it years later. Gilmore's interpretation had an added twist: The spikes that are now understood to grace the dinosaur's tail instead sprouted from the stegosaur's back, in between the plates. Frank Bond's stegosaur looks like a big cactus with four legs and a mouth.

Year: 1931
Photographed in: National Zoo, Washington, DC by kroo2u (some rights reserved)
Paleontology has its own Gates of Paradise, though they're admittedly more modest than Lorenzo Ghiberti's Renaissance masterpiece. Construction on the Reptile House in the National Zoo finished in 1931, and the entrance featured a set of doors graced with gilded reptiles. Besides the stylized circular reptiles, the door panels showed more conventional renderings of Stegosaurus. Much more accurate than some earlier reconstructions, these stegosaurs still sported droopy tails. But it's hard to find any fault with a golden dinosaur.

Year: 1952
Artist: Ernest Untermann
Image provided by: Marxism and Dinosaurs: The Fanciful Art of Gerhard Ernest Untermann
Born in Prussia, Ernest Untermann immigrated to the United States, becoming a citizen in the late 19th century. He spent his salad days as a socialist, even running for public office as such. But Untermann was also a pacifist, and became disillusioned with the increasing militancy of some of his comrades. Tempering his enthusiasms, he wound up working for a mining company in Utah. Intrigued by local geology, he resolved to paint prehistoric life, and after some wandering through other states, he returned to Utah and kept painting. This picture incorporates more than one idea that has now been discredited: wallowing sauropods and dragging tails. The theropod on the right engages in a kind of saurian ballet, perhaps foiled by the coiled sauropod tail. Yet it's impossible to dislike this picture, or really any of Untermann's paintings of extinct reptiles.

Year: 1964
Scientist: Barnum Brown
Artist: Matthew Kalmenoff
Originally appeared in: Sinclair Dinoland at the New York World's Fair
Image provided by: Tom Simpson (some rights reserved)
This Triceratops has all the proper parts, and its coloring is plausible considering dinosaur colors have pretty much always fallen somewhere between educated guess and artistic license. But its posture looks closer to an alligator's than to a dinosaur's, at least what modern paleontologists have reconstructed. This stance was still quite popular in dinosaur reconstructions of the 1960s. The erupting volcanoes in the background add color and drama, but one has to wonder how easily even a robust dinosaur could have survived the ashfalls, lava flows, and volcanic gases from such a close range. But in fairness to Sinclair, all those smiling dinosaurs, whether at the World's Fair or neighborhood gas stations, got plenty of kids sufficiently interested in paleontology to make all the newer, better discoveries.

Year: 1910
Scientist: H.N. Hutchinson
Originally published in: Extinct Monsters and Creatures of Other Days
Image provided by: Biodiversity Heritage Library (some rights reserved)
This illustration from the early 20th century shows amphibious and reptilian animals from what was known as the New Red Sandstone period. Named for red sandstone beds deposited in the United Kingdom, the time span included the Permian and Triassic Periods, roughly 290 to 205 million years ago. Perhaps the most eye-catching creature in this prehistoric tableau is the Hyperodapedon emerging from the shrubbery on the right. Its tube-like body looks like a scaled-down version of a giant Dune sandworm with almost ineffectual legs attached. More thorough reconstructions have since given the animal a different posture, in which its small tank-like torso is well off the ground. But the animal still looks pretty weird in modern reconstructions, and still sports the curved double fangs protruding from its upper jaw.

Year: 1883
Scientist/artist: Jean Rengade
Originally published in: La Création Naturelle et les Êtres Vivants
Now appears in: The Reign of the Dinosaurs by Jean-Guy Michard
This colored engraving shows a heap of ruling reptiles felled by the eruption of poisonous hot springs, although some of the reptiles shown here look more like big crocodiles than dinosaurs. Nineteenth-century geologists named geologic periods based largely on fossils. The disappearance of certain types of fossils (indicative of extinction) and their replacement by different organisms generally marked the end of one geologic period and the beginning of another. The geologist John Phillips named three major geological eras: Palæozoic ("old life" or "The Age of Fishes"), Mesozoic ("middle life" or "The Age of Reptiles") and Cænozoic ("new life" or "The Age of Mammals") in 1841. But even though geologists recognized that Mesozoic reptiles went extinct, the naturalists couldn't be sure why, and proposed multiple explanations.

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 examined in the 1820s 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.

Year: c. 1835
Scientist: William Buckland
Artist: George Scharf
Originally appeared as: "The Comparative Sizes of Extinct Animals" (wall chart)
Now appears in: The Earth on Show by Ralph O'Connor
Iguanodon was the clear winner of the size contest in this wall chart used by William Buckland to teach his classes. Buckland adopted the same view as Mantell, who first discovered the Iguanodon tooth. Because the tooth looked like that of an iguana's, but was so much bigger, it wasn't entirely illogical to assume the ancient animal was a sized-up lizard. Early estimates of Iguanodon sized the animal at about 100 feet long. Not until more fossils turned up did the dinosaur get a new shape.
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Year: 1853
Scientist: John Mill
Originally published in: The Fossil Spirit: A Boy's Dream of Geology
Now appears in: The Earth on Show by Ralph O'Connor
These monstrous Iguanodon specimens are ready to rumble at sunset in the dramatic frontispiece of Mill's book. The animals look a bit more like dragons than prehistoric reptiles, and they both sport the misplaced horns on their snouts. But if you were a boy (or a sensible girl) of the 19th century, you would likely enjoy Mill's book, though it might cost a couple days' worth of your dad's wages. Written for a young audience, the gift book neatly incorporated little outline drawings of fossils and fleshed-out extinct animals. Each chapter featured an initial capital letter made up of fossils and other objects.
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Year: 1873
Scientist: John William Dawson
Originally published in: The Story of the Earth and Man
Image provided by: Project Gutenberg
As the 19th century progressed, so did paleontologists' understanding of the herbivorous dinosaur species Iguanodon. Paleontologists initially envisioned the animal as a giant lizard then as a mammalian-style quadruped. By the late 19th century, better fossil remains indicated that the dinosaur was largely bipedal, with relatively short forelimbs, though Iguanodon and Hadrosaurus were often shown with a kangaroo-like tripod stance. As for this dinosaur pictured in J.W. Dawson's book, though it resembles late-19th-century Iguanodon depictions, the species identification isn't given; it's simply listed as "an herbivorous Dinosaur," and it demonstrates its diet by munching on a tree. But get a load of the dinosaur's feet. Dawson was a creationist who opposed Darwin's theory of natural selection, and who cited scripture throughout The Story of the Earth and Man. So you wouldn't think he believed there was any relationship between dinosaurs and birds, and yet . . .

Year: 1910
Scientist: H.N. Hutchinson
Artist: J. Smit
Originally published in: Extinct Monsters and Creatures of Other Days
Image provided by: Biodiversity Heritage Library (some rights reserved)
Several decades after paleontologists imagined Iguanodon as a scaled-up lizard, or a dragon-like lizard, or a mammal-like quadruped (at least in posture), the animal got do-over. J. Smit's picture illustrates 19th-century advancements in piecing together the ancient reptile, including placement of the spike on its thumb instead of its snout. But this illustration shows a tripod-like posture — balancing on its hind legs and tail. Research in the century since this picture was published indicates that such a posture might have actually broken the ancient reptile's tail. As for the animal's color, a guess from 1910 is still about as good as a guess from today. Few skin samples from the Mesozoic survive.

Year: 1855
Author: William Elfe Tayler
Originally published in: Geology: Its Facts and its Fictions
Now appears in: The Earth on Show by Ralph O'Connor
With titles to his credit such as Ashley Down; or, Living Faith in a Living God and Popery: Its Character and its Crimes, 19th-century writer W. Elfe Tayler was arguably more interested in the future inhabitants of heaven than the past inhabitants of Earth. But he wrote about geology, too, namely to argue, "whilst the facts of the science are plain and incontrovertible, the inferences which our most celebrated Geologists have drawn from them, are, on the contrary, of the most questionable character — being not only founded on data altogether uncertain and insufficient, but actually at variance with many of the phenomena of the Earth's surface, as described by themselves." In the preface of his so-called exposé of contemporary geologic theories, he vowed to "show their inconsistency both with reason and Scripture." In short, Tayler was a biblical literalist. But like geologists and paleontologists of his day, he still had to entice readers to buy his book, and as Ralph O'Connor argues, Tayler used the same sort of bait the geologists did: pictures of prehistoric beasts. The frontispiece of his book showed smiling marine reptiles and a very lizard-like dinosaur. The spike on its snout suggests it was Iguanodon. More complete fossil finds eventually showed paleontologists that the spike really resided on the dinosaur's thumb.
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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.

Year: 1664-1678
Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher
Originally published in: Mundus Subterraneus
Now appears in: Fossils: Evidence of Vanished Worlds by Yvette Gayrard-Valy and Athanasius Kircher's Theatre of the World by Joscelyn Godwin
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 European Christians 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.

Year: 1651
Scientist/artist: Johannes Faber
Originally published in: Thesaurus
Now appears in: The Eye of the Lynx by David Freedberg and "Investigation of Claims of Late-Surviving Pterosaurs: The Cases of Belon's, Aldrovandi's, and Cardinal Barberini's Winged Dragons" by Phil Senter and Darius M. Klein in Palaeontologia Electronica
Kircher likely based his dragon depiction on a similar engraving done by Faber, a member of the Lincean (or Lyncean) Academy in Italy. The Linceans set out with the ambitious agenda to be "slaves neither of Aristotle nor any other philosopher, but of noble and free intellect in regard to physical things." Unfortunately, they still needed patrons. The influential Barberini family — with multiple cardinals and Pope Urban VIII among its ranks — was fond of dragons. So while Faber entertained plenty of doubts about the accuracy of this dragon, he had to do what he had to do. Compared to Kircher's rendition of what was probably the same specimen, Faber's illustration is a bit grittier. It shows loose flaps of tissue at the juncture of the neck and torso, as well as some ribs. In their paper on alleged winged dragons from the Renaissance and Baroque periods, Senter and Klein point out that these messy details are good indicators that the dragon was pieced together from different animals.
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Year: c. 600 BC
Photographed in: Detroit Institute of Arts by Maia C. (some rights reserved)
Discussed in: The Natural History of Unicorns by Chris Lavers
This snake dragon graced Ishtar Gate around the inner city of Babylon, and was associated with the Neo-Babylonian deity Marduk. According to legend, the young and hungry Marduk acquired his pet after volunteering for combat and handily defeating a series of foes. This dainty dragon combines features of multiple animals. A horn (or perhaps two horns in perfect profile) on the head likens it to a unicorn. The creature sports mammalian front legs and avian hind legs with long, sharp claws. Scales run from the head to the apparently prehensile tail. A forked tongue protrudes from the dragon's rippled snout. Whether the dragon of Marduk was remotely inspired by, or intended to represent, an actual animal is hard to say, but Lavers argues that visitors to the imposing monuments of imperial capitals may very well have taken images like this literally, fueling legends about fantastic creatures.

Photographed in: Metropolitan Museum of Art by Klaus Wagensonner (some rights reserved)
Discussed in: Fabulous Beasts by Joseph Nigg
This exquisitely carved artifact provides another view of the hybrid animal on the Ishtar Gate. This dragon, or mushussu, was said to be offspring of Tiamat, a mother goddess often portrayed as a she-dragon. Tiamat played a part in a complicated Babylonian creation epic that started with a domestic dispute about whether her children were spoiled brats, and quickly escalated into a story of banishment, magic spells, rebellion and murder. The creation epic ended with the slaying of Tiamat by the god Marduk, who managed to make the heaven and Earth out of her remains. Afterwards, this orphaned mushussu became Marduk's sidekick. Whereas Christian Europe would usually regard dragons as demonic, the ancient story of Tiamat was more nuanced. She had incredible powers and a mean temper, but also relatable motives. Mark Norell, paleontologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History, contends that while the builders of the Ishtar Gate and other great monuments were willing to decorate their structures with intimidating animals like Marduk's pet dragon, they would have avoided representations of animals that were wholly evil. Instead, he argues, dragons acquired their reputation for pure wickedness (and at the same time, wings) when the Judeo-Christian tradition began to take hold in Europe. Although ancient myths provided plenty of opportunities for heroes to prove their mettle by defeating dragons, it was the arrival of Christianity that turned a hero-slaying-dragon event into a symbol of Christ defeating evil.

Year: c. 1430-1440
Artist: Master of Sir John Fastolf
Originally published in: Medieval manuscript
Now appears at: Saint Michael and the Dragon Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program
One reason dragons were viewed so negatively by European Christians was that the beast typically symbolized the devil. The Book of Revelation mentions a war in heaven between the satanic dragon and Saint Michael the Archangel. The archangel, being stronger, defeats the dragon and kicks him out of heaven. Maybe not the best move, considering Satan and his fallen-angel groupies were believed to spend the many years that followed making mischief among impressionable humans. Fear of the dragon's evil persists today; as recently as 2007, a group of unusually strict Welsh Christians asked for the red dragon on the Welsh flag to be replaced with the black and gold cross of Saint David.

