A TALE OF SCALES, AND SOME BOTANICAL SERPENTS

 

Vintage engraving from 1885, depicting giant tree-like Lepidodendron lycophytes thriving during the Carboniferous Period (public domain)

I've always been fascinated by zoological misidentifications, whether accidental or deliberate. So here is a truly outrageous example of the latter variety that I recently investigated.

During early 1851, publicity broadsides were being posted on walls around the Welsh town of Neath to draw public attention (and attendance) to an eyecatching object currently being exhibited in the town hall during three consecutive days (30 and 31 January and 1 February). For according to the broadside, the object was none other than a very sizeable fossil serpent, 8 ft 3 in long and 7 in across.

Broadside for exhibition of alleged fossil serpent at Neath's town hall, early 1851 (public domain)

As revealed by F.J. North in the second edition of his book Coal, and the Coalfields in Wales (1931), however, it was actually the trunk of an enormous, superficially tree-like, but long-extinct lycophyte plant related to club mosses and (especially) quillworts.

Known as Lepidodendron, it thrived during the Carboniferous Period around 360 million years ago, and attained a colossal height of up to 180 ft. Its fossils are found preserved in coal deposits, and it is characterised by its trunk's noticeably scaly outer surface (Lepidodendron actually translates as 'scale tree'), although its 'scales' are actually leaf scars, created when its leaves fell off.

 

Portion of fossil Lepidodendron bark exhibited at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, Houston, Texas, USA (copyright free)

Moreover, the true botanical identity of Lepidodendron fossils had been known to scientists for several years before this exhibition. So one can only assume that the latter's organiser did not intend to let a mere technicality like the truth stand in the way of making some easy money from scientifically-naive visitors anxious to see the mortal remains of an alleged prehistoric serpent!

Indeed, amateur exhibitions at sideshows and fairs of similar Lepidodendron specimens masquerading in best Barnumesque fashion as giant fossil snakes or even lizards were by no means uncommon back then. And for another monstrous misidentification featuring a supposed fossil snake, be sure to click here to read all about the bothersome Bothrodon.

 

Pictured here in 1851, the very same year as the Neath exhibition, the great(est) showman Phineas T. Barnum - he of the fake Feejee mermaids and other zoological frauds displayed by him during the 1800s - would no doubt have approved! (public domain)

 

KOCH'S MONSTROUS MISSOURIUM AND HORRID HYDRARCHOS - A PHENOMENAL PAIR OF FOSSILISED FRAUDS. Part 2: HYDRARCHOS, THE FAKE SEA SERPENT THAT MADE A SILLY MAN OUT OF SILLIMAN

 

Albert C. Koch's Hydrarchos (aka Hydrargos) – a classic engraving from a German journal, 1846, colourised (public domain)

As recently revealed in Part 1 of this 2-part ShukerNature blog article (click here to access it), the self-styled 'Dr' Albert C. Koch (in reality, he did not possess a doctorate) was one of many 19^th-Century Phineas T. Barnum emulators at large in the USA, establishing dime museums filled with a riotous assemblage of factual and phoney specimens from the living and non-living worlds, and, if sufficiently successful, organising nationwide and sometimes even international tours displaying their most famous and fantastic exhibits. In the case of Koch, who was not merely an entrepreneur of this dubious variety but also a passionate amateur palaeontologist and fossil collector, after opening during 1836 one such museum in St Louis, Missouri, he successfully excavated a mastodon skeleton in Missouri's Benton County four years later, but that was far from all.

Once Koch had not only assembled this skeleton but also surreptitiously made it much bigger than it actually was by adding extra vertebrae and other bones to it from additional mastodon remains, he dubbed his monstrous multi-mastodon the Missourium, and audaciously claimed that it was nothing less than the fossilised remains of the biblical reptilian sea monster Leviathan. Moreover, after making this phoney mega-beast the central exhibit at his museum for a year, Koch decided in 1841 to sell his museum and go on tour with the Missourium. This he did, but after receiving a very lucrative offer for it from the world-famous palaeontologist Prof. Sir Richard Owen of London's British Museum in 1843 (who readily recognised that the Missourium was a fraudulent composite, not a single creature, but could also see that if dismantled, a complete genuine mastodon skeleton could be reassembled from its components), he promptly sold it to Owen.

