The true world's first sculptures of antediluvian animals, which never were...

In 1852, the French state commissioned the artists Frémiet and Jacquemart to execute bronzes of a plesiosaur and a pterodactyl for the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. The orders were cancelled before the sculptures could be realized, largely because of petty jealousies among the professors of the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, who maintained that the long-extinct animals were too poorly understood for accurate reconstructions. In this way an important opportunity to educate and inspire the French public about the life of the past was lost.