Year: c. 1260
Originally published in: Medieval bestiary
Now appears in: Beasts: Factual and Fantastic by Elizabeth Morrison © J. Paul Getty Museum
Discussed in: Medusa's Gaze and Vampire's Bite by Matt Kaplan
A feature common in medieval European dragon stories was a dragon's ability to breathe fire; Beowulf fought just such a beast in the epic poem from the early Middle Ages. Perhaps this worrisome dragon feat simply emerged from someone's desire to tell a really good story, but Kaplan highlights some intriguing possibilities from the real world. The furious dragon in Beowulf torched the local landscape after waking from a nap to find a valuable goblet had been stolen from its lair. In 2003, the husband-and-wife archaeologist/linguist team of Paul and Elizabeth Barber proposed that the fire-breathing dragon — which left no trace of itself once slain — might have been inspired by a real phenomenon in medieval northern Europe, where dank burial chambers and decaying corpses provided the perfect nursery for methane-producing bacteria. If you were a grave robber in the Middle Ages looking for loot, you'd need to take a torch along for light, and if the flame from your torch ignited the methane, you might think you'd awakened a fire-breathing monster. Ancient miners armed with torches might also have stumbled into explosive gas deposits deep underground.

Year of correction: 2014
Appears in: "Investigation of Claims of Late-Surviving Pterosaurs: The Cases of Belon's, Aldrovandi's, and Cardinal Barberini's Winged Dragons" by Phil Senter and Darius M. Klein in Palaeontologia Electronica
"Winged dragons" cobbled together by Renaissance and Baroque con artists have found a renewed lease on life, thanks to modern-day creationists. Multiple 20th- and 21st-century biblical literalists have argued that the winged dragons pictured in old books by Athanasius Kircher, Ulisse Aldrovandi and others really show pterosaurs that lived through the Middle Ages. Senter and Klein debunk that nonsense in their investigation of the creationists' claims, first by showing how much the anatomy of alleged winged dragons of yesteryear differ from the anatomy of pterosaur fossils. Their most obvious point: Pterosaurs had bigger wings and smaller guts; besides defying the science of geologic time and evolution, a tiny-winged, pot-bellied Renaissance dragon would have to defy the laws of physics to fly. But Senter and Klein don't stop there. They also compare detailed illustrations from old tomes to the anatomy of very real, non-extinct animals that might have been used in the forgeries. (The only appendages that stumped them were the wings.) This diagram compares the head of Cardinal Francesco Barberini's dragon, illustrated by Lincean Academy member Johannes Faber and Baroque polymath Athanasius Kircher, to the skull of a weasel (Mustela nivalis). The paper authors found Faber's illustration and written description of the "dragon's" teeth especially instructive; the teeth were differentiated like those of mammals. In the annotations for this image, "m" stands for molar and "pm" stands for premolar. Senter and Klein remark, "We conclude that Cardinal Barberini's dragon was a taxidermic composite. It includes the skull of a common weasel; the belly skin of a snake; the dorsal and lateral skin of one or two individual lizards, possibly of the genus Lacerta; the tail skeleton of an eel; and 'wings' that remain a mystery."
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Year: 1590
Scientist/artist: Ulrich Vogelsang
Photographed in: Klagenfurt, Austria by Janos Korom Dr. (some rights reserved)
Discussed in: The First Fossil Hunters by Adrienne Mayor
Sometime around 1335, quarrymen discovered the skull of a Pleistocene woolly rhinoceros in the region of Klagenfurt. The concepts of an ancient Earth, ice ages and extinction were all pretty foreign to medieval and Renaissance Europeans, so the odd-looking skull was interpreted as something less real but at the same time more familiar: a dragon. Folklorist Adrienne Mayor points out that, even though it was presented as a mythical beast, Vogelsang's sculpture "is often cited as the earliest known reconstruction of an extinct animal." Vogelsang's dragon was just one of many instances where fossil remains, in this case mammalian remains, were interpreted as dragon bones. But whether fossil bones provided the original inspiration for dragon myths is a tough question to answer. Dragon legends have existed for thousands of years in multiple cultures, and these mythical creatures haven't all looked or acted the same. Animals still living, such as some reptile or amphibian species, or simply the human imagination might have played a bigger role than fossils.

Century: 3rd BC
Appears at: Pendant in the Form of a Knotted Dragon © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art: "A conceptual as well as a technical tour de force, this pendant defies the obdurate character of jade and makes it appear to be impossibly supple and pliant. The pendant takes the form of a serpentine dragon, whose body is grooved to resemble twisted rope. The two ends of the dragon overlap to form a circular ring. One end has a flattened felinelike head with gaping jaws, bared fangs, and striations marking the eyebrow and upper lip. The other end loops behind the head and doubles back in an elegant counter curve. At the bottom of the ring, the sculptor further defies the nature of the medium by making the body appear to have tied itself in a double knot. The pendant was suspended from a small horizontal perforation drilled through the neck of the dragon at the apex of the ring, just behind the juncture of the two ends."
In contrast to the fire-spewing, bling-hoarding, virgin-chomping beasts of the West, dragons were viewed much more favorably in the East — cheerful animals that could bring life-giving rain. The Chinese prized jade perhaps as much as they prized dragons, and working such hard material would require tremendous skill.

Year: 1664-1678
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: c. 1471
Originally published in: Prayer Book of Charles the Bold
Now appears in: Beasts: Factual and Fantastic by Elizabeth Morrison © J. Paul Getty Museum
Regardless of how medieval Europeans felt about dragons, the magnificent beasts made magnificent decorations, such as this grouchy but cute little creature.

Century: 12th
Originally published in: Royal Bestiary
Now appears in: The Book of Fabulous Beasts by Joseph Nigg
This 12th-century bestiary illustration was likely influenced by the work of Isidore of Seville, who was influenced by the Classical scholar Pliny. Isidore was born around 560, and although he was a bishop, he introduced a certain degree of secularism to bestiaries. Animals were animals, not necessarily living, breathing morality lessons existing just for the benefit of humans. The relaxation of the bestiary moral code, however, didn't keep folklore about fanciful animals out of Isidore's encyclopedia. Thanks to its sheer size, this dragon, or draco, poses a threat even to the elephant (which is rendered with impressive accuracy). According to legend, the dragon could entangle the elephant's legs and strangle the proboscidian.

Year: 1572
Scientist/artist: Ulisse Aldrovandi
Originally published in: Tavole di Animali
Now appears in: Possessing Nature by Paula Findlen
Ulisse Aldrovandi produced his own description of the alleged dragon that was brought to him for inspection upon the elevation of Pope Gregory XIII. Aldrovandi immediately set to work writing about the animal, even looking into the commonly held belief of the time that serpents arose from eggs laid by roosters. Meanwhile, locals saw the dragon as an omen of bad times ahead.
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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: 1640
Scientist/artist: Ulisse Aldrovandi
Originally published in: Liber Serpentium et Draconum
Image provided by: Biodiversity Heritage Library (some rights reserved)
This fantastic creature mixes traits of multiple animals (bird feet, serpent tail, shark teeth, mottled fog skin) and combines them with a trait of a monster (seven heads). This picture roughly resembles the hydra woodcut published nearly a century earlier by Conrad Gesner, and a woodcut very much like Gesner's hydra appears on the preceding page of Aldrovandi's book. In all likelihood the similar creatures were derived from the seven-headed beast in the Book of Revelation, itself a metaphor for Rome's famed seven hills. Aldrovandi remained fascinated by dragons, seven-headed and single-headed, all his life.

Year: 1560
Scientists/artists: Conrad Gesner
Published in: Icones Animalium
Now appears in: "The Sources of Gessner's Pictures for the Historia Animalium" by S. Kusukawa in Annals of Science
This so-called salamander has birdlike feet, fur, a remarkably knobby head, a piggish nose, ears, and a neat row of stars running down its back. Gesner made his share of mistakes about the natural world, but by the time he reproduced this illustration in Icones Animalium, he knew quite well it was wrong. He didn't have a problem with publishing conflicting illustrations, especially when he could compare a bad example to a better one. By showing this image along with a more accurate rendition, Gesner probably hoped to clear up misconceptions.
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Year: 1658
Scientists/artists: Conrad Gesner and Edward Topsell
Published in: Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes and Serpents
Now appears in: Topsell's Histories of Beasts edited by Malcolm South
Topsell did not present dragons as uniformly evil, but instead as creatures of a mixed nature. He also described the animals' medicinal values. "First, the fat of a dragon dried in the sun is good against creeping ulcers; and the same mingled with honey and oil helps the dimness of the eyes. . . . The head of a dragon keeps one from looking asquint. . . . The fat of dragons is of such virtue that it drives away venomous beasts. It is also reported that by the tongue or gall of a dragon boiled in wine men are delivered from the spirits of the night called incubi and succubi, or else nightmares."
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Year: 1658
Scientist: Edward Topsell
Published in: Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes and Serpents
Now appears at: Topsell's Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes at the University of Houston Digital Library
This dragon appeared in the same illustration as the snakelike winged creature above. Topsell believed in nearly endless dragon variety, writing, "There are divers sorts of dragons, distinguished by their countries, partly by their quantity and magnitude, and party by the different form of their external parts. Some dragons have wings and no feet; some have both feet and wings, and some have neither feet nor wings, but are only distinguished from the common sort of serpents by a comb upon their heads and by a beard under their cheeks." The feature on this dragon's head looks not so much like a comb as a pair of devilish horns.

Century: Early 17th
Scientist/artist: Crispin de Passe
Published in: America
Now appears in: "The Basilisk and Rattlesnake, or a European Monster Comes to America" by Boria Sax in Society and Animals
This engraving, which was not necessarily intended to be taken literally, shows a creature resembling a basilisk — a creepy hybrid animal with avian and reptilian characteristics. Europeans thought the basilisk could kill with its malevolent gaze, and the same quality was attributed to the American rattlesnake. Although rattlesnakes eat plenty of other reptiles, early accounts of their diet listed only "higher" animals like birds and small mammals. Sax argues that, in the European mindset, the evil-eye capability of basilisks and rattlesnakes could be explained by the envy that lowly types feel toward their betters.

Year: 1534
Scientist/artist: Andrea Alciati
Published in: Emblematum libellus
Now appears in: "Marcus Gheeraerts and the Aesopic Connection in Seventeenth-Century Scientific Illustration" by William B. Ashworth in Art Journal
Some of the earliest naturalist texts and illustrations took their inspiration from non-scientific sources, specifically emblem books and fables. That might explain this "chameleon," which looks very little like the reptile it's meant to represent, and more like a grouchy possum. Medieval and Renaissance naturalists often conveyed morals with their accounts of animal life and the chameleon, able to change colors, was disliked for its duplicity.

Year: 1553
Scientist/artist: Pierre Belon
Published in: De aquatilibus
Now appears in: "Marcus Gheeraerts and the Aesopic Connection in Seventeenth-Century Scientific Illustration" by William B. Ashworth in Art Journal
Two decades after Alciati's improbable chameleon, Pierre Belon introduced a far more accurate rendition. Not only does this chameleon look familiar to the modern viewer in general appearance, but it's also accurate in details many would miss. On its front feet, the chameleon has two outside toes and three inside toes. On its hind feet, the numbers are reversed. Even though this chameleon's leg posture looks a little odd, it illustrates the creature's strange toe arrangement. And it looks nothing like a possum.

Year: c. 1500
Originally published in: Hortus Sanitatis
Now appears in: Natural History in Shakespeare's Time by H.W. Seager
Image provided by: Biodiversity Heritage Library (some rights reserved)
In 1896, Herbert West Seager assembled a Goof Gallery of his own: a book entitled Natural History in Shakespeare's Time. He assembled passages of text from multiple sources, and used woodcuts photographed from Hortus Sanitatis. Seager's copy of the herbal was undated, but he pointed out to his readers that multiple editions of the book dated from 1490 to 1517. Although the passages Seager included about the species were entertaining, none of them come close to this woodcut. Madagascar — and everyplace else that chameleons live — must have been far away from the artist.

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.

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 peaco*ck. Nobody should forget, Lonitzer's readers knew, who tempted Eve into eating that apple.

