Sauropods on hind legs

[Richard W. Travsky]

When was the first conjecture of sauropods rearing up on their hind legs? There was a popular press article on the topic last fall and I recently acquired and read a reprint volume of the 1933 Alley Oop dailies wherein a couple of characters are chased up a tree by a sauropod which is then on its hind legs trying to get at them.

 

The 1914 animated short "Gertie the Dinosaur" had its sauropod on two legs (to dance). Artistic license no doubt for both but am curious if there was anything published at the time from which the artists derived inspiration.

[Ben Creisler]

Ben Creisler

bcre...@gmail.com

Charles R. Knight depicted a Diplodocus rearing on its hind legs in 1907, so the idea came earlier:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Diplodocus_cknight.jpg

On Thu, Jan 29, 2026 at 2:38 PM 'Richard W. Travsky' via Dinosaur Mailing Group <DinosaurMa...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

When was the first conjecture of sauropods rearing up on their hind legs? There was a popular press article on the topic last fall and I recently acquired and read a reprint volume of the 1933 Alley Oop dailies wherein a couple of characters are chased up a tree by a sauropod which is then on its hind legs trying to get at them.

 

The 1914 animated short "Gertie the Dinosaur" had its sauropod on two legs (to dance). Artistic license no doubt for both but am curious if there was anything published at the time from which the artists derived inspiration.

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[Mike Taylor]

See the section "A short history of rearing sauropods" in the in-progress manuscript "The skeletal reconstruction of Barosaurus lentus in the American Museum of Natural History", which you can find in the repository at https://github.com/MikeTaylor/palaeo-baromount/tree/main

-- Mike.

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[Tyler Greenfield]

"The first ever life restoration featuring sauropods is Charles R. Knight’s 1897 drawing, created under the supervision of E. D. Cope, appearing in Ballou (1897:20) and reproduced in Osborn and Mook (1921:figure 127). This shows several Amphicoelias individuals in mostly submerged rearing postures."

Just a minor correction to your manuscript Mike, but Knight's Amphicoelias group was not the first life restoration of sauropods. There are at least three earlier examples I know of. One is an uncredited 1892 illustration of Amphicoelias, which was clearly an inspiration for Knight's rendition (especially the patterning). The others are an 1892 illustration of Brontosaurus by Joseph Smit and an 1886 illustration of Atlantosaurus by Jules Blanadet.

References:

• Culver, J.E. (1892, April). Some extinct giants. The Californian Illustrated Magazine, 1(5), 501–507.
• Flammarion, C. (1886). Le monde avant la création de l'homme. Origines de la terre. Origines de la vie. Origines de l'humanité. C. Marpon et E. Flammarion.
• Hutchinson, H.N. (1892). Extinct monsters: A popular account of some of the larger forms of ancient animal life. Chapman & Hall. [This links to the more widely-circulated 3rd edition from 1893.]

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[Tyler Greenfield]

Sorry, the 1892 illustration of Amphicoelias is by Carl Dahlgren, not uncredited.

[Gregory Paul]

Osborn and especially Riggs discussed rearing sauropods around the last turn of the century, which inspired Knight. Then it was pretty much forgotten until Bakker brought it back in an encyclopedia year book in the early 70s -- it was pretty shocking at the time. 

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[Mike Taylor]

This is AWESOME! Thanks so much, Tyler.

"The best way to get information on Usenet isn't to ask a question, but to post the wrong information" -- aa...@netcom.com

-- Mike.

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[Richard W. Travsky]

Thanks for the replies. I did go look for the Knight painting. Scientific American, June 1907 volume 96 number 24 page 485. Interesting juxtaposition, one rearing on hind legs with one in the water. The painting was done for an article on Diplodocus ("The animal was principally aquatic…"). Nice picture of a crew engaged in mounting the skeleton though.

