Nov 6, 2025
Leander Russ - "At the Pyramids" (1842)
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Leander Russ - "At the Pyramids" (1842)
At the Pyramids by Leander Russ, 1842
At the Pyramids by Leander Russ
At the Pyramids (1842)
Once upon a time the plesiosaurs of France were snake-tongued anaconda-skinned tree-hugging land-lubbers (kind of). We have one by Théodore Susemihl (above) and other that seems to be attributed to Pierre Boitard (below). Both were illustrations for the science fiction of Boitard, a botanist and a geologist. However Susemihl created the first image for a shorter article in 1836, while the second appears in a posthumous novelized version of Boitard's story published in 1851. If you are fluent in French you can enjoy the original article Paris avant les hommes in the Google Books edition of Musée des Familles, starting from page 257: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Mus%C3%A9e_des_familles/nKc_AAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1
From there the Susemihl/Boitard plesiosaur seems to have spread to Austria, into the painting Vorweltliche Landschaft by Leander Russ (1842), and survived long enough to appear on the cover of Le Pélerin in 1922. A respectable run in the pre-Internet times. If you manage to find more of these amphibious spotted plesiosaurs somewhere, please let me know. They may yet have a future...
At the Pyramids, 1842, by Leander Russ. Via Archeology & Art on twitter
The Solar Eclipse of 8 July 1842
by Leander Russ
'Prehistoric landscape' (1842) by Austrian artist Leander Russ.