Year: 1635
Scientist/artist: George Wither
Published in: A Collection of Emblemes
Now appears in: "Poor, Bare, Forked" by Laurie Shannon in Shakespeare Quarterly
Another example of animals as emblems included the crocodile, with the rather improbable characteristic of virtue (or "vertue"). After listing weapons people might acquire for their own protection, Wither warned in verse:
"If, therefore, thou thy Spoylers, wilt beguile,
Thou must be armed, like this Crocodile;
Ev'n with such nat'rall Armour (ev'ry day)
As no man can bestowe, or take away:
For, spitefull Malice, at one time or other,
Will pierce all borrowed Armours."
With a canine mouth, birdlike legs, and a high-flying tail, this crocodile left a little room for improved realism, but it beat medieval bestiary crocodile pictures.
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Year: c. 1270
Originally published in: Bestiary
Now appears in: Beasts: Factual and Fantastic by Elizabeth Morrison © J. Paul Getty Museum
"The [hy]drus is a worthy enemy of the crocodile and has this characteristic and habit: When it sees a crocodile sleeping on the shore, it enters the crocodile through its open mouth, rolling itself in mud in order to slide more easily down its throat. The crocodile therefore, instantly swallows the [hy]drus alive. But the [hy]drus, tearing open the crocodile's intestines, comes out whole and unharmed." True to bestiary tradition, the description offered a moral, namely that the crocodile represented death, and the hydrus represented Christ, who defeats death. Symbolic meaning aside, the hydrus might have been based on observations of some kind of water snake, albeit with the addition of feet and pointy ears; the crocodile clearly wasn't based on observation.

Century: 13th
Originally published in: Medieval manuscript
Now appears at: A Crocodile Devouring a Water Snake Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program
The Getty Museum hosts more than one manuscript showing a furry crocodile fighting a losing battle. If, like the [hy]drus shown above, the water snake represents God defeating death, then this "water snake" might allude to the Trinity with its three heads. Not quite a typical snake, it also has legs, at least a hind set. Front legs, if they exist, are somewhere inside the unfortunate crocodile. The illustrator(s) who portrayed the beasts had apparently seen neither an actual crocodile nor an actual snake, but certainly knew how to wield gold leaf.

Century: 13th
Appears in: Bestiary: MS Bodley 764 by Richard Barber
This bestiary depiction of a crocodile is an improvement over some contemporary renditions in that this crocodile doesn't have any fur. Otherwise, it's not much of an improvement. It has a human-like face, pointed ears, and disproportionately long armored spikes running down the sides of its body. Considering it's holding two fish, it apparently also has opposable thumbs. Meanwhile, the unfortunate fish in the crocodile's mouth knows it's doomed, evident from its downturned mouth. The bestiary text about the crocodile included the gem that crocodile dung was used as an ointment by old women and faded trollops to beautify their skin until their sweat washed the ointment away.

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.

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 alligators, but also venomous snakes.

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.

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.

Year: 1664-1678
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: 1664-1678
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: 1697
Scientist/artist: Caspar Schott
Originally published in: Physica Curiosa
Now appears in: The Browsing Corner from Ebling Library (http://ebling.library.wisc.edu/ historical/browsingcorner/ bc-issue003.html)
Caspar (also spelled Gaspar or Kaspar) Schott was a student of the polymath Athanasius Kircher in Würzburg. After Schott was ordained, and after he corresponded with his old teacher, he was appointed Kircher's assistant in Rome. Schott was only in Rome for a couple years before being sent back to Germany, but the two Jesuits continued to collaborate on publications for years. Although Kircher's reputation might have eclipsed that of his former pupil, Schott was said to be admired by Catholics and Protestants of his hometown of Augsburg. He labored for years over his Physica Curiosa. This illustration comes from a later edition, published decades after his death. Schott may have shared his old teacher's credulity about dragons, as he depicted his own scene of a dragon slaying. It appeared on a foldout page at the front of the book. Aside from the flame or vapor emanating from its mouth, this unwieldy dragon doesn't look capable of putting up much of a fight.

Year: 1723
Scientist/artist: Johann Jakob Scheuchzer
Originally published in: Ouresiphoítes Helveticus
Now appears at: Illustration depicting a mythical "Alpine dragon"
Scheuchzer, who mistook the fossil of a giant salamander for a human victim of the biblical flood, also depicted an alpine dragon scaring the daylights out of an alpine human. Dispensing with the customary scales and wings, Scheuchzer gave this dragon a catlike face. What might be fur runs from its head to its rump. Birdlike feet and a snakelike tail complete the chimeric creature. If Scheuchzer took alpine dragon legends seriously, he would be one of the few naturalists after Athanasius Kircher who still believed in dragons.

Year: 1664-1678
Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher
Originally published in: Mundus Subterraneus
Image provided by: Biodiversity Heritage Library (some rights reserved)
In his two volumes of Mundus Subterraneus, Kircher discusses gravity, eclipses, weather, the sun and moon, subterranean men, giants, poisons and antidotes, astrology, fireworks, fossils, dragons, demons and more. Included among the lavish illustrations are maps — Eden before Eve bit into the apple, and homier places like the Black Forest. This excerpt of a Black Forest map shows Mummelsee, a lake that remains a popular tourist destination today. The map might be described as realistic were it not for the reptilian monsters frolicking in the water. Legends persist even now about water sprites and a king who likes to drag ladies under the waves.

Year: 1555
Scientist/artist: Olaus Magnus
Originally published in: History of Nordic Peoples
Now appears at: Olaus Magnus - History of the Nordic Peoples - Illustrations with Comments (http://www.avrosys.nu/prints/ prints23-b-olausmagnus-intro.htm)
Olaus Magnus's book wasn't an account of far-off exotic people, but the story of his own country, Sweden. His familiarity with the land described, however, didn't prevent the occasional tall tale. This crude woodcut shows the noble King Harald and his loyal servant killing the dragon that was supposed to kill them. While the king drives a razor through the beast's navel, the servant boxes the poor thing about its ears with a femur and skull.

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 BC, 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.

Century: c. 7th BC
Originally appeared on: Ancient Greek pottery
Now appears in: Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws by Adrienne Mayor (sketch by Adrienne Mayor)
Mayor first came across "a superb collection" of griffins in a small archaeological museum on Samos, an island off the coast of Turkey. She spent hours sketching bronze griffin heads and griffin paintings on ancient vases. A portion of her sketch of griffins painted onto an ancient Greek vase appears here. Mayor eventually made the case for the fossil inspiration for the griffin myth in scientific literature, but not until after she spent years discerning hints of ancient Greek expertise in recognizing fossil remains. Before Mayor argued for a dinosaur-griffin connection, and described other fossil discoveries from Antiquity in The First Fossil Hunters, the prevailing view among science historians was that virtually no paleontological insights happened before the Renaissance. In Flying Snakes and Griffin Claws, Mayor writes, "[I]t didn't seem fair that scholars willing to give so much credit to the Greeks for inventing democracy, philosophy, and catapults could give the same people a D- in paleontology."

Year: c. 490 BC
Now appears in: The Griffin and the Dinosaur by Aronson, Mayor and Muller
Folklorist Adrienne Mayor devoted a decade to finding the origin of the griffin myth. A major clue came from Greece, where her study of ancient manuscripts turned up the first accounts of griffins around 675 BC. Accounts stated that griffins guarded gold in Scythia. Nomads, traders and gold prospectors, the Scythians ranged from the Black Sea to Mongolia; trade between Greece and Scythia later morphed into the Silk Road. Another clue came from the museum in Olympia, which displayed a bronze relief of a griffin mother and pup. Ancient Greeks rarely portrayed purely mythical creatures with babies or parents; the mother-pup pairing suggested something real. Among the Classical texts she studied, Mayor found a comment from a Greek-reading Roman named Aelian. Adept at collecting accounts of nature, Aelian doubted that griffins cared much for gold. Like most animals, he argued, they probably really cared for their offspring. Following up on her hunch that fossils inspired the legend, Mayor eventually wrote to Phil Currie and Dale Russell asking about the possibility of seeing fossils eroding out of the Gobi Desert. Not only could paleontologists find Protoceratops fossils, but also complete nests with eggs and hatchlings. No one would have seen a live "griffin" (the dinosaurs that inspired the tales were long extinct) but sharp-eyed nomads could easily have spotted their skeletons. Modern research and Aelian's insights aside, the gold-guarding griffin legend persisted for centuries, earning the creature a place in coinage. This Greek coin was minted a couple centuries after the Greeks and Scythians made contact, and it shows a griffin and a cicada.

Year: c. 370-350 BC
Now appears in: Mythic Creatures by Kendall, Norell and Ellis
The Crimean Peninsula, today internationally recognized as part of Ukraine, was once a Greek colony. This coin from classical antiquity was excavated in Crimea. The griffin legend, which likely reached Ancient Greece via Silk Road traders, influenced multiple aspects of Greek culture, everything from art to currency. So perhaps it was fitting that an animal often rumored to guard gold — by people who themselves prospected for it — would appear on gold coins. At the feet of this griffin is a stalk resembling another kind of gold, one both more abundant and more vital than the precious metal: wheat. Over 2,000 years later, Ukraine retains its reputation as one of the world's vital breadbaskets.

Year: c. 150
Now appears in: Mythic Creatures by Kendall, Norell and Ellis
From around 800 BC to 200 AD, Scythians controlled large stretches of Central Asia and the northern Middle East. If the griffin myth indeed originated with Scythian nomads, that myth mutated as it spread to other cultures, and persisted over centuries. In some cases, the creature embodied majesty; in others, greed. (It was originally said to guard gold, after all.) This faience statuette, found in Egypt and dating from the time of the Roman Empire, shows a griffin turning a wheel of fortune. Throughout much of the Mediterranean in those days, griffins frequently represented the Greek goddess Nemesis — the goddess of retribution. As for the origins of the myth, folklorist Adrienne Mayor has made the case that the griffin myth may have been inspired by Protoceratops and Psittacosaurus fossils in the Gobi Desert, but other dinosaur species might have played their part in the mythology. Laurel Kendall, Mark Norell and Richard Ellis point out that giant claws of Therizinosaurus and/or Deinocheirus found in the Gobi bear a strong resemblance to the sharp claws in many griffin depictions.

Year: c. 470-450 BC
Photographed in: Metropolitan Museum of Art by Peter Roan (some rights reserved)
Griffins make multiple appearances on ancient currency. The griffin on this ancient silver coin from Thrace, photographed in, looks almost like a parrot. Folklorist Adrienne Mayor argued in the early 1990s that dinosaur fossils may have inspired the mythological creature, which first turned up in ancient Greek accounts around the seventh century BC. It's not proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that dinosaur fossils inspired the griffin myth, but fossils, historical records and geography combine to provide a plausible explanation. Ceratopsian and psittacosaurid skulls certainly sport narrow, pointy birdlike beaks.

Year: c. 500 BC
Photographed in: Persepolis, Iran by Sebastià Giralt (some rights reserved)
Discussed in: The First Fossil Hunters by Adrienne Mayor, "Griffins and Arimaspeans" by Adrienne Mayor and Michael Heaney in Folklore, 1993 issue, and "Persia: Ancient Soul of Iran" by Marguerite del Guidice in National Geographic, August 2008 issue
Given its location along the route later known as the Silk Road, the Persian Empire was ideally placed to absorb cross-cultural legends such as griffins. Carved some 25 centuries ago, these griffins can still be seen in Persepolis, Iran, an ancient capital of the Persian Empire. According to a nearby interpretative sign, these eagle/griffin capitals (apparently meant to crown a column) were likely intended for use in a local structure, but were later rejected for some reason. After their discovery in the mid-20th century, the griffins were mounted on a short pillar for preservation. Like other griffin depictions, these creatures boast fearsome beaks and characteristic griffin ears, although they lack the customary wings.

Years: 350-300 BC
Now appears at: Helmet of Chalcidian Type Digital image courtesy of the Getty's Open Content Program
Besides making its way westward along trade routes such as the Silk Road, griffin lore made its way into multiple aspects of daily life in the classical world. Excavated in southern Italy, this helmet is of Greek design. A griffin head with pointy ears and a birdlike beak emerges from the top of the helmet, and wings protrude upward from the sides. Perhaps the helmet was intended to imbue its wearer with a griffin's tenacious defense of all things held dear.

Year: c. 510 BC
Photographed in: Louvre Museum, Paris, by Steven Zucker (some rights reserved)
Discussed at: Louvre: Frieze of Griffins (http://www.louvre.fr/en/ oeuvre-notices/ frieze-griffins)
Situated in modern-day Iran, Susa was an ancient city along the Royal Road of the Achaemenid (First Persian) Empire. In the early 20th century, Jacques de Morgan led a series of excavations at the Palace of Darius, recovering thousands of decorative bricks comprising portraits of mythological creatures. This reconstruction at the Louvre Museum shows a griffin, part of a larger group. This griffin is a composite animal, with front legs looking like a lion's, and back legs looking like an eagle's. It has birdlike wings but, in contrast to many other griffins, the head of a lion instead without any beak. On top of its head are two curved goat horns pointing in opposite directions. This frieze must have presented an impressive image as it was, in the analysis of the Louvre, "charged with a symbolism relating to the Persian empire" whether or not it was intended to be viewed as a literal creature. Today, though, the curving goat horns might have an unintentionally comic effect, as they look a little like a jester's hat. Having to wear a silly hat might explain why the griffin looks so angry.