 

Koch's monstrous Missourium, depicted in this 19^th-Century engraving towering over an Asian elephant! (public domain)

However, this meant that Koch now needed a new, equally – if not even more – spectacular exhibit to tour with and earn him further money by drawing in the crowds of visitors anxious to cast their credulous eyes upon it. So, what did he do? He created not one but two gargantuan fossil sea serpents, bigger than any fossil creature ever recorded at that time!

In 1845, an immense skeleton that Koch had recently unearthed in Alabama, and which he claimed to be the near-complete fossilised remains of a prehistoric reptilian sea serpent, was exhibited by him in assembled form, mounted on stilts, in the Apollo Saloon's rooms on New York City’s Broadway.

 

Advertisement for the very first public exhibition of Hydrarchos (public domain)

Measuring at least 114 ft long (but see Koch's own inflated claim below), it consisted of a skull (including a pair of lengthy, tooth-brimming jaws), an exceedingly long, sinuous vertebral column that featured a lengthy curved neck held upright and an even longer horizontally-curved tail, some ribs in the creature's thoracic region, and parts of supposed paddle limbs, He charged interested spectators in America 25 cents to observe his antediluvian marvel, and 1 shilling to spectators in England once he began touring overseas with it.

Despite this specimen looking totally unlike his Missourium, Koch bizarrely stated that it too was the biblical Leviathan! And according to one broadsheet advertisement for its appearance at Niblo's Garden in New York City, he also claimed that when alive it must have measured 30 ft in circumference, and weighed at least 7,500 lb (I've seen one incredible claim that it weighed an outrageous 40,000 lb!).

 

A second classic engraving of Hydrarchos from a German journal, 1846, colourised (public domain)

As with the Missourium, Koch soon prepared a short booklet fully documenting his new reptilian revelation, which was published in 1845. Like before, it sported an unnecessarily lengthy, albeit informative title: Description of the Hydrarchos Harlani (Koch): A Gigantic Fossil Reptile: Lately Discovered by the Author, in the State of Alabama, March 1845 [I've omitted the remainder of its title, which stretched to a further 32 words!]. In it, he introduced his description of the Hydrarchos with the following emphatic pronouncement and dramatic dimensions:

This relic is without exception the largest of all fossil skeletons, found either in the old or new world. Its length being upwards of one hundred and fourteen feet, without estimating any space for the cartilage between the bones, and must, when alive, have measured over one hundred and forty feet, and its circumference probably exceeded thirty feet, reminding us most strikingly, of the various statements made by persons, in regard to having seen large serpents in different parts of the ocean, which were known by the name of Sea Serpents.

 

Reconstruction of Hydrarchos in life, based upon Koch's claims (© Tim Morris)

As with his Missourium booklet, Koch then went on to provide a lengthy, extremely detailed description containing all manner of unfounded conjectures and suppositions regarding the possible lifestyle and appearance in life of the Hydrarchos (such as sunbathing in rivers; possessing an extremely long neck that it held upwards in an arching curve like a swan to spy unwary prey walking upon the adjoining shore that it could then seize; and cannibalistically devouring younger specimens of its own kind). Ironically, conversely, he also included some accurate accounts of its genuine mammalian characteristics, such as its double-rooted teeth, even at times comparing it directly and favourably with cetaceans (of which Basilosaurus was of course one – see a little later here for Basilosaurus details), only for him then to dismiss them in favour of a reptilian identity for it!

