page_title: Edaphosaurus
section_title: In popular culture
hierarchical_section_title: Edaphosaurus / In popular culture
caption_attribution_description: English: Identifier: naturalhistory07ameruoft (find matches) Title: Natural history Year: 1919 (1910s) Authors: American Museum of Natural History Subjects: Natural history Publisher: New York&#160;: American Museum of Natural History Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: e the waters of the Permianrivers and lakes, need not be taken very seriously. Although clumsy and awkward looking in comparison with themore highly developed carnivorous reptiles and mammals of laterperiods, the Xaosaurus was the most active and powerful predaceousanimal of its time. A suggestion of its fighting habits is conveyed in theinjury to one of the spines in this skeleton. This was broken and dis-placed during life, probably in some affray, and afterwards united by agrowth of false bone. Several other specimens in the collection bearmarks of injuries received during life. With this skeleton the Department of Fossil Vertebrates enters uponthe illustration of the fauna of the Age of Amphibians, which precededthe Age of Reptiles as that preceded the Age of Mammals in the historyof the earth. In the Hall of Fossil Mammals may be seen the rise anddevelopment of the various races of quadrupeds which to-day inhabitthe earth; while the Dinosaurs, in the Dinosaur Hall, and the Marine Text Appearing After Image: THE SKELETON OF NAOSAURUS Cope CollectionA great, flesh-eating lizard, eight feet long, (nun the Permian beds of Texas.Collected by Charles H. Sternberg. Mounted at the American Museum in 1906 by A. Hermann. Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Edaphosaurus is a genus of extinct edaphosaurid synapsids that lived in what is now North America and Europe around 303.4 to 272.5 million years ago, during the late Carboniferous to early Permian periods. American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope first described Edaphosaurus in 1882, naming it for the "dental pavement" on both the upper and lower jaws, from the Greek edaphos έδαφος and σαῦρος.
  Edaphosaurus is important as one of the earliest-known, large, plant-eating, amniote tetrapods. In addition to the large tooth plates in its jaws, the most characteristic feature of Edaphosaurus is a sail on its back. A number of other synapsids from the same time period also have tall dorsal sails, most famously the large apex predator Dimetrodon. However, the sail on Edaphosaurus is different in shape and morphology. The first fossils of Edaphosaurus came from the Texas Red Beds in North America, with later finds in New Mexico, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Ohio. Fragmentary fossils attributed to Edaphosaurus have also been found in eastern Germany in Central Europe.
context_section_description: The strange appearance of Edaphosaurus with its distinctive dorsal sail composed of tall spines studded with bony knobs has made it a popular subject for scientific reconstructions and paleoart in museums and in books. However, confusion over the animal's skull dating back to Cope's ideas about "Naosaurus" and over other details led to a long history of scientific and artistic errors that lasted in some cases into the 1940s.  The correct scientific name Edaphosaurus (rather than "Naosaurus") also was not used consistently until the 1940s.
  At the urging of paleontologist Henry Fairfield Osborn, American paleoartist Charles R. Knight consulted with Edward Drinker Cope in person in early 1897 about a set of illustrations of prehistoric reptiles, one of Cope's specialties. Shortly after, Knight  reconstructed Edaphosaurus (as "Naosaurus") with a Dimetrodon skull that Cope had previously referred to that genus in error. This painting was commissioned for the American Museum of Natural History in 1897 and was reprinted for Cope's obituary in the November 1898 issue of The Century Magazine. Knight later created a more accurate revised version of the painting that turned "Naosaurus" into Dimetrodon, with a corrected head and teeth, and a sail with smooth, unbarred spines. He also turned the Dimetrodon in the original background into Edaphosaurus (still called "Naosaurus" at the time) with a different head and a sail with crossbars.
  German paleontologist Otto Jaekel argued in 1905 that there was no direct scientific evidence that the tall dorsal spines on Dimetrodon and "Naosaurus" were bound in a web of skin like a sail or fin (as portrayed by Cope, Knight, and others) and proposed instead that the long bony projections served as an array of separated spines to protect the animals, which allegedly could roll up like hedgehogs. Spiny-backed reconstructions of "Naosaurus" (with a large carnivore's head) appeared in different German sources, including as a tile mosaic on the façade of the Aquarium Berlin in 1913 (destroyed in World War II and later recreated). 
  Nearly complete specimens of Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus (as "Naosaurus") had not been found yet by the first decade of the 20th century when American paleontologist E.C. Case produced his major monograph on the Pelycosauria in 1907. Case argued that the apparent lack of any associated elongate and cylindrical tail bones with the known fossils meant that Dimetrodon and "Naosaurus" must have had short tails in life. (Earlier, Cope had assumed that the animals had long tails as in most reptiles, an idea seen from his sketches and his advice to Charles R. Knight in 1897.) Based on the authority of Case, museums and artists at the time restored "Naosaurus" with a short tail. New fossil finds and research by A.S. Romer in the 1930s and 1940s showed that both Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus had long tails, a feature similar to other "pelycosaurs" and seen as primitive.
  The American Museum of Natural History mounted the first full skeletal reconstruction of Edaphosaurus (as "Naosaurus claviger" (a synonym of Edaphosaurus pogonias) for public display in 1907 under the scientific direction of H.F. Osborn, along with W.D. Matthew. The main part of the "Naosaurus" skeleton was a set of dorsal vertebrae with high spines (AMNH 4015) from a partial Edaphosaurus pogonias specimen found by the fossil collector Charles H. Sternberg in Hog Creek,Texas in 1896. Because of the still incomplete knowledge of Edaphosaurus at the time, the rest of the mount was a "conjectural" composite of various real fossil bones collected in different places with other parts recreated in plaster, including a skull (AMNH 4081) based on Dimetrodon (per E.D. Cope, and despite Case's already expressed doubts about such a skull for "Naosaurus") and a hypothetical short tail (per Case).  As "Naosaurus" was thought to be a close relative of Dimetrodon rather than Edaphosaurus, slender limbs (AMNH 4057) probably belonging to Dimetrodon dollovianus were also mounted with this composite specimen, rather than the correct, stoc
caption: The Naosaurus skeletal mount, with wrongly attributed Dimetrodon skull, as mounted in the AMNH in 1906-1907
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