Year: c. 625-600 BC
Photographed in: Louvre Museum, Paris
Now appears at: Griffin protome Louvre Bj39.jpg (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File: Griffin_protome_Louvre _Bj39.jpg)
Once in Greece, Griffins quickly became a hit with the locals. Griffins appeared in coinage, artwork, armor, and even faience. Griffins also appeared in bling. Here, a griffin protome emerges from a brooch. A Gene Simmons-style tongue and Yoda-style ears emerge from the protome, along with the typical parrot beak that might have been inspired by a dinosaur skull. The brooch is made of electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, a little tougher than pure gold. In the 19th century, Auguste Salzmann excavated this brooch from the necropolis of Kameiros on the island of Rhodes.

Year: c. 1450 BC BC
Photographed at: Pylos, near the palace of Nestor
Now appears in: "Emblem for a New Era" by Jarrett Lobell in Archaeology, and "The Griffin and Lion Ivory Pyxis Lid from the Grave of the Griffin Warrior at Pylos" by Davis, Stocker and Aruz in Hesperia
Being a mythological creature didn't prevent the griffin from fighting with a real animal, and least not in art. In 2015, months of excavations of a grave from the ancient Greek city of Pylos revealed a literal wealth of artifacts from the Bronze Age. The griffin figured among the imagery in the grave goods so much that the research team named the ancient warrior the Griffin Warrior. One of the more stunning artifacts was this elephant-ivory lid of a pyxis (cosmetic box). Carved in relief is a griffin, whose beak nearly touches the rim of the lid on the left. Also carved in relief is a lion who, remarkably, seems to be getting the better of the griffin. The research team found the theme of this carving "unusual, though not unique, in representations dating to the early phases of the Late Bronze Age" in this region. The picture might have carried some geopolitical significance at the time.
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Year: 1250-1300
Appears at: Panel with a Griffin © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art: "In the ancient world, the mythical beasts called griffins were symbols of royalty and protectors of the dead. They continued to play these roles for Christians. A legend popular in the Byzantine era told of griffins carrying Alexander the Great through the heavens so he could view his vast realm. Carved griffins such as the one illustrated here are found on later Byzantine tombs, where they may have been placed to identify the dead of royal status and to afford them protection. The design of the relief is similar to patterns on Byzantine and Islamic silks."
In short, Christians inherited from the Classical world a mythical beast that might have been inspired by dinosaur fossils in the Gobi Desert.

Year: 1675
Scientist/artist: Athanasius Kircher
Originally published in: Arca Noë
Now appears in: Athanasius Kircher and Athanasius Kircher's Theatre of the World 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. He remarked that if they did exist, griffins likely belonged in the same category as vultures and eagles, "which have grown to such size either through the nature of the region or the influx of the heavens; wherefore we exclude them from the Ark." By the time Kircher penned Arca Noë, discoveries of so many animals from exotic locations had considerably crowded the biblical vessel.

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' 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.

Year: c. 1425-1450
Appears at: Aquamanile in the Form of a Griffin © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art: "This magnificent aquamanile in the form of a griffin with (separately cast) outstretched wings can be grouped stylistically with the unicorn [another specimen at the museum] and a few other examples that were probably produced by the same Nuremberg workshop in the second quarter of the 15th century. The aquamanile was filled through a hole between the ears, and water was poured from the spigot in the chest, likely a rare surviving original element."
Aquamaniles often held water needed for hand washing in Catholic masses and in upper-crust meals, and the water vessels often took human or animal form. Like the griffins that preceded it, this one sports a prominent beak and bird-foot forepaws.

Century: c. 6th-4th BC
Appears at: Plaque with Horned Lion-Griffins © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art: "In the 6th century BC, under the leadership of Cyrus the Great, the Persians established themselves at the head of an empire that would eventually extend from eastern Europe and Egypt to India. The Achaemenid Period is well documented by the descriptions of Greek and Old Testament writers and by abundant archaeological remains. Like the Achaemenid gold vessel decorated with the forepart of a lion also in the Museum's collection, this ornament depicts the winged lion-monster but here two creatures are shown rampant. In place of the lion's ears they have those of a bull. Horns curl back over spiky manes and the lion's neck is covered with a feather pattern. Sharply stylized wings extend over two of the five bosses and serve as decorative balance for the design. Heavy rings attached to the back suggest that the ornament was worn on a leather belt. the similar treatment of the lion motif on different types of objects demonstrates decorative conventions of the period."
Considering griffins reputedly guarded gold, it made sense to cast their likenesses in gold, too. Griffin bling for the brave warrior.

Year: c. 375–350 BC
Scientist: Herodotus
Appears at: Gold, Griffins, and Greeks: Scythian Art and Cultural Interactions in the Black Sea from The Metropolitan Museum of Art
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art: "The Greek historian Herodotus described a legendary race of one-eyed men living in the far north who were in constant battle with the griffins guarding hoards of gold. The men were called Arimaspeans by the nomadic Scythians who dominated the steppes north of the Black Sea, and also by the Greeks. The subject matter is appropriate indeed for a group of fourth century Attic vases that were found in considerable quantity in southern Russia, specifically Kerch, whence that name, which is often used for them."
Presumably the Arimaspeans were born one-eyed and didn't get their eyes poked out in battle with griffins. While the griffin myth might have been based on dinosaur fossils, it's less clear whether there was a real-life inspiration for the Arimaspeans, or whether they were just a scary tale of far-off, weird people.
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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.

Year: 1886
Author: Camille Flammarion
Originally published in: Le Monde avant la création de l'homme
Now appears in: Monsters: A Bestiary of the Bizarre by Christopher Dell
Titled "A prehistoric monster in a modern town," this illustration features another gigantic reptilian voyeur. The horn on the snout suggests Iguanodon leanings but by the time this prehistoric monster leered through a high-rise window, Louis Dollo had already established that Iguanodon's horn was really a thumb spike. Given this beast’s story-high head and front legs bending like human arms, however, realism probably wasn't the goal.
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Year: 1886
Author: Camille Flammarion
Artist: A. Jacob
Originally published in: Le Monde avant la création de l'homme
Now appears in: Dinosaurs: A Journey to the Lost Kingdom by Argot and Vivès
Another version of the peeping dinosaur in Flammarion's book does away with the erroneous snout horn, but adds two rows of menacing spikes running down the animal's back. Argot and Vivès note that there was ample confusion about whether this dinosaur was an Iguanodon or Stegosaurus, and confusion still reigned about how to depict Stegosaurus protuberances. Either way, you wouldn't want this creepy giant staring through your bathroom window.
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Year: 1884
Scientist/artist: A. Tobin
Now appears in: The Story of the Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries by Donald R. Prothero
In this reconstruction, Stegosaurus appears as a biped with a long neck and dual rows of spikes running along its back. Thankfully, it's depicted in a Jurassic landscape, not spying on a modern human in a high-rise.

Year: 1905
Originally published in: "The Giant Brontosaurus in Central Park" in the Los Angeles Herald
Now appears in: Assembling the Dinosaur by Lukas Rieppel
The unveiling of Brontosaurus (actually Apatosaurus) at the American Museum of Natural History drew hundreds from the upper crust to the New York City museum. J.P. Morgan was there, and President Teddy Roosevelt's sister served tea. The event also attracted news coverage on the opposite coast; this picture appeared in the Los Angeles Herald. The dinosaur sits the way a dog would, and grips the nearest tree trunk the way a primate would. But the mistakes are forgivable in this charming sauropod, who cranes his neck to look at the scene above. The story boasts that the dinosaur has a "stomach cavity as big as the kitchen of a Harlem flat." Harlem flats might have had small kitchens in those days, and besides, Los Angeles residents couldn't easily verify Harlem's average kitchen size.
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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: 1853
Scientist: Sir Richard Owen
Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Originally appeared in: Crystal Palace Park, London
Photographed in: Crystal Palace Park by Alex J. White (some rights reserved)
Pterosaurs lurk among the suite of stony ruling reptiles at Crystal Palace Park, and the pterosaurs look like dragons. In fact there is plenty to admire, or at least understand, in this reconstruction. Paleontologists debated pterosaur posture and locomotion on the ground for many years after Hawkins produced these sculptures, and the scaly necks reflect the understanding that the animals were indeed reptiles. More recent finds indicate that, although pterosaurs had scales, they were confined to the feet and maybe the legs. The dragon-like necks might owe their existence to artistic license.

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
This is a close-up view of the pterodactyles in the previous picture. After the Crystal Palace project ground to a halt, due partly to a lack of funds, Hawkins began selling lithographs of his reconstructions. He also started the lecture circuit. One of his favorite themes was the resemblance he saw between pterosaurs and legendary dragons.

Year: 1800
Scientist: Johann Hermann
Originally appeared in: Letter to Georges Cuvier
Now appears at: Early Paleoart: Of Prehistoric Monsters and Men
The practice of identifying pterosaur fossils as bats precedes Neuman's mid-19th-century restoration by several decades. The naturalist Cosimo Alessandro Collini published a description of a pterosaur fossil in 1784, but because it was unlike any life form previously seen, no one was quite sure how it had lived. Sixteen years later, another naturalist, Johann Hermann, made an educated guess that the elongated fourth finger supported a membrane necessary for flight (accurate), but also envisioned semicircular wings (inaccurate). In fairness, he did illustrate one wing with a more triangular shape closer to what paleontologists envision today. Not so close to current reconstructions, he gave the animal protruding ears and mammalian-like naughty bits. Hermann never published his reconstruction as he died the same year he sent this illustration to Cuvier.

Year: 1911
Author: Edwin Grew
Originally published in: Romance of Modern Geology
Now appears in: "Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle's Contribution to the Popularity of Pterodactyls" by David Martill and Tony Pointon in Geological Society, London, Special Publications
A terrestrial and an avian reptile share space on this book cover, where Grew called pterosaurs "Dragons of the prime." The overall shape of the pterosaur isn't too bad, although its wings appear not quite up to the task keeping the fairly robust body aloft, and the long tail is characteristic of a species that would actually be much smaller. The terrestrial reptile below is presumably a dinosaur, although this one sports a lizard-like form that had largely been overturned by the time this book was published. The hapless animal in the big lizard's mouth looks like a platypus, and that might seem anachronistic in this ruling-reptile scene, but platypus-like fossils do date back to the time of the dinosaurs. The year after this book was published, Arthur Conan Doyle prominently featured pterosaurs in The Lost World, arguably making the flying reptiles far more popular (or infamous) to the general public than they ever had been before.

Year: 1910
Author: W. Percival Westell
Originally published in: The Book of the Animal Kingdom
Image provided by: Biodiversity Heritage Library (some rights reserved)
This color plate shows a scene very similar to the one on the cover of Edwin Grew's book published the following year: a pterosaur hovering over a Teleosaurus chomping on a platypus. This pterosaur isn't a bad rendition although, as on Grew's book cover, it could probably stand bigger wings or a skinnier torso. Placing a pterosaur so close to the action on the ground allows the reader to see multiple animals in one scene, but a smart pterosaur probably would keep its distance. Pterosaurs had to be lightweight in relation to their size, with very thin-walled bones. So a pterosaur couldn't easily fly off with a platypus, and such a curious pterosaur would risk a fracture by getting too close to a predation scene for no good reason.

Year: 1912
Scientist: Henry R. Knipe
Artist: Alice B. Woodward
Originally published in: Evolution in the Past
Image provided by: Biodiversity Heritage Library (some rights reserved)
Scientists have puzzled for decades over pterosaurian details such as locomotion on the ground and posture in flight, and not all these issues are necessarily settled now. This early-20th-century depiction might be off in a few details — the pterosaurs' trunks look a bit stout and their necks a bit short — but the general picture is right. But paired with the prehistoric pteranodons are some very modern-looking birds: a seagull standing by the shore and what might be a co*ckatoo in flight.

Year: 1829
Artist: George Howman
Originally appeared as: "Flying Dragon found at Lyme Regis, supposed to be noctivagous" (painting)
Now appears in: The Earth on Show by Ralph O'Connor
"Noctivagous" means wandering at night, and the Reverend Howman inscribed on the back of his nighttime painting that it was based on an account of a "flying dragon" fossil by William Buckland. Buckland's paper was about a pterodactyl fossil. Howman portrayed the pterosaur as a dragon, complete with a pointy tail, and put it into a present-day landscape, embellished with castle ruins and a listing ship. As flying reptiles, pterosaurs probably counted among the most puzzling fossils encountered by scientists in the early 19th century. At the same time scientists struggled to understand pterosaur appearance and behavior, artists such as Howman struggled to depict the animals in life. Howman erred on the side of dragons and time travel.

