Ichthyosaur Vertebrae in cross section, copper plate illustration from a paper by Sir Everard Home in the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Soci

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Ichthyosaur Vertebrae in cross section, copper plate illustration from a paper by Sir Everard Home in the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Society. He wrote the first scientific papers on the group between 1813 and 1820 but did a rather poor job. On the basis of the cupped vertebrae (this image) and limbs he proposed a place for them between Proteus (Salamanders) and lizards and gave them the name Proteosaurus. He may have been influenced by Cuvier's identification of large fossil proteus (itself a correction of Schuechzer's misidentified human witness of the flood fossil, Homo diluvii testis). See other images in this collection.

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Size: 3398px × 5143px
Photo credit: © PAUL D STEWART/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No

Keywords: anning, artwork, black, black--white, cuvier, diluvii, everard, fossil, home, homo, ichthyosaur, icthyosaur, illustration, mary, misidentification, monochrome, palaeontology, paleontology, proteosaurus, testis, vertebra, vertebrae, white