 

 

 

[Richard W. Travsky]

Meant to include the link

 

https://catalog.lindahall.org/discovery/delivery/01LINDAHALL_INST:LHL/12101915570005961

 

= = =

[Jerry Harris]

We're not the first to go down the "first sauropod life restoration" rabbit hole...!: https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-long-winding-road-to-first-sauropod.html . Looks like he came to the same conclusion that Flammarion's might well be the first, but I'm kind of surprised that neither Cope nor Marsh commissioned (or made themselves) any sort of life restorations of the taxa they were naming. Maybe none were ever published, I guess, but I kind of wonder what's lurking in Cope's or Marsh's notes or communications...!  I don't see any such thing reproduced in Davidson's biography of Cope, although there are only a few figures therein; in Schuchert & LeVene's biography of Marsh, there's an interesting restoration of Diplodocus I don't recall seeing before:

...that are credited to Arthur Lakes, so almost certainly post-dating Marsh, but I'm not sure of their dates of production, or where they were first published...?

[Jura]

On Monday, February 2, 2026 at 5:14:47 PM UTC-6 Jerry Harris wrote:

We're not the first to go down the "first sauropod life restoration" rabbit hole...!: https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-long-winding-road-to-first-sauropod.html . Looks like he came to the same conclusion that Flammarion's might well be the first, but I'm kind of surprised that neither Cope nor Marsh commissioned (or made themselves) any sort of life restorations of the taxa they were naming. Maybe none were ever published, I guess, but I kind of wonder what's lurking in Cope's or Marsh's notes or communications...!  

__________________________________________

The famous leaping Laelaps image by Knight was commissioned by Cope. 

https://www.lindahall.org/experience/digital-exhibitions/paper-dinosaurs/29-dinosaurs-in-motion/30-leaping-dryptosaurs-1898/

[Tyler Greenfield]

"Leaping Laelaps" was not commissioned by Cope AFAIK. It was made for an article in The Century Magazine by William H. Ballou, so was presumably commissioned either by the editorial staff or Ballou himself. Cope did act as a scientific consultant for the article and artwork, and met with Knight personally on one occasion.

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[Jura]

Not according to the Linda Hall Library's description.

"Shortly before his death in 1897, he engaged Charles Knight to construct models of some of his dinosaur discoveries, and one of these was a marvelous realization of Cope's thoughts on active dinosaurs."

[Tyler Greenfield]

That's not correct. Those models were made as reference maquettes for his paintings in the 1897 Century Magazine article, which were not commissioned by Cope.

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[Jura]

If it's incorrect then the story that Cope commissioned the work has been around for a long time. 

To quote Bakker's The Dinosaur Heresies:

"Cope had a painting made of Dryptosaurus, showing a pair of the giant meat-eaters excavated from the phosphate mines of New Jersey. Cope's dryptosaurs were portrayed in violent locomotor exercise. One was flung on its back, hind legs lashing out in claw-tipped defensive strokes; the other was painted in mid-leap, its great hind legs having propelled its body far above the ground."

[Tyler Greenfield]

Pop histories of "Bone Wars"-era paleontology have been inaccurate for a long time, mostly due to a failure to consult primary sources. Besides the evidence I've already shown, keep in mind that Cope was penniless and on his deathbed in early 1897 (indeed, he died months before the Century Magazine article was published). He was in no position to commission artworks at that time.

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[Tyler Greenfield]

Marsh was notoriously anti-life-reconstruction because he thought they were too speculative/unscientific. Cope made several crude sketches (some of which were references for Knight's 1897 paintings) but most were never published during his lifetime.

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[Thomas Yazbek]

Didn't Cope have, like, no money by this point? He had to sell his specimens...would he have any money to pay Knight with?

Thomas

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[Thomas Yazbek]

I wouldn't consider Bakker's book to be a 100% detailed, accurate source on this. Not to besmirch his good name by any means, but "had a painting made" is somewhat vague. 

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[Gregory Paul]

Ah, so that is where the bias by some professional paleos against paleoartists got started:(

GSPaul

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[Gregory Paul]

Cope was not broke. He had sold his collections, at least most of it to the AMNH, for a good price, 100Ks in today's money (he had enough funds to recommission Sternberg to prospect for fossils, see Wiki entry). This was a huge disappointment to C. He had hoped to open his dream museum in Philly. But -- partly to pay for his journal publications - he invested the large amount of his family money (he had literally sold the farm, his father's) in mining operations that went bad. 

He was in terrible physical shape, and his self medications including formaldehyde did not help -- Osborn was horrified. 