Year: 1863
Scientist: Louis Figuier
Artist: Édouard Riou
Originally published in: Earth Before the Deluge
Now appears in: "A Short History of Pterosaur Research" by Peter Wellnhofer in Zitteliana
Paleontologist Peter Wellnhofer points out that, at the beginning of the 19th century, few fossil reptiles had been found, so naturalists had to reconstruct ancient animals based on sparse information. Aside from all the other vexing problems about pterosaurs (Were they bats, birds, or reptiles? And how did they get off the ground?) there was the question of how they moved around while still on the ground. In his book about the history of life, Figuier reproduced Riou's reconstruction of pterosaur terrestrial locomotion. Riou believed he had found the evidence of how long-tailed pterosaurs moved — on all fours, tails dragging behind them — in tracks preserved in the Solnhofen limestone. It wasn't a bad approach; paleontologists often find clues to animal movement preserved in tracks, but Riou was wrong about the kind of animal that left those tracks. The tail dragging was really the work of horseshoe crabs. Some horseshoe crabs had the good manners to clarify their identities by simply dying at the ends of their tracks, and such "death march" fossils left little doubt. The identity of the track maker was only settled in about 1940, and just how pterosaurs move on the ground remained a topic of debate throughout the 20th century. Newer evidence indicates that Riou was at least correct about their quadrupedal gait.

Year: 1881
Scientist: Richard Owen
Artist: Alfred Waterhouse
Photographed at: : Natural History Museum, London by Peter O'Connor (some rights reserved)
Discussed in: Alfred Waterhouse and the Natural History Museum by Mark Girouard
Architect Francis Fowke won the competition to design the Natural History Museum, London, but after his unexpected death, Alfred Waterhouse took over as architect. Richard Owen, who championed and oversaw the project, wanted a "cathedral to nature," and the building's German Romanesque style very much resembles a cathedral to religion. This pterosaur sculpture on the front of the museum bears no small resemblance to a gargoyle, hunched on almost human-looking hind legs. In his cathedral to nature, Owen insisted on the segregation of extinct and extant animals, putting still-living species in the west wing, and long-dead species in the east wing. Owen was a progressive creationist who believed that the Earth had seen a series of complete extinctions followed by game-over-new-game resets. But as he insisted that extinct and extant species had no relation to each other, Darwin's theory of natural selection was gaining ground.

Year: 1914
Scientist/artist: Vassily Alexeyevich Vatagin
Originally appeared in: State Darwin Museum, Moscow
Now appears in: Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze
In the 1910s, Vatagin painted a series of watercolors for the State Darwin Museum. Lescaze describes Vatagin's paintings as the earliest depictions prehistoric reptiles displayed in Russia. Vatagin's pterosaurs must have been crowd-pleasers; they were pugnacious, scary monsters now safely extinct. Like earlier pterosaur reconstructions, Vatagin's images have some flaws: torsos too heavy to loft into the air, and wing membranes encompassing the hind legs and tails. The jagged teeth aren't pure fabrication, though; plenty of pterosaur fossils preserve teeth that menacing. The forked tongues are more conjectural.
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Year: 1830
Scientists: Henry De la Beche and Charles Lyell
Originally published in: "Awful Changes" print
Now appears in: Earth's Deep History and Scenes from Deep Time by Martin J.S. Rudwick
The author of this illustration was De la Beche. The target was Charles Lyell. Lyell argued for uniformitarianism: geologic processes occurring today, such as floods, earthquakes and erosion, are the same as those that occurred millions, even billions of years ago, and can account for landscapes as varied as the Alps and the Grand Canyon. Uniformitarianism is widely accepted among geologists today. Likewise, it's perfectly reasonable to think that, just as some parts of the globe were balmy or frigid millions of years ago, they may well be balmy or frigid millions of years in the future. But Lyell took that thinking an improbable step further, claiming, "huge Iguanodon might reappear in the woods, and the ichthyosaurs in the sea, while pterodactyle might flit again through umbrageous groves of tree ferns." It was this speculation — that the exact same animals that had lived in the distant past would recur in the distant future — that De la Beche lampooned, with an ichthyosaur lecturing students about the ancient human skull. The caption for this cartoon reads, "'You will at once perceive,' continued Professor Ichthyosaurus, 'that the skull before us belonged to some of the lower order of animals, the teeth are very insignificant the power of the jaws trifling, and altogether it seems wonderful how the creature could have procured food.'"
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Year: 1865
Scientist: Louis Figuier
Artist: Édouard Riou
Originally published in: Earth Before the Deluge
Now appears in: Scenes from Deep Time by Martin J.S. Rudwick
Figuier and Riou added this image to the fourth edition of Earth Before the Deluge, and it features an example of Hylaeosaurus and two examples of Teleosaurus, one of whom, unfortunately, is dead. Riou's hylaeosaur is a little more accurate than what Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins produced for Richard Owen at Crystal Palace, but it doesn't quite match a modern understanding of ankylosaurs. The teleosaurs are closer to a modern interpretation, with their long, thin snouts, and they may very well have feasted on squid. The deceased individual floats rather comically on the water surface, limbs akimbo, but showing one specimen belly-up gives the reader a view of its belly.
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Year: 1836
Scientist: Edward Hitchco*ck
Originally published in: "Ornithichnology: Description of the Foot Marks of Birds (Ornithichnites) on New Red Sandstone in Massachusetts" in American Journal of Science and the Fine Arts
Now appears in: The Dinosaur Papers edited by Weishampel and White
Edward Hitchco*ck was a professor of geology and theology, and the president of Amherst College, as well as an enthusiastic collector of the tracks left behind by giant Biblical birds. At least he thought they were birds. Hitchco*ck actually produced beautifully engraved but wrongly identified dinosaur tracks.
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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, after his celebrity had waned, and familial and financial problems had accumulated. 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: 1840
Scientist: Thomas Hawkins
Artist: John Martin
Originally published in: The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons
Now available via: The Online Books Page (http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu /webbin/book/lookupid?key=olbp19013)
The collaboration of artist John Martin with paleontologist Thomas Hawkins was a match made not in heaven but perhaps in the antediluvian inferno that Hawkins believed once dominated the globe. Contemporaries of dinosaurs, plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs were giant sea-dragons in his opinion, and his collaborator Martin accommodated that vision perfectly. The sea-dragons weren't just big, strong and hungry, Hawkins argued, they were evil. After describing one fossil, Hawkins explained to his readers the work of paleontologists: "By such inductions we revive the habits of Creatures long vanished away, and recolor the ardent Monster fleeting through the expanse of Seas like lightning to his distant prey, with a lust quenchable alone in gore." The sea-dragons aren't alone in this scene; vicious pterosaurs lurk about, one of them pecking at a dead animal's eye. Hawkins's eccentric take on the ancient Earth didn't end with mean monsters. He was also confident that the planet was bathed in darkness. He doubted the sun even existed the days of his sea-dragons, and if it did, its light couldn't penetrate our planet's murky atmosphere. Dark days indeed.
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Year: 1837-1838
Scientist: Gideon Mantell
Artist: John Martin
Originally published in: The Wonders of Geology
Now appears in: The Google Cultural Institute. Also discussed in Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of the Dinosaurs by Dennis R. Dean
Martin's painting of this scene has not survived, but this watercolor and subsequent engravings have. The engraving of Martin's work served as the frontispiece of Mantell's book — written in a less dramatic tone than Thomas Hawkins's apocalyptic tome on "sea-dragons." Mantell's caption text varied a bit in different editions, but explained the general scene: "The greater reptiles are the Iguanodon, Hylaeosaurus, Megalosaurus, and the Crocodile. An Iguanodon attacked by a Megalosaurus and Crocodile constitute the principal group; in the middle distance an Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus are preparing for an encounter; a solitary Pterodactyl, or flying reptile, with its wings partly expanded, forms a conspicuous object in the foreground while tortoises are seen crawling on the banks of the river. Ammonites and other shells of the Portland Oolite, which is the foundation rock of the country, are strewn on the shore." Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus weren't Mantell's only fossil discoveries to figure in this scene. At Tilgate Quarry, Mantell had discovered plant fossils, including ferns and conifers. The dinosaurs in this image, though, bear the dueling-dragon look typical of Martin's other pictures.
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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: 1915
Scientist/artist: Franz Baron Nopcsa
Originally published in: Die Dinosaurier der Siebenbürgischen Landesteile Ungarns
Now appears in: "Lost in Transylvania" by Vanessa Veselka in Smithsonian Magazine and the Internet Archive
Struthiosaurus was likely a dwarf ankylosaur that lived on islands during the late Cretaceous Period. Compared to more modern reconstructions, this illustration shows a Struthiosaurus with a neck a little too long, a head a little too smooth and dainty, and a tail a little to dragging. But the mistakes in this image are minor, and Nopcsa was well ahead of his time in understanding dinosaur biology, dinosaur ancestry of birds, and island dwarfing. The aristocratic scientist, would-be king of Albania and occasional imperial spy grew fascinated with dinosaurs as a teenager when his sister handed him some fossil bones she found on a walk near a family home. Over the years, Nopcsa authored many scientific papers on fossils, often including his own illustrations.
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Year: 1837
Scientist/artist: William Buckland
Originally published in: Geology and Mineralogy 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: 1834
Scientist/artist: Gideon Mantell
Now appears in: Paleontology: An Illustrated History by David Bainbridge
William Buckland didn't corner the market on cute depictions of dinosaurs. A few years before Buckland's dainty dinosaur appeared in print, Mantell's sketched this illustration of Iguanodon. The animal's thumb spike appears as a horn on its snout — an error that would persist into the mid-19th century in Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins's weighty reconstructions Crystal Palace Park. This version also retains a very long tail redolent of a modern lizard's. Still, there's something very appealing about this tiny, mistaken dinosaur drawn by its own discoverer.
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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.

Year: 1877
Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Originally appeared in: Museum of Natural History, Princeton University
Now appears in: Dinosaurs Past and Present: Volume I, All in the Bones by Bramwell and Peck, and the Princeton University Art Museum
Princeton University invited Waterhouse Hawkins to paint a series of mural-size paintings of ancient life in the 1870s. Though paleontologists had given up the image of dinosaurs as oversized lizards decades earlier, he sometimes persisted in depicting them as such. These lizard-like creatures figured into his depiction of Jurassic life.

Year: 1868
Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Originally prepared for: American Museum of Natural History
Now appears in: American Monster by Paul Semonin
This sketch, from the library of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, shows Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins's proposal for a prehistoric hall. (Note the tiny visitors in the lower right corner.) The dragon-like dinosaurs look like they're up to no good.

Year: 1877
Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Originally appeared in: Museum of Natural History, Princeton University
Now appears in: All in the Bones by Bramwell and Peck, and Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze
Having worked with the paleontologist Joseph Leidy to reconstruct the most complete Hadrosaurus foulkii specimen yet found, Waterhouse Hawkins ranked among the most knowledgeable on the dinosaur's shape and posture. But although their reconstruction was far more accurate that other saurian reconstruction attempts — including Waterhouse Hawkins's own work at Crystal Palace Park in the 1850s — scientific understanding of the animal's posture was still being refined, and its skull was still based on that of a modern-day iguana's. Marching single-file to the shore, the hadrosaurs in this image look a bit like actors in lizard-man costumes in a low-budget sci-fi thriller. The poor things are fleeing an attack from a pack of Laelaps (Dryptosaurus) dinosaurs. The painting suggests that the hadrosaurs may not be any safer in the water, which teems with monstrous ichthyosaurs and sinister, snake-necked plesiosaurs.
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Year: 1877
Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Originally appeared in: Museum of Natural History, Princeton University
Now appears in: Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze, and the Princeton University Art Museum
Another of Waterhouse Hawkins's Princeton paintings, this is titled Triassic Life of Germany. Lescaze observes that this working shows Waterhouse Hawkins's "Romantic fascination with the sublime desolation of deep time." In this eerie landscape, a hulking creatures — perhaps reptiles, perhaps amphibians — make their way onto land, where a sharp-fanged reptilian reception committee awaits. A close look shows that not one but two prehistoric monsters are just coming ashore. An even closer look shows that they are leading an improbable procession of similar beasts stretching far into the distance.
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Year: 1838
Artists: George Nibbs (illustrator), George Scharf (engraver)
Originally published in: Sketches in Prose and Verse by George Richardson
Now appears in: Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze
Figuring out that weird fossil teeth found in Sussex in 1822 resembled those of an iguana, only much bigger, was no small achievement for country doctor Gideon Mantell. First, he had to persuade himself and his contemporaries that the tooth was reptilian. Once the great French naturalist Cuvier wondered whether Mantell might have "a new animal, an herbivorous reptile?" the challenge was to find a modern analogue. Iguanas aren't native to England, and museum specimens were rare when Mantell went looking. Once he did find a modern analogue, and formally named Iguanodon in 1825, artists went all in on scaled-up iguanas. This fossil reptile even has a dewlap.
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Century: Late 19th
Inspired by: John Martin
Originally published by: Libraire Delagrave
Now appears in: Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze
Released in France, this colorful little picture was part of a series of collectible cards. Overall, the cards took their inspiration from earlier depictions done in Britain and America. This dragon-like Iguanodon resembles John Martin's work from the early 1840s, complete with its horned snout and forked tongue. By the time this little card saw the light of day, Martin-style lizard- and dragon-like depictions had been discarded in favor of more accurate representations. Still, a dinosaur, even an inaccurate one, makes a better trading card than a ball player.
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Century: Late 19th
Inspired by: E.D. Cope and Joseph Leidy
Originally published by: Libraire Delagrave
Now appears in: Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze
This picture shows another trading card from the series released in France. In contrast to the dragon-like dinosaur inspired by the work of John Martin, this card bears a picture that was more up to date, at least at the time of its release. It shows a leaping little theropod, Laelaps. Laelaps has been reworked since the late 19th century, including trading in its kangaroo posture and its name. The species is now known as Dryptosaurus because the coveted name of Laelaps — evocative of powerful winds — had already been assigned to a much-less-deserving mite.
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Year: 1859
Author: John Cargill Bough
Artist: Charles H. Bennett
Originally published in: The Fairy Tales of Science: A Book for Youth
Now appears in: Dinosaurs: A Journey to the Lost Kingdom by Argot and Vivès
Aiming to make prehistory appealing to young readers, Bough took a fairy-tale approach in his mid-19th-century book. The chapter titled "The Age of Monsters" opened with this "pre-Adamite," reminiscent of the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, menacing a frightened human explorer. Brough likened dinosaurs to dragons and, perhaps not knowing how right he was, griffins. Brough's "Age of Monsters" reads like a Rocky and Bullwinkle Fractured Fairy Tale; by the second page, a fastidious monster is ordering a princess for dinner.