Again as with his Missourium, Koch had given this elongate entity a formal scientific name, which was originally Hydrargos sillimanii, honouring eminent Yale College (now University) naturalist Prof. Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864), who believed in the existence of sea serpents, and had written a fulsome letter of 2 September 1845 to the editors of the New York Express newspaper authenticating Koch's Hydrargos.

 

Prof. Benjamin Silliman (public domain)

Here is what he wrote:

The Skeleton having been found entire, inclosed in limestone, evidently belonged to one individual, and there is the fullest ground for its genuineness. The animal was marine and carnivorous, and at his death was imbedded in that ancient sea where Alabama now is; having myself recently passed 400 miles down the Alabama river, and touched at many places, I have had full opportunity to observe, what many Geologists have affirmed, the marine and oceanic character of the country.

Most observers will probably be struck with the snake-like appearance of the skeleton. It differs, however, most essentially, from any existing or fossil serpent, although it may countenance the popular (and I believe well founded) impression of the existence, in our modern seas, of huge animals, to which the name of sea serpent has been attached.

 

A lesser-known Hydrarchos engraving, from 1845 (public domain)

Notwithstanding Silliman's misplaced faith in its authenticity, however, the true identity – or identities – of Koch's Hydrargos ultimately came to light when one of its numerous visitors, esteemed American anatomist Prof. Jeffries Wyman (1814-1874), exposed two major problems with it.

Firstly, its teeth and bones were mammalian, not reptilian, originating from a prehistoric form of very lengthy whale known as Basilosaurus (its reptilian-sounding moniker derives from the fact that when first named by zoologist Dr Richard Harlan (1796-1843), it was mistakenly assumed by him to have been a reptile). Secondly, just like the Missourium, its spinal column was composed of vertebrae obtained from more than one individual specimen (possibly as many as six, in fact, and procured by Koch from several different Alabama locations too), thereby explaining this creature's gigantic size. Indeed, as Basilosaurus attained a total length of 'only' 70 ft or so, Koch's 114-ft Hydrargos was larger than life in every sense!

 

A model of Basilosaurus (© Markus Bühler)

Once this became known, with the horrid Hydrargos, courtesy of Koch, having duly made a silly man out of Silliman, the latter highly-embarrassed scientist demanded that his name be removed forthwith from the binomial with which Koch had christened his bogus beast. Yet seemingly unfazed by its public unmasking as a fake, Koch simply gave his charlatan sea serpent a new binomial and continued exhibiting it on tour undeterred.

It was now known as Hydrarchos harlani, or simply the Hydrarchos colloquially, its new genus being only a slight modification of the old one, and its new species name, harlani, honouring another scientist. This time it was none other than the afore-mentioned Dr Richard Harlan, who had examined the very first known fossil vertebra of Basilosaurus and had given this archaic whale its misleadingly reptilian genus name in 1835. Moreover, being deceased by now, Harlan was in no position to challenge Koch's usage of his name when rechristening his spoof sea serpent.

 

Mounted Basilosaurus skeleton at Nantes Natural History Museum (© François de Dijon/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 4.0 licence)

In 1848, English palaeontologist Dr Gideon A. Mantell (1790-1852) wrote an excoriating letter to the Illustrated London News denouncing both Koch and his lithic Leviathan, and fully explaining the latter's true nature as a composite Basilosaurus. At much the same time, however, Koch had sold it to Prussia's King Friedrich Wilhelm IV for a lifelong annual pension, so I doubt that Mantell's criticism unduly disturbed him.

In any case, once he had sold his original Hydrarchos specimen, Koch had returned to Alabama and unearthed a second Basilosaurus skeleton in February 1848. From this and other remains, he duly constructed a second Hydrarchos specimen, this one measuring 96 ft long, and then began touring in Europe all over again.

 

Hydrarchos advertisement flyer, 1840s (public domain)

Meanwhile, the new, royal owner of what had previously been Koch's original Hydrarchos gave it to Johannes Müller at Berlin's Royal Anatomical Museum, who, knowing of its true nature, arranged for it to be dismantled, with its components officially relabelled as Basilosaurus remains. Some of these were subsequently sold during the 1850s t0 the Teyler Museum in Haarlem, the Netherlands, via the fossil auction house Krantz, based in Bonn, Germany (but without their origin in Koch's Hydrarchos being revealed!).

