Ichthyosaur Vertebrae in cross section, copper plate illustration from a paper by Sir Everard Home in the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Society. He wrote the first scientific papers on the group between 1813 and 1820 but did a rather poor job. On the basis of the cupped vertebrae (this image) and limbs he proposed a place for them between Proteus (Salamanders) and lizards and gave them the name Proteosaurus. He may have been influenced by Cuvier's identification of large fossil proteus (itself a correction of Schuechzer's misidentified human witness of the flood fossil, Homo diluvii testis). See other images in this collection.