Year: 1863
Scientist: Margaret Plues
Artists: Dalziel Brothers
Originally published in: Geology for the Million
Now appears at: British Library (https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/ geology-for-the-million)
Geology for the Million provided an introduction to geology for the non-scientist. Illustrations in the book closely followed earlier depictions, so these pictures of Megalosaurus, Iguanodon and Hylaeosaurus are clearly based on Crystal Palace Park sculptures executed by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and overseen by Richard Owen. Repeating the Crystal Palace Park descriptions, these illustrations repeat the mistakes that wouldn't be corrected until more complete specimens were found. But the mistakes are pretty forgivable. As the British Library explains, the publisher, Routledge, aimed to make science education available to Victorian Britain's less affluent. Designed to fit well into one's hand or pocket, the books often sold for just one or two shillings. (Note the price printed across the top of the book cover.) In the mid-19th century, a shilling amounted to 12 pence — still out of reach for the very poorest, but reasonable for many others. Illustrations of any kind were a bonus.
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Year: c. 1895
Inspired by: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins
Originally published by: Chocolat Suchard
Now appears in: Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze
If there's one thing better than a dinosaur, it's a dinosaur associated with chocolate. By the time a Swiss chocolate company issued this trading card, more extensive fossil finds had long overturned the body shape and posture that Hawkins had produced in the mid-19th century for the Crystal Palace models. By the late 19th century, paleontologists understood that Iguanodon had longer hind legs than front legs, and that the horn that had once adorned its reconstructed snout really was a thumb spike. But if the chocolate is tasty, a few mistakes in a colorful complimentary trading card can be forgiven.
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Year: 1852
Artist: John Emslie
Publisher: James Reynolds
Originally published as: The Antediluvian World (broadsheet)
Now appears in: David Rumsey Map Collection (https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/ RUMSEY~8~1~283752~90056270: The-antediluvian-world) (Also discussed in Scenes from Deep Time by Martin Rudwick)
Dinosaurs, marine reptiles and pterosaurs look like hybrids of modern-day lizards and mythical dragons in this hand-colored vignette from Emslie's broadsheet. This scene is part of Emslie's larger artwork embellishing a meandering path through geological periods with whimsical illustrations. In the larger broadside, Silurian life appears at the bottom and Tertiary life appears at the top. As with other popular-interest publications about geology in Victorian times, "antediluvian" didn't mean before the flood so much as before people.
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Year: 1897
Artist: Charles R. Knight
Now appears at: Knight Hadrosaurus (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Knight_hadrosaurs.jpg)
Once paleontologists managed to collect enough fossils, they quickly noted the similarities between the bones of Iguanodon and Hadrodaurus. Based on only a few fragments, the earliest reconstruction of Iguanodon showed a giant lizard. In the nearly 200 years since Gideon Mantell first described Iguanodon, paleontologists have collected skeletons of adults and juveniles, and studied tracks of these similar groups of ornithopod dinosaurs. They are now understood to have been bipedal, walking on their large hind limbs with their tails stretching out behind them. Toward the end of the 19th century, hadrodaurs were slowly lumbering toward a more accurate reconstruction, but they weren't quite there yet. Knight's illustration shows an animal with a tail that could double as a chair.

Year: 1901
Scientist/artist: Louis de Pauw
Originally appeared as: First Attempt to Reconstruct the Manners, Habits, and Attitudes of Iguanodons in the Paris Museum of Natural History
Now appears in: Dinosaurs: A Journey to the Lost Kingdom by Argot and Vivès
In the 1830s, Iguanodon was reconstructed as a giant lizard. In the 1850s, the fossil reptile was reconstructed as a stout quadruped. Easy to chuckle at today, the early mistakes were understandable because 19th-century scientists had so few remains on which to base their reconstructions. But in 1978, coal miners discovered dozens of Iguanodon skeletons in Bernissart, Belgium. The rich assemblage of complete skeletons enabled unprecedented accuracy in Iguanodon mounts, including transforming the snot horn to its proper place as a thumb spike. But a few errors remained, such as the tripod pose. Louis de Pauw supervised the reconstruction of the dinosaur at the Paris Museum of Natural History, and this small reconstruction of the landscape, an electroplated relief, appeared at the skeleton's feet.

Year: 1919
Artist: Charles R. Knight
Now appears at: T. rex Old Posture (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki /File:T._rex_old_posture.jpg) and Tyrannosaurus rex Circulating Exhibit (http://lbry-web-007.amnh.org/ digital/index.php/ items/show/22923)
Hadrosaurus wasn't the only dinosaur Knight endowed with a tripod pose. His early-20th-century depiction of Tyrannosaurus rex showed the "tyrant lizard" with an upright posture, balancing on its substantial hind legs and ready to rest on its tail. This image dominated for decades; in 1969, the American Museum of Natural History featured a miniature, portable exhibit of T. rex with Knight's picture in the background, and teeny plastic fossil diggers and a suit-wearing scientist (all white guys) in the foreground.

Year: c. 1946
Artist: Charles R. Knight
Now appears in: Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze
Knight's dinosaur illustrations crystallized paleontologists' views for generations, and tail dragging wasn't the only mistake the dedicated artist depicted. Another was the early-20th-century hypothesis that sauropod dinosaurs habitually hung out in water. This pastel picture shows a herd of Brontosaurus venturing into s marshy water body. Paleontologists now realize that water pressure on a sauropod thorax would outweigh any benefit from buoyancy.
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Year: 1897
Artist: Charles R. Knight
Now appears at: Knight Brontosaurus and Diplodocus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Brontosaurus#/media/File: Pasta-Brontosaurus.jpg)
Discussed in: Why Dinosaurs Matter by Kenneth Lacovara
Besides a tail-dragging Diplodocus and largely aquatic Brontosaurus, 21st-century paleontologist Lacovara points out another problem with Knight's late-19th-century depiction, namely one of cheerful gentle giants — an image that persisted into the 21st century. "If present-day herbivores are a guide, this could not have been further from the truth," Lacovara writes. "Big herbivores tend to be territorial, surly, and aggressive. Far more people have been injured in Yellowstone National Park by bison than by grizzly bears. In Africa, hippos are widely regarded as the most dangerous large animals. . . . Big herbivores are dangerous." If the present truly is key to the past, those smiley green Sinclair dinosaurs might not have been your Mesozoic buddies after all. Poo.

Year: 1886
Author: Camille Flammarion
Artist: J. Lévy
Originally published in: Le Monde avant la création de l'homme
Now appears in: Dinosaurs: A Journey to the Lost Kingdom by Argot and Vivès
Flammarion's book was published in the late 19th century, but it featured battles between the first two dinosaur species ever named. Megalosaurus was the first formally described extinct reptile, named by William Buckland in 1824. Iguanodon was the second dinosaur species, named in 1825 by Gideon Mantell. This image shows hints of Iguanodon's thumb spike, relocated from its erroneous position on the animal's snout, but other than that, it's tough to tell the carnivorous Megalosaurus and herbivorous Iguanodon apart. Here, they form a pair of snarling, dueling tripods.