GSPaul

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[Jerry Harris]

Just for the record: that Diplodocus restoration attributed to Arthur Lakes in the Marsh biography apparently isn't by Lakes. I found the same pic in another book from 1940, and in its lower left corner is the name "C.E. Swan."

So apparently the painting is by Cuthbert Edmund Swan (the signature matches those on other paintings by that artist), a renown wildlife artist from the early 20th century. Swan was born in 1873, so the dinosaur painting was probably done after at least 1890, if not 1900; he died in 1931, so it's at least from before that. In any case, it therefore wouldn't be one of the first sauropod restorations. I have not been able to find any further information on when Swan actually produced the painting or where it may have first been published.

[Ben Creisler]

Ben Creisler

bcre...@gmail.com

Just for the record, see this recent blog post by Mike Taylor, not mentioned here yet it seems:

What was the first life restoration of a sauropod?

https://svpow.com/2026/02/02/what-was-the-first-life-restoration-of-a-sauropod/

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[Ben Creisler]

Ben Creisler
bcre...@gmail.com

Without getting too technical for now with lots of ref links…

Some additional historical issues to point out. There was considerable confusion early on about exactly what sauropods looked like. Marsh had compared “Titanosaurus montanus” (renamed Atlantosaurus) to Hadrosaurus, based on a femur and a sacrum, thus presumably a biped with a short neck. 

When describing the later species Atlantosaurus immanis, he originally overestimated the size of the femur (supposedly more than 8 feet tall), conjecturing that the entire animal would have been 115 feet long if it had the proportions of a crocodile(!?). He sent out plaster replicas of the 8-foot Atlantosaurus femur to various museums and institutions, but then discovered, based on the much more complete Brontosaurus excelsus skeleton, that he had overestimated the size of the femur and had to send out 6-foot-tall replacements for the oversize 8-foot versions. (I’ve been trying to find copies of Marsh’s letters online explaining the correction). This resulted in considerable confusion about the size of Atlantosaurus, especially in popular sources, and his miscalculation of the femur size was brought up in the Marsh-Cope battles.

Cope had compared Camarasaurus early on to a giraffe and had John Ryder create a life-size reconstruction of the skeleton that was displayed in public but not published at the time. His various later descriptions and sketches of Camarasaurus and Amphicoelias suggested that he thought they likely were aquatic bipeds, at least when mostly submerged.

 
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amphicoelias_altus_cope_sketch.jpg

The earliest published relatively accurate sauropod reconstruction is Marsh’s 1883 skeleton image of Brontosaurus excelsus, with a long neck.

https://www.lindahall.org/about/news/scientist-of-the-day/othniel-charles-marsh/

Some popular sources drew a flesh outline around Marsh’s 1883 skeleton image, but did not restore a fully fleshed in life image covered in skin.

Marsh’s 1883 Brontosaurus reconstruction appears to be the basis for Jules Blanadet’s 1886 fully fleshed out Atlantosaurus, scaled to 35 meters (115 feet) based on Marsh’s initial wrong reconstruction of the Atlantosaurus immanis femur. This oversized version of Atlantosaurus would continue to be mentioned well into the 20th century as the largest land animal that ever lived, until the German Tendaguru “Gigantosaurus” humerus (now part of Giraffatitan) was described, and used, based on the body form of Carnegie’s Diplodocus, to conjure a dinosaur twice the size of Diplodocus (which is a whole other story!).

Cope’s Amphicoelias fragillimus, which was also estimated to be exceptionally gigantic, somehow slipped out of view, overshadowed by Marsh’s Atlantosaurus immanis.  I had a post on Amphicoelias fragillimus back in April 2022 (“Cope's Mystery Monster Amphicoelias fragillimus”) but I do not see it archived online from the old Dinosaur Mailing List. Maybe I should repost it to the new list so it’s archived...

====

Also:

The Ballad of Atlantosaurus

https://equatorialminnesota.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-ballad-of-atlantosaurus.html

[Richard W. Travsky]

Thanks for the interesting posts on this. Below is the comic segment that first prompted me to ask. My scanner doesn't accommodate the wide format of the book so I had to take a picture. So from 1933