Various other remains from it were donated by Müller to Berlin's Museum für Naturkunde. However, the vast majority were long thought to have been destroyed during World War II, but according to recent ongoing investigations this may not have been the case.

 

Hydrarchos as portrayed in Koch's own diary (public domain)

As for Koch's second Hydrarchos: when he finally tired of touring, Koch sold it to the new owner of his erstwhile St Louis museum, who in turn later sold it to a similar establishment in Chicago, Illinois. This was a mini-emporium packed full of curiosities and real specimens intermingled with fake ones, which was owned by Colonel E.L. Wood and duly known as Colonel Wood's Museum.

Here the Hydrarchos was soberly labelled as a specimen of Zeuglodon (a junior synonym of Basilosaurus), rather than as any legendary Leviathan or suchlike. Tragically, however, the entire museum and its contents were destroyed during the great fire that devastated Chicago in 1871.

 

The nemeses of Hydrarchos – Prof. Jeffries Wyman (left) and Dr Gideon A. Mantell (right) (both public domain)

An inevitable result of his escapades with the Missourium and the two Hydrargos/Hydrarchos specimens was that Koch's name became synonymous with fraud, and by the time of his death in 1867 all claims and finds made by him were routinely dismissed as unreliable by the scientific community. This trend continued for many decades, but based upon some intriguing, corroborating finds in later years by reputable researchers, a number of scientists have reassessed Koch's claims and now believe that some of them, especially ones relating to various human artefacts allegedly found by him in association with fossil mastodons and ground sloths in North America, may have been valid after all.

Even so, it seems highly unlikely that Koch will ever be fully rehabilitated by mainstream science. Thanks to his faked fossil exhibits, he may have acquired fame and fortune, but at the same time he lost the opportunity for scientific recognition that he had always craved – and which he might well have achieved, if only he had presented his notable finds of mastodon and Basilosaurus skeletons in a straightforward, honest manner, rather than wilfully distorting and misrepresenting their nature for purely lucrative, non-scientific purposes. Instead, his name seems forever destined to be irrevocably associated with hoax and fraud.

 

 Above: The section of John J. Egan's enormous painting 'Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Plain' that contains the white-trousered figure believed by some researchers to be Albert C. Koch, shown gesticulating towards some fossilised ground sloth remains (public domain); Below: an engraving of a fossil ground sloth skeleton whose corresponding form readily confirms the taxonomic identity of the remains in Egan's painting (public domain)

Finally: It is nothing if not curious that images of Albert C. Koch himself are exceedingly elusive, as I discovered when preparing this 2-part ShukerNature blog article. However, some researchers have claimed that Koch is the figure who is depicted wearing white trousers, and gesticulating towards some newly-unearthed fossil ground sloth remains (a feat that he did indeed accomplish in 1838), within one section of the enormous 348-ft-long painting 'Panorama of the Monumental Grandeur of the Mississippi Plain', which was produced by artist John J Egan in 1850.

Incidentally, some online commentators regarding this painting, and no doubt influenced by Koch's mastodon excavations, have misidentified the beast remains being gesticulated at in it as those of a mastodon. In reality, however, they are unequivocally from a ground sloth, whose skeleton is visibly very different from that of any mastodon.

 

Close-up of the section of Egan's painting containing the figure believed by some to be Koch (public domain)

 

KOCH'S MONSTROUS MISSOURIUM AND HORRID HYDRARCHOS - A PHENOMENAL PAIR OF FOSSILISED FRAUDS. Part 1: MISSOURIUM, A MULTI-MASTODON!

