Satirical long-necked #Basilosaurus illustration produced by Anthonie Cornelis Oudemans in his book “The Great Sea-Serpent”. The context is that Mr. Searles V. Wood Jr. speculated — in the journal Nature! — about Basilosaurus being responsible for long-necked #SeaSerpent sightings. Seemingly he had no access to a skeletal (?!?)

#AncientWhaleWeek

Link:
https://www.nature.com/articles/023054a0

Reconstruction of #Basilosaurus from Cleland’s 1916 “Geology”

vs.

My own attempt to give Basilosaurus the correct number of vertebrae and an appropriate amount of soft tissue.

#AncientWhaleWeek #Whales #Cetaceans

For #AncientWhaleWeek I’d like celebrate how much better reconstructs have gotten over the years. This #Basilosaurus is from Roy Mackal’s 1980 “Searching for Hidden Animals” and uh… it looks seriously unprofessional to modern eyes (and doesn’t follow the skeleton whatsoever).

Skeletal is from:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0209021.g001