Way back in 2010, when I was young and stupid, I wrote as follows in my History Of Sauropod Studies book-chapter (Taylor 2010:368–370):
Ballou (1897) included, as one of his six figures, the first published life restoration of a sauropod, executed by Knight under the direction of Cope (Fig. 5a). This illustration, subsequently republished by Osborn & Mook (1921, fig. 127), depicted four Amphicoelias individuals in a lake, two of them entirely submerged and two with only their heads above the water. The skins were shown with a bold mottled pattern like that of some lizards, which would not be seen again in a sauropod restoration for the best part of a century
And here is that illustration:
Taylor 2010:Fig. 5. Snorkelling sauropods. Left: the first-ever life restoration of a sauropod, Knight’s drawing of Amphicoelias, published by Ballou (1897), modified from Osborn & Mook (1921, fig. 127). Right: a similar scene with ‘Helopus’ (now Euhelopus), modified from Wiman (1929, fig. 5).
I blithely repeated this assertion on the in-progress Barosaurus-mount manuscript. When I mentioned this manuscript in a Dinosaur Mailing Group thread, Tyler Greenfield helpfully pointed out that I’d missed something!
Two publications in 1892 included life restorations of sauropods.
One is Henry Neville Hutchinson’s book Extinct monsters: A popular account of some of the larger forms of ancient animal life, first published in September 1892. His Plate IV (between pages 68 and 69) shows a Brontosaurus:
My initial thought that this may be by Joseph Smit, since the book’s title page says “With illustrations by J. Smit and others”, but that the poorly preserved signature at bottom left doesn’t look like it spells his name. However, Mary Kirkaldy sent me a helpful comparison of this poorly reproduced signature with several others which are definitely Smit’s, and it checks out:
The other 1892 publication with a sauropod life-restoration is James Erwin Culver’s seven-page article “Some Extinct Giants” from issue 1(5) of The Californian Illustrated Magazine. This must have been published before Hutchinson’s book, because the date-range for Volume 1 of this magazine is October 1891 to May 1892.
I’ll quote from page 505 because it’s just so cute:
If men lived in those days, they were cave dwellers living in the rocks,, garbed in skins, defending themselves,, if necessary, with stone clubs and hammers. But what could their weapons, avail against the giant Amphicoelias that crawled slowly and heavily out of the water in the direction of their homes, a mountain of flesh, weighing possibly twenty tons, four or five feet taller than the tallest elephant, and dragging along sixty or seventy feet of flesh?
And on page 506 we see this — note the cavemen on the ledge to the right!
(Tyler says this artwork is by Carl Dahlgren, but I’ve not been able to find the attribution. Can anyone point me to it? He also notes that this piece was clearly an inspiration for Knight’s rendition, especially the patterning.)
But both of these 1892 works were predated by Camille Flammarion’s 1886 book Le Monde Avant la Création de l’Homme (The World before the Creation of Man). On page 561, as figure 297, Flammarion included this restoration by Jules Blanadet:
Translation: Shape and probable size of the atlantosaur, the biggest animal that ever existed (length: 35 meters).
As things stand, this is the oldest life restoration of a sauropod that I know of. But I’ve been wrong about this before, and very possibly there are yet older ones that I don’t yet know about. Can anyone point us to something older than 1886?
- Culver, James Erwin (1892, April). Some Extinct Giants. The Californian Illustrated Magazine 1(5):501–507.
- Flammarion, Camille. (1886). Le Monde Avant la Création de l’Homme. Origines de la Terre. Origines de la Vie. Origines de l’Humanité. C. Marpon et E. Flammarion (eds.). 847 pages.
- Hutchinson, Rev. Henry Neville (1892). Extinct Monsters: A Popular Account of some of the Larger Forms of Ancient Animal Life. Chapman & Hall, London. [This links to the more widely-circulated 3rd edition from 1893.]
- Taylor, Michael P. 2010. Sauropod dinosaur research: a historical review. pp. 361-386 in: Richard T. J. Moody, Eric Buffetaut, Darren Naish and David M. Martill (eds.), Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Saurians: a Historical Perspective. Geological Society of London, Special Publication 343. doi: 10.1144/SP343.22