Old Art

Osborn's drawing and hypotheses about the habits of Apatosaurus are timeless classics of thoughts about dinosaurs at his time.The tail dragging sauropod of that time is long gone in both literature and illustration but the images stay with us, as does the idea that the dinosaur was a lumbering beast incapable of supporting its own weight out of water. These images will slowly disappear from the popular psyche as older cartoons and illustrations as they become more obscure; however, they were once the height of scientific thinking and some aspects of the reconstruction of dinosaurs from then can still be seen in today's modern depictions of dinosaurs.

Illustration and text by Henry Fairfield Osborn