Elasmosaur Painting

The Snake-necked Elasmosaurus by Charles R. Knight appeared in the 1909 memoir The Life of a Fossil Hunter by amateur paleontologist Charles H. Sternberg. Knight, born in 1874 in Brooklyn, New York, was renowned for his paintings of prehistoric animals. Early artists reconstructed marine reptiles and dinosaurs based on the only animals they knew, living reptiles. Today, based on detailed studies of their anatomy, scientists know that elasmosaurs could not move their necks as depicted here.

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