 

Colour engraving of 'Dr' Albert C. Koch's Missourium (Wellcome Collections/Wikipedia – CC BY 4.0 licence)

Unless you're well-versed in palaeontology, fossil forgeries are less likely to have attracted your attention than fraudulent fauna composed of modern-day materials. These latter fakes include the infamous Feejee mermaids skilfully constructed from the upper portions of monkeys and the lower regions of fishes, North America's notorious jackalopes and Europe's horned hare counterparts (both types sporting deer antlers or individual tines), and the dragonesque Jenny Hanivers and monstrous devil-fishes that upon closer observation turn out to be nothing more radical than dried rays or skates with modified fins and remodelled bodies.

However, there are two very notable – and exceedingly sizeable – pseudo-reptilian exceptions to this generalisation. Moreover, both of them were created by the very same hoaxer, as will now be revealed here in this present 2-part ShukerNature blog article.

 

Phineas T Barnum, pictured in 1851 (public domain)

Long before the box-office blockbuster movie The Greatest Showman, loosely based upon his highly eventful life, was released in 2018, Phineas T. Barnum (1810-1891) was already world-famous as a slick 19^th-Century American purveyor of curiosities. Barnum began what became a highly successful foray into this field by establishing a magnificent museum packed to the rafters with all manner of extraordinary specimens, many genuine but also including a sizeable number of deftly fabricated fakes, including one of the afore-mentioned Feejee Mermaids. But after his museum burnt down, he lost no time in assembling a new collection, one that featured both preserved and living exhibits, and which this time travelled with him throughout the USA and overseas too, in the form of a spectacular show unlike anything that had ever been seen before.

Moreover, although Barnum certainly eclipsed all would-be rivals in this phantasmagorical field, he didn't entirely extinguish them. Inspired by his success, a fair few loitered and even thrived in his shadow, presenting their own lesser but still financially lucrative exhibitions of oddities. Among these entertainers of the snake-oil sideshow variety was one notorious figure whom I always think of as "the other Barnum" – a certain self-styled Dr Albert C. Koch (evidently dismissing as a mere technicality the inconvenient fact that he had never actually obtained a doctorate!), who transformed his genuine passion for palaeontology into a money-making scheme of monstrous proportions, literally!

 

Charles W Peale, self-portrait (public domain)

Born in 1804 in Roitzsch, near Dresden in Saxony, Germany, Koch emigrated to the USA in 1827 (not 1836 as often claimed – that is the year when he opened his museum in St Louis, see below). Several years later, his entrepreneurial epiphany was inspired from taking particular note of the financial success enjoyed by Peale's American Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, founded in 1805 by painter/naturalist Charles W. Peale (1741-1827). Its centrepiece was a magnificent mounted specimen of a fossil American mastodon Mammut americanum (although back then it was incorrectly dubbed a mammoth) that had been discovered in 1799 by farmer John Masten on his land outside Newburgh, New York.

It had subsequently been disinterred by a team of workers employed by Peale, who had then purchased it, paying Masten a total of US$ 800 for the specimen and the right to search his land for further remains. This was the first complete mastodon specimen ever procured and assembled, for which Peale cannily charged visitors an extra 50 cents on top of the museum's normal entry fee in order to view it. In 1806, Peale painted a somewhat dramatised rendition of this historic specimen's disinterment, entitled 'The Exhumation of the Mastodon'.

 

'The Exhumation of the Mastodon', painted by Charles W. Peale, 1806 (public domain)

Consequently, in 1836 Koch opened a museum of his own, based in St Louis, Missouri, where he was currently living. It was principally dedicated to the exhibition of American natural history specimens and indigenous archaeological curiosities (although it did include performing magicians and ventriloquists too!). Some of these specimens were living or stuffed, others were long since deceased, as they included examples of his greatest passion – fossils. Indeed, Koch's primary purpose for opening his museum was to obtain sufficient money, via the entry fee that he charged to its visitors, to fund his palaeontological searches and excavations for ever more, ever greater fossil specimens.

