‘Labrinthodon restored’ Unknown artist

Landscape featuring a reconstructed example of a reptile from the extinct amphibious group Labyrinthodontia, a loose definition of creatures active in the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic periods. The scene features a trace fossil footprint.

Figure 83 from p.193 of the book The world before the deluge, by Louis Figuier, newly edited and revised by H. W. Bristow (Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, London, 1872).

Figure not signed. The image is numbered and captioned below: ‘Fig 83. – Labryinthodon restored. One-twentieth natural size.’

The accompanying text (p.190) states: ‘we should note, that at the Bunter period a gigantic Reptile appears, on which the opinions of geologists were for a long while at variance…imprints of the foot of some animal were discovered in the sandstones of Storeton Hill, in Cheshire, and in the New Red Sandstone of parts of Warwickshire, as well as in Thuringia, and Hesseburg in Saxony…These traces were made by a species of Reptile furnished with four feet…This curious and uncouth-looking creature, of which the woodcut Fig. 83 is a restoration, has been named the Cheirotherium, or Labrinthodon, from the complicated arrangement of the cementing layer of teeth.’