Year: 1933-1936
Designers: James Messmore and Joseph Damon
Originally published in: Popular Mechanics (top), "The World a Million Years Ago" (bottom)
Now appears in: "The Lost Worlds of Messmore and Damon" by Chris Manias in Endeavour
Messmore and Damon started a business together in 1916, making automated human and animal figures, and making them look as lifelike as possible. Much of Messmore and Damon's business came from department stores, where animated window displays were big hits, especially at Christmastime. But the men liked dinosaurs, and admired Brontosaurus excelsus on display at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). In the 1920s, they built an automated sauropod in their workshop, giving it the ability to swing its neck from side to side, bat its eyelids, and move its mouth. In the 1930s, they aimed even bigger, and the result was "The World a Million Years Ago" at the Chicago World's Fair of 1933. The display, depicted in Popular Mechanics, mingled animated dinosaurs with Ice Age mammals and cave men — all the prehistoric crowd pleasers they could stuff into a single hall, regardless of the fact that they didn't live at the same time. A few animal descriptions were a bit off; exhibit text described the pterosaur as a "gigantic ancestor of the bat family." The entrepreneurs even threw in a giant gorilla that looked a lot like King Kong. Manias explains that most exhibit attendees — even (or especially) the kids — knew that dinosaurs and prehistoric humans didn't live at the same time, but exhibit text carefully danced around the topic of human evolution. The cost of the exhibit was roughly half the budget of the movie King Kong, and much more than the annual budget of the AMNH vertebrate paleontology department. To recoup their costs, Messmore and Damon needed to attract 1.5 million attendees, and they sold souvenirs along with tickets. After 1933, the business partners looked for ways to keep the money coming, revamping "The World a Million Years Ago" and renaming it "Down the Lost River." Men dressed as Neanderthals pushed boats full of visitors down a manmade river. Messmore and Damon even staged a nudist wedding in the revamped exhibit, but it didn't go smoothly, and an errant glyptodont knocked one of the nudists into the water. In 1936, the enterprising pair sold sheet music. Of course no dinosaur would still be alive to dance with a naked girl 1 million years ago, any girl living 1 million years ago would be sporting some serious brow ridges. Oh well.
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Year: 1900
Originally published as: Promotional poster for the Exposition Universelle
Now appears in: Dinosaurs: A Journey to the Lost Kingdom by Argot and Vivès
Taking place in Paris from April to November 1900, the Exposition Universelle (World Fair) celebrated the achievements of the previous century. Among those achievements was the realization that giant reptiles walked an ancient Earth; in 1800, nobody had heard of dinosaurs. Fair organizers constructed an Iguanodon statue for the 1900 festivities. This Iguanodon was a more accurate reconstruction than Giden Mantell's supersized lizard, or Richard Owen's stout sculptures in Crystal Palace Park. It wasn't entirely accurate, though, retaining the tripod posture typically assigned to duckbilled dinosaurs. But give the Exposition Universelle organizers credit; they already knew what draws millions of visitors to museums more than a century later: dinosaurs and ancient Egypt.
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Year: 1924
Scientist(s): Henry Fairfield Osborn and Roy Chapman Andrews, George Olsen
Published in: "Three New Theropoda, Protoceratops Zone, Central Mongolia" in American Museum Novitates
Now appears in: American Museum of Natural History Digital Repository (http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/ handle/2246/3223) (Also discussed in All About Dinosaurs by Roy Chapman Andrews)
Paleontologists weren't entirely sure dinosaurs laid eggs until the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) sent multiple expeditions into the Gobi Desert. Hoping to find human ancestors, the expeditions instead found dinosaur fossils, including the first recognized dinosaur eggs. In 1923, expedition member George Olsen found a clutch of eggs. Starting to brush dirt away from his find, as Andrews later recounted, Olsen found a small theropod just inches away. The site was rich in Protoceratops remains, so the little theropod seemed likely to be a thief. Back in New York, Osborn named the theropod Oviraptor philoceratops. The generic name means "egg seizer" and the specific name means "fondness for ceratopsian eggs." To his credit, Osborn expressed some doubt about the name he had picked, writing that the name "may entirely mislead us as to its feeding habits and belie its character." He was right. Pictured here is an accurate illustration of a mangled skull of a misnamed dinosaur. Political changes in Mongolia and decades of Cold War tensions kept American researchers out of the Gobi for several decades. When AMNH researchers returned in the 1990s, they found more dinosaur eggs, including one egg that was close to hatching when it fossilized. The embryo turned out to be an Oviraptor. The little dinosaur hadn't been stealing ceratopsian eggs after all. It had likely been protecting its own.
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Year: 1953
Scientist: Roy Chapman Andrews
Artist: Thomas W. Voter
Published in: All About Dinosaurs
In the 1920s, research by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in the Gobi Desert found the first definitive evidence that dinosaurs laid eggs. Because the eggs turned up near Protoceratops remains, the logical assumption was that they belonged to that species. Another logical assumption was that dinosaurs, being reptiles, let their young fend for themselves. So, in 1923, when AMNH researcher George Olsen uncovered a small theropod skeleton right next to the eggs, it looked like an egg thief caught red-clawed tens of millions of years later, and it got an egg-thieving name: Oviraptor. Perfectly reasonable assumptions can prove to be wrong, though. Seven decades after the initial discovery, and four decades after Andrews published his popular account, another AMNH expedition found an embryo inside a fossil egg — and found it belonged to Oviraptor. Andrews didn't know that when he wrote All About Dinosaurs, so the book includes this illustration of splay-legged ceratopsian hatchlings. The caption reads, "Baby dinosaurs as they may have looked coming from eggs." Coming from some Gobi Desert eggs, maybe, but not the ones Olsen found.
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Year: c. 1965
Scientist: William Elgin Swinton
Artist: Neave Parker
Now appears in: The Story of the Dinosaurs in 25 Discoveries by Donald R. Prothero and What's wrong with these dinosaurs? (https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/whats-wrong-with-these-dinosaur-reconstructions.html)
Modern reconstructions of Hypsilophodon show a bipedal dinosaur likely capable of fast running, but when Hypsilophodon ran, it ran on the ground. In the 1960s, some paleontologists thought that the dinosaur had a grasping big toe. In keeping with that interpretation, paleoartist Neave Parker depicted Hypsilophodon perched in a tree. Even setting aside the toe mistake, it's hard to see how this dinosaur could have kept its balance between its robust torso and heavy tail. Parker did a good job with the science available at the time, though, and paleontologists long puzzled over Hypsilophodon posture. An illustration from the late 19th century showed the animal in both bipedal and quadrupedal poses.
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Year: c. 1938
Photographed in: National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Now appears at: Smithsonian Institution Archives (https://siarchives.si.edu/ collections/siris_sic_8266)
In the late 1930s, the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History featured staid, tail-dragging dinosaurs like all the other respected museums. The sauropod specimen shown here was Diplodocus longus, collected in the 1920s. What's a little surprising about this setting isn't what it shows but what it was named. It wasn't known as the hall of prehistoric life, or the dinosaur hall, or the gallery of ancient reptiles. It was the Hall of Extinct Monsters.
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Year: 1936
Artist: Emmet Sullivan
Photographed in: Rapid City, South Dakota, by Travis S. (some rights reserved)
These dinosaurs were erected as part of the New Deal Works Progress/Project Administration (WPA). Setting up the park provided work for people who needed it, and the park provided recreation for dinosaur-loving kids. Whether the sculptures provided much accuracy is another matter. Putting aside T. rex's posture and stumpy arms, the tyrant lizard looks like he's missing his dentures. The background sauropod standing next to the flag is a nice touch.

Year: c. 1958
Photographed in: Vernal, Utah, by arbyreed (some rights reserved)
Not far from Dinosaur National Monument, in northeastern Utah, is the town of Vernal. If you approach Vernal from the east, on Highway 40, you'll be welcomed to town by Dinah. Originally gracing a motel, this big pink dinosaur took on a second career four decades later as the town greeter. Several years after that, she got a coat of fresh pink paint. Though she dates from the days of tail-dragging dinosaur articulations, it isn't really fair to call Dinah a goof. Clearly, nobody ever thought this stance was realistic. Such long lashes probably never graced a sauropod, but as for the color, Wolf Volcano in the Galápagos Islands is home to pink iguanas. Nobody knows dinosaurs couldn't be pink. Some of them might have been pink.

Year: 1958
Originally published in: The Dinosaur Quarry
Image provided by: Project Gutenberg
To introduce dinosaur lovers of all ages to Dinosaur National Monument, straddling the Colorado-Utah border, the U.S. National Park Service published The Dinosaur Quarry, priced at 25 cents. Anyone able to plunk down a quarter could learn the latest findings about the Age of Reptiles. The little book featured fieldwork photos and dinosaur depictions by some of the best saurian illustrators: Charles R. Knight, Margaret Matthew Colbert (daughter of William Diller Matthew and wife of Ned Colbert), socialist illustrator Ernest Untermann. In 1958, though, paleontologists hadn't quite figured out that dinosaurs didn't pose like kangaroos, drag their tails everywhere, or pass their lives standing in lakes.

Year: c. 1965
Photographed in: Dinosaur Land, White Post, Virginia
Now appears in: Terrible Lizards: Dinosaur Statues of Questionable Accuracy from The Atlantic
Discussed in: Dinosaur Land from RoadsideAmerica.com
Entertained by dinosaur models from a putt-putt Florida golf course, Joseph Geraci set up dinosaur models near a gift shop he owned in Virginia, then realized dinosaurs should be the main attraction. In the decades since Dinosaur Land started, newer models have been added, but some older ones have simply weathered the years. Besides dinosaurs, the small park features more fanciful creatures, including King Kong and a 14-foot praying mantis.

Photographed in: Prachinburi Dinosaur Park, Thailand
Now appears in: Terrible Lizards: Dinosaur Statues of Questionable Accuracy from The Atlantic
Artistic license in dinosaur reconstruction isn't unique to the United States and Europe. These saurians with anglerfish-style teeth were built in Thailand. The dinosaur head looming on the right may belong the a Tyrannosaurus rex. The brightly-hued, spiky-all-over saurian in the foreground is harder to link to any identified dinosaur species, but park managers might not have to worry much about even the most adventurous tykes climbing into this dinosaur's back.

Year: 1994
Issuer: Romania
Parasaurolophus was a duck-billed, crested dinosaur that lived in North America during the Cretaceous Period. Issued in the early 1990s, this stamp gets most things right about the dinosaur, including its bill, crest, and overall body shape. But whereas modern articulations show Parasaurolophus moving with its torso more or less horizontal to the ground, this image shows an upright articulation reminiscent of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins's reconstructions from the late 19th century.

Year: 1955
Scientist/artist: Konstantin Konstantinovich Flyorov
Originally appeared in: "Tarbosaurus and Armored Dinosaur"
Now appears in: Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze
This Tarbosaurus has a now-discredited tripod stance, but that's hardly the most noticeable thing about the ancient theropod. More noteworthy is the gleeful way the dinosaur leers at the viewer. The dinosaur might be a reflection of the painter. Born in Moscow in 1904, Flyorov earned a science degree from Moscow State University then conducted research in paleontology in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) for about 10 years before returning to Moscow. Flyorov was as colorful as his art, and perhaps less truthful. He bragged about seducing a dowager while attending a military academy in his teens. He periodically scared his credulous colleagues with hints that he worked for the KGB. (That wouldn't have been light humor; Economist Moscow bureau chief Robert Cottrell once characterized the KGB as "one of the most powerful institutions in one of the world's most powerful countries [consisting] almost entirely of vicious people doing stupid things.") Politics, and real or fabricated KGB connections aside, Flyorov's paleontological paintings are still a delight.
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Year: c. 1940
Scientist/artist: Konstantin Konstantinovich Flyorov
Now appears in: Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze
Despite ultimately playing for the opposing superpower's team, Soviet artist Konstantin Konstantinovich Flyorov would have seen and probably admired American artist Charles R. Knight's depiction of tripod Tyrannosaurus rex facing off against Triceratops. But when Flyorov painted his own Mesozoic rumble, he gave the ceratopsians a rare victory over the tyrannosaur. Here, three of the three-horned herbivores gore the carnivore. T. rex, bathed in its own blood — and in a weird, ruddy reflection from the ground — takes in its own demise. It's as if Flyorov coached the herbivores with, "Proletarian ceratopsians unite!"
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Year: 1928
Artist: Charles R. Knight
Now appears in: Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze
Knight's oil painting of a battle between Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus rex quickly became a classic image, one that inspired fight scenes in films: King Kong in 1933 and Fantasia in 1940. In the hazy, swampy world of this Cretaceous battle, Knight included a T. rex in the background, sporting the standard toothy grin and tripod stance.
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Year: 1984
Artist: Alexander Mikhailovich Belashov
Originally appeared in: Tree of Life, Orlov Paleontological Museum, Moscow
Now appears in: Paleoart by Zoë Lescaze, Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Blog, and Bloodshed and Impressionism (https://www.wired.co.uk/ article/ paleoart-dinosaurs-art)
Stalin's taste for colossal artwork influenced Soviet art installations decades after the dictator's death. In 1984, as the Cold War was reheating, Moscow's Orlov Paleontological Museum installed a larger-than-life mosaic about the history of life on Earth, primitive forms near the bottom giving way to "more evolved" forms near the top. (The very top features figures looking very much like Madonna and her baby — an interesting choice for an ostensibly atheist state.) In between the most primitive life forms and the big mammals, a foolhardy hadrosaur — and even foolhardier babies — square off with a T. rex. This being art, the figures can strike a pose they wouldn't dare in real life, but the dinosaurs also take tripod stances. Soviet dinosaurs still dragged their tails in 1984. Though no longer entirely accurate, the mosaic is nevertheless great fun to see. In an interview with the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, Lescaze lamented the disregard of great paleontological art because the science has moved on, describing paintings rescued from dumpsters by paleontologists who appreciate history.
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Year: 1965
Issuers: Poland (top) and San Marino (bottom)
Now appears in: "Tyrannosaurus rex: On Our Stamps and on Our Minds" by Joel I. Cohen in American Philatelist
Discovered at the turn of the 20th century, Tyrannosaurus rex finally appeared on postage stamps in 1965. According to American Philatelist, Poland was the first to decorate its mail with the famous predator, followed a few months later by San Marino. Both T. rexes take the typical tripod stance, but San Marino's extinct tyrant lizard is considerably heavier — so heavy it looks like it might struggle to walk. Poland's T. rex, meanwhile, marches past bromeliad-like plants sprouting from neon-green ground.

Year: 1905
Originally published by: Chocolat D'Aiguebelle
Now appears at: Copyright Expired (http://www.copyrightexpired.com/earlyimage/bones/daiguebelle.html)
In the early 20th century, French chocolates came with more than built-in appeal to discerning diners. They came with dinosaur trading cards. In keeping with scientific understanding at the time, this delightful card shows an Iguanodon in close proximity to the water. It also shows the dinosaur's thumb spike, accurately moved away from the snout to the forelimbs. But whoever designed this card apparently believed the thumb was opposable. Notice the monkey-like Iguanodon dining on a handheld fish.

Year: 1905
Originally published by: Chocolat D'Aiguebelle
Now appears at: Copyright Expired (http://www.copyrightexpired.com/earlyimage/bones/daiguebelle.html)
Another trading card from Chocolat D'Aiguebelle featured a dinosaur first excavated in the United States, one of the most iconic species: Brontosaurus. This illustration may have really represented Apatosaurus since the sauropod had been doubly named in the Cope-Marsh Bone Wars. Then again, a 2015 study rehabilitated the reputation of Brontosaurus as a legitimate genus. More mistaken than the name was the lifestyle depicted here, with tiny brontosaurs in the background living out their lives underwater, feeding on aquatic plants. That misconception persisted decades after a chocolate maker issued this adorable trading card.

