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 (?!?)
#basilosaurus #seaserpent #ancientwhaleweek
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.
#basilosaurus #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
#ancientwhaleweek #basilosaurus