Striving accordingly to elicit the maximum visitor footfall through his museum's doors, Koch was by no means averse to employing the same tricksy, theatrical advertising for which Barnum was infamous. Namely, employing the wiles of ambiguous exaggeration and factual flexibility in order to pull in credulous and credible visitors alike, from local yokels to eminent scientific figures, all equally curious to discover what was awaiting their attention within this extraordinary establishment. Yet to be fair, Koch's collections did include some very significant specimens too, especially within his assemblage of early Osage Nation artefacts that he had reputedly found alongside various excavated fossil animals, and in 1838 he had even successfully unearthed some fossil remains of a giant ground sloth Mylodon east of the Osage River in Missouri. However, in 1840 his museum would gain an exhibit that entirely – and literally – overshadowed all others.

 

Modern reconstruction of an American mastodon in life alongside a human for scale purposes (© Dantheman9758/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 3.0 licence)

On 24 March 1840, Koch learnt that a farmer living in Missouri's Benton County had found some remains of an enormous creature on his land. Mindful of the handsome monetary remunerations that the mastodon skeleton had garnished for Peale, and despite being beset with fever at that time, Koch swiftly travelled to meet the farmer there. Four months later, after supervising several different teams of workers, Koch was rewarded with the unearthing of a huge fossil skeleton, which he took back to his museum in St Louis and assembled into the most prodigious palaeontological creature that had ever been seen at that time.

Measuring 32 ft long and standing 15 ft high, this gargantuan mega-beast towered over Peale's mundane mastodon (indeed, it was so immense that a three-piece band was hired to play inside its ribcage!), and sported an enormous pair of tusks curving out laterally from its skull's jaws. But that was not all. As the pièce de resistance of his publicity campaign to promote this stupendous specimen, which he alleged to have resembled a vast hippopotamus-like creature with scaly alligator-like skin when alive (see more details later here), Koch sensationally claimed that it was nothing less than the fossilised reptilian remains of the ocean-dwelling biblical Leviathan itself!

 

The biblical Leviathan, as envisaged by Arthur Rackham (public domain)

Indeed, Koch clearly deemed his Missourium to be so good that, just like New York, he named it twice – formally dubbing it Missourium leviathan and also Leviathan missourii, both names translating as the Missouri Leviathan. (Moreover, in later advertisements, he also referred to it by yet another name, Missourium theristrocaulodon.) In colloquial parlance, he referred to it simply as the Missourium. So was the Missourium truly a latter-day remnant of Leviathan – "the dragon that is in the sea" (Isaiah 27:1)? Needless to say, the unspoken reality was very different from Koch's outspoken claim.

In fact, Koch's monumental Missourium was not a single specimen but a composite. That is to say, it was composed not merely from the fossil bones of the mastodon that Koch had unearthed in Benton County but also from various additional mastodon vertebrae, ribs, and limb bones that he had obtained in the Ozarks, most of which he had skilfully combined together to yield his colossal creation. While doing so, he increased its extended spinal column even further by surreptitiously adding concealed wood blocks between its supernumerary vertebrae. He also utilised the longest limb bones available in order to make this titanic entity far taller than any normal mastodon, as well as rotating its shoulder blades and pelvis to enhance its elevated height to an even more dramatic extent. And he had purposefully angled its tusks to splay out sideways and upwards, instead of correctly pointing them forwards and upwards, in order to increase still further this monstrous creature's perceived size and dramatic appearance. After all, Koch reasoned, if Peale's mastodon could pull in the crowds, how much more so would his even more spectacular Missourium?

 

19^th-Century engraving of Missourium towering over a normal Asian elephant (public domain)

The year 1841 saw the publication of a short pamphlet-style booklet authored by Koch that was very grandly (and wordily) entitled Description of the Missourium, or Missouri Leviathan; Together With Its Supposed Habits. And Indian Traditions Concerning the Location From Whence It Was Exhumed: Also, Comparisons of the Whale, Crocodile and Missourium, With the Leviathan, as Described in 41^st Chapter of the Book of Job. In it, notwithstanding that he knew only too well that its subject was a blatant fake, Koch offered the following confident, and comprehensive, prediction of the appearance and lifestyle of the Missourium in the living state:

The animal has been without doubt an inhabitant of water courses, such as large rivers and lakes, which is proven by the formation of the bones: 1st, his feet were webbed; 2d, all his bones were solid and without marrow, as the aquatic animals of the present day; 3d, his ribs were too small and slender to resist the many pressures and bruises they would be subject to on land; 4th, his legs are short and thick; 5th, his tail is flat and broad: 6th and last, his tusks are so situated in the head that it would be utterly impossible for him to exist in a timbered country. His food consisted as much of vegetables as flesh, although he undoubtedly consumed a great abundance of the latter, and was capable of feeding himself with the fore foot, after the manner of the beaver or otter, and possessed, also, like the hypopotamus [sic], the faculty of walking on the bottom of waters, and rose occasionally to take air.

The singular position of the tusks has been very wisely adapted by the Creator for the protection of the body from the many injuries to which it would be exposed while swimming or walking under the water; and in addition to this, it appears that the animal has been covered with the same armor as the alligator, or perhaps the megatherium [prehistoric ground sloth].

 

Reconstruction of Missourium in life, based upon Koch's above-quoted claims (© Tim Morris)

In fact, even a cursory examination of his Missourium skeleton would readily reveal that even if it had been genuine, many of Koch's assertions concerning it were eminently nonsensical. These include, but are not limited to: its feet being webbed (how could he deduce that, bearing in mind that its feet were actually those of a mastodon?); its ribs being too small and slender to resist damage if the creature had been terrestrial (we're talking about decidedly sturdy mastodon ribs here!); its legs being short (the Missourium stood a very lofty 15 ft tall); its tail was flat and broad (despite consisting of mastodon tail bones); its undoubted consumption of a great abundance of flesh (its exclusively herbivorous mastodon dentition would suggest otherwise); its ability to feed itself with its forefoot like a beaver or otter (not when possessing the highly inflexible skeletal structure of a mastodon's forelimb); and its body being covered with alligator-like armour, i.e. scaling (how could anyone assume that from what in reality were the assembled remains of conspicuously non-scaly mastodons?).

In the same laughable manner of hyperbolic hypothesising, Koch then presented a point by point comparison of his Missourium's predicted form and lifestyle with that of the biblical Leviathan in the Book of Job, and, unsurprisingly in view of his agenda for yielding a phoney phenomenon, concluded that the two great creatures were evidently one and the same species. And so it was that according to the highly imaginative gospel of Koch, the spectacular fossilised remains of a colossal reptilian sea monster from the holy scriptures came to be placed on public display by him inside a small Missouri museum for all to see (once an entry fee to do so had been paid, of course).

An advertisement for Koch's Missourium exhibition in the saloon at the rear of Tommey's Hotel (public domain) 

Thanks to his Missourium, Koch's museum of wonders proved sufficiently successful to remain in business until he voluntarily sold it in 1841, having decided by then to emulate Barnum yet again by launching a touring show instead, with the Missourium assuming centre stage once more. After taking it across the USA, Koch ventured overseas, presenting his show in London, Dublin, and Germany, and advertising it with lurid posters and flyers that further exaggerated the dimensions of his Missourium, to the extent that a full-grown Asian elephant was depicted standing between its front and hind limbs underneath its belly! He also claimed that the reasons why its tusks were flared laterally were to protect itself from floating debris encountered when swimming in the sea, and to hang itself from underwater branches!

Eventually, however, scientists visiting Koch's show not only perceived that the bones of his Missourium were mammalian, not reptilian, in nature (i.e. merely mastodon, as opposed to Leviathan!), but also readily discerned its composite nature. Yet because he recognised its scientific worth, due to it containing at least one complete, