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.

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Year: 1853

Scientist: Sir Richard Owen

Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins (engraving of reconstructions)

Originally appeared in: Crystal Palace Park, London

Now appears in: The Reign of the Dinosaurs by Jean-Guy Michard, Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World by Martin J.S. Rudwick and Gideon Mantell and the Discovery of Dinosaurs by Dennis R. Dean

Sir Richard Owen, who originally proposed the term Dinosauria , personally supervised the sculpture of these beasts. When the sculptures were complete, he then dined with 20 dignitaries in the belly of a reconstructed Iguanodon. Gideon Mantell, who discovered and named this dinosaur, had been invited to participate in the reconstruction, but withdrew from the project because he disliked the idea of life-size models, and perhaps disliked Richard Owen even more. (As any eight-year-old can tell you, this Iguanodon reconstruction had some mistakes. The horn on its snout was later determined to be a specialized toe, the animal was later found to be primarily bipedal, and the tail wasn't droopy.)

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Year: 1853

Scientist: Sir Richard Owen

Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins

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 team included this depiction of "giant lizards and pterosauria." Because the earliest dinosaur fossils were fragmentary and vaguely resembled modern lizards, 19th-century paleontologists initially thought of them as big lizards. Yet Hawkins's "lizards" — like the Iguanodon reconstructions — have more of a mammalian pose, standing on four sturdy legs. Owen didn't accept evolution and preferred to show dinosaurs (the dominant life forms of the Mesozoic) resembling the dominant life forms of modern times. That would be mammals.

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Year: 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 had to work closely with Owen to complete all the Crystal Palace sculptures, and the artist shared the anatomist's anti-evolutionist views. It's reasonable to infer that Waterhouse Hawkins had great admiration for the scientist who oversaw the project, 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: 1853

Scientist: Sir Richard Owen

Artist: Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins

Still appears in: Crystal Palace Park, London (photo by Michon Scott)

Besides Iguanodon and Megalosaurus, the Crystal Palace Park sculptures included Hylaeosaurus. Although Richard Owen favored mammalian postures for his dinosaur reconstructions, Hylaeosaurus looked more like a giant lizard — much more so than Iguanodon. Adding to its lizard-like appearance was a row of spikes running down its back. In fact, the spiny back was not in error, although more complete finds since Richard Owen's day show that the spines extended roughly from the hips to the tip of the tail. Hylaeosaurus was actually a type of ankylosaur — a heavily armored tank-like dinosaur bearing little resemblance to modern-day iguanas. At Crystal Palace Park, visitors typically approach Hylaeosaurus from the rear. It's a bit like getting mooned by a giant lizard. This posterior view was a particular favorite of Victorian cartoonists working for Punch, which was perhaps the Victorian equivalent of The Onion. Sir Owen would not have been amused.

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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 1853 New Year's Eve party anywhere was the one inside the belly of an Iguanodon. 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, and 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: 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/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: 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: 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 peacock. 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.

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. 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 Owen and 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 cockatoo 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 Hitchcock

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 Hitchcock 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. Hitchcock 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 Denni