Year: c. 1960
Scientist: William Elgin Swinton
Artist: Neave Parker
Originally published in: Printed guides for the Natural History Museum, London
Now appears at: What's Wrong with These Dinosaurs? (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/whats-wrong-with-these-dinosaur-reconstructions.html)
In the early 1960s, printed guides for the Natural History Museum, London, featured a dinosaur that wasn't. Scleromochlus is depicted here as a theropod dinosaur, based on Swinton's assessment of a partial skeleton. Subsequent finds led to a completely different interpretation. The trim, dainty Scleromochlus is "now thought to be closely related to the flying reptiles, pterosaurs," the Natural History Museum explains.
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Year: 1897 (top), c. 1877 (bottom)
Scientist: E.D. Cope
Artist: Charles R. Knight (top), E.D. Cope (bottom)
Originally published in: Century Magazine (top)
Now appears at: Wikisource (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/ Century_Magazine/Volume_55/ Issue_1/Strange_Creatures_of_the_Past) (top), Hands on the Land (http://www.handsontheland.org/garden-park/quarries/37-amphicoelias.html) (bottom)
The misconception that sauropods couldn't support their own weight on land goes back to the earliest days of the Cope-Marsh Bone Wars. Amphicoelias altus (also spelled Amphicælias altus in the early days) was one such dinosaur that seemingly had to live in water. An 1897 article in Century Magazine explained, "It probably never came wholly out of water. Had it done so, the great weight of its structure might have caused a collapse." In fact, had it assumed an underwater posture like the one shown here, the water pressure would have made breathing pretty difficult. The magazine passed along another of Cope's mistaken assumptions, that the dinosaur was an omnivore. "The amphibious dinosaur was undoubtedly omnivorous. It seized whatever came within its reach, whether fish, flesh, or vegetation." Knight's picture in Century Magazine shows a fairly cautious depiction, and the dinosaur on the left partakes of an underwater plant. In Cope's original sketch, the little dinosaur in the same location is about to snatch a fish.

Year: c. 1889
Scientist/artist: E.D. Cope
Now appears in: The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte
As recognizable as a ceratopsian skull is to any five-year-old today, it was still a baffling phenomenon in the late 19th century, especially when finds were still fragmentary. Cope's crude sketch approximated the horns, at least partially, and even captured the parrot-like beak. But he missed the frill, and attached the head to a body befitting a sauropod. Modern paleontologist Brusatte notes that Cope "was a much better scientist than artist."
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Year: 1887
Scientist/artist: O.C. Marsh
Published in: Notice of New Fossil Mammals
Discussed at: When Triceratops Was a Giant Bison (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-triceratops-was-a-giant-bison-179449725/)
In the spring of 1887, Denver-area geologist and high school teacher George Cannon found two big horns and part of a massive skull. After the find made its way to Marsh at Yale University, he prodded his field workers to dig up more fossils. Absent more of the skull, Marsh's conclusion that the horns belonged to a bison, just a specimen much bigger than anything still living, seemed reasonable. He named it Bison alticornis. His field paleontologists familiar with the rock layers where the fossil had been found thought it was odd that such a big mammal would occur in such close proximity to dinosaurs. When more fragments turned up, such as a third horn, Marsh was compelled to reassess the species. Ceratopsians, with their giant, flamboyant skulls, weren't so easily envisioned until multiple specimens could be pieced together.
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Year: 1899
Scientist: O.C. Marsh
Artist: Frank Boyd, supervised by Charles R. Knight
Originally published in: "Osteology of the carnivorous Dinosauria in the United States National Museum, with special reference to the genera Antrodemus (Allosaurus) and Ceratosaurus" by Charles W. Gilmore in Bulletin of the United States National Museum
Now appears in: Wikipedia
First found in the Morrison Formation at Garden Park, Colorado, in the 1880s, the Jurassic carnivore Ceratosaurus definitely had a horn, but it didn't have one this pointy. Frank Boyd's illustration may have been the first restoration drawn for this species, but the illustration didn't appear in print until it accompanied Gilmore's paper in 1920. By the time this illustration was published, another (more accurate) version had already appeared a popular book.

Year: 1901
Scientist: O.C. Marsh
Artist: J.M. Gleeson, supervised by Charles R. Knight
Originally published in: Animals of the Past by Frederic A. Lucas
Image provided by: Biodiversity Heritage Library (some rights reserved)
Though closer to the mark than Frank Boyd's illustration from the previous year, this Ceratosaurus, with its toned-down horn, still has a couple issues, namely an extra claw (on the fourth finger) and a dragging tail.

Year: 1938
Artist: James E. Allen
Originally published in: The Saturday Evening Post
Now appears at: Sinclair Oil Company, 1934-38 (https://exhibits.stanford.edu/james-e-allen/feature/sinclair-oil-company-1934-38)
In the 1930s, illustrator James Allen turned his attention from illustrating art to illustrating ads, including ads for Sinclair Oil. In 1938, his work featured in a series of pictures in an ad campaign in The Saturday Evening Post, one of them showing this hadrosaurid dinosaur. Though Allen was a talented artist, the science he relied on was still evolving. Annotations to this illustration read, "With his periscope-like nose Parasaurolophus could breathe while feeding on prehistoric marsh bottoms. Ancient days those were, millions of years ago — but not nearly so ancient as the day which saw the origin of Bradford-Allegany crude oil." So, to its credit, Sinclair's ad campaign didn't spread the common misconception that oil came from dinosaurs. It just spread a bunch of other misconceptions.

Year: 1960
Author: Darlene Geis
Artist: Kenyon Shannon
Published in: The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs
Sauropod nostrils discussed in: New Study Puts Dinosaur Noses in Their Place (https://www.ohio.edu/infocus/dinose/)
Besides the long-lived assumption that dinosaurs couldn't support their own weight on land, the sauropod Brachiosaurus gave paleontologists another reason to assume an amphibious existence: nasal openings on top of its head. The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs neatly explains the reasoning to young readers: "Brachiosaurus could stay hidden under water with just this little breathing dome showing. There were plenty of water plants for him to feed on. And this great clumsy creature spent most of his time standing in the water, chewing on plants. He couldn't move around much on land. He couldn't swim in the water. It must have been a dull way to live — even for a dinosaur." Where dinosaur nostrils really resided on sauropod heads got a fresh look in a 2001 study by Ohio University paleontologist Lawrence Witmer. He compared dinosaur skull anatomy to that of 45 species of crocodiles, lizards and birds living today. He found that nasal bone openings farther back on the skull don't necessarily mean that nostrils will live in the same vicinity. In fact, the soft tissue separating nostrils from nasal openings supports important functions such filtering and humidifying air the animal breathes, and smelling.
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Year: 1960
Author: Darlene Geis
Artist: Kenyon Shannon
Published in: The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs
Protoceratops looks a bit like a bullfrog in this posture. Though the skull shape and limb proportions are accurate, the belly-dragging gait is off. The dinosaur apparently drags itself toward its clutch of eggs, and the book explains that Protoceratops "is the only dinosaur whose eggs have ever been discovered." Though it seemed true in the mid-20th century, that claim turned out to be as wrong as the posture. Eggs collected in the Gobi Desert in the 1920s were attributed to the ceratopsian, but in the early 1990s, paleontologists from the American Museum of Natural History found that those eggs actually belonged to Oviraptor, which had long been maligned as an egg thief. In all likelihood, Protoceratops was misunderstood long before the 20th century. Centuries earlier, Protoceratops remains along the Silk Road may have inspired the griffin myth.
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Year: 1960
Author: Darlene Geis
Artist: Kenyon Shannon
Published in: The How and Why Wonder Book of Dinosaurs
Like much of the popular literature in the mid-20th century, this children's book introduced its readers to the earliest dinosaurs. Only they weren't all dinosaurs. A tiny Saltoposuchus tipeos across the center of the scene. Though long discussed as a direct ancestor of dinosaurs, it has since been reclassified — and given a new posture that keeps its tail off the ground. Likewise, the phytosaur was also not a dinosaur, and its name was a complete mistake because it implied that this meat-eating animal subsisted on plants. Prominent in this picture is Dimetrodon, which is actually a protomammal that lived in the Paleozoic Era, before dinosaurs evolved. Even worse, the poor thing has completely lost its head here. Yet this error-filled scene has a winsome charm full of smiling, skittering creatures. No wonder kids got hooked.
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Year: 1960
Artist: Rudolph Zallinger
Originally published in: Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Reptiles by Jane Werner Watson
Now appears in: Paleontology: An Illustrated History by David Bainbridge
Zallinger is perhaps best know for the spectacular Peabody Museum mural at Yale and the iconic "march of progress" of human evolution. But his illustrations clearly had a playful side, too. This snoozing T. rex gets a few winks during a rainstorm. It dates from the dinosaur-depiction era of dragging tails and slow movement but this picture isn't necessarily wrong. As Bainbridge remarks, "presumably Tyrannosaurus had to sleep, and a rain storm seems as good a time as any." Note the caption in the lower right, which reads, "Early opossums."
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Year: 1953
Scientist: Roy Chapman Andrews
Artist: Thomas W. Voter
Published in: All About Dinosaurs
Parasaurolophus had a crest on the top of its head that has baffled generations of paleontologists. Maybe the crest supported regulating temperature or amplifying the animal's call. Maybe it helped the dinosaur show off to the opposite sex. One thing scientists are pretty sure of now is that the crest wasn't a built-in scuba tank. When Andrews penned All About Dinosaurs, though, dinosaurs were assumed to spend a lot of time underwater, hence these tiny bubbles and this adorable picture caption.
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Year: 1953
Scientist: Roy Chapman Andrews
Artist: Thomas W. Voter
Published in: All About Dinosaurs
In his dinosaur book, Roy Chapman Andrews started the chapter titled "Death of the Dinosaurs" with an admission that nobody knew for sure why they died off. The asteroid-impact theory of dinosaur extinction was only introduced in 1980, and became the leading theory of dinosaur extinction years after that, so the lack of consensus in the early 1950s was perfectly understandable. But one of the more colorful explanations Andrews offered was "racial senescence." As he put it, "The dinosaurs may have died because they were old and had reached the end of their rope. This kind of old age is sometimes shown by the production of strange forms. Such, for instance, as some of the armored dinosaurs, with spines and projections and bumps and warts all over their bodies." But he added the caveat that "old age of the race" couldn't account for all dinosaur extinctions. He continued, "Possibly an important reason was the very small and poor brain of these great reptiles. In Stegosaurus, which must have weighed four or five tons, the brain was no larger than that of a small kitten. With such a brain, the animal could barely eat and sleep and muddle through life." But if a small brain-to-body ratio doomed a species to eventual extinction, plenty of modern fish and reptiles would have gone extinct, too.
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Year: 1974
Authors: Leonora and Arthur Hornblow
Artist: Michael K. Frith
Published in: Prehistoric Monsters Did the Strangest Things
Duckbill crests discussed in: Key to Function of Dinosaur Crests Found in Brain Structure (https://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=112409)
Film producer Arthur Hornblow had more than one career. After producing classics such as Witness for the Prosecution and Gaslight, he teamed up with his wife Leonora to write a series of children's books, illustrated by Michael K. Frith: Animals Do the Strangest Things. No such series would be complete without ruling reptiles. Published in the mid-1970s, the volume devoted to prehistoric life featured simple text and adorable pictures. Alas, not all the descriptions of ancient life have withstood the test of time. Titled "The Odd-Bills," the spread on hadrosaurs states, "Most duck-bills had odd crests of bone on top of their heads. Some crests were shaped like feathers. Some looked like helmets, others like ax blades. These strange crests stored air. The duck-bills were able to stay under water longer because of the extra air." The text went on to describe the dinosaurs' habit of fleeing into the nearest water body whenever threatened, a scene portrayed by Frith. Duckbill dinosaurs certainly do have odd crests, but not like the boomerang shapes on the tops of these little heads. According to research published in 2008, CT scans indicate the presence of tortuous nasal passages in the crests, but they were likely for making noise, not serving as oxygen tanks under water.
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Year: 1974
Authors: Leonora and Arthur Hornblow
Artist: Michael K. Frith
Published in: Prehistoric Monsters Did the Strangest Things
In 1912, Bert Leston Taylor penned "The Dinosaur."
Behold the mighty Dinosaur,
Famous in prehistoric lore,
Not only for his weight and strength
But for his intellectual length.
You will observe by these remains
The creature had two sets of brains —
One in his head (the usual place),
The other at his spinal base.
Thus he could reason a priori
As well as a posteriori.
No problem bothered him a bit;
He made both head and tail of it.
So wise he was, so wise and solemn,
Each thought filled just a spinal column.
If one brain found the pressure strong
It passed a few ideas along;
If something slipped his forward mind
'Twas rescued by the one behind;
And if in error he was caught
He had a saving afterthought.
As he thought twice before he spoke
He had no judgments to revoke;
For he could think, without congestion,
Upon both sides of every question.
Oh, gaze upon this model beast,
Defunct ten million years at least.
What prompted this poem was the same mistaken belief that prompted the text in the children's book several decades later. Early studies of the Stegosaurus genera turned up a spinal cavity over the hips, most likely just an enlarged nervous system ganglion. But early speculation led to a long-lasting belief that the stegosaur, with such a tiny brain for its big body needed a second brain. The actual brain is indeed small, but stegosaurs might not have needed much intelligence to munch plants all day. And contrary to popular belief, the stegosaur brain was not the size of a walnut; it was the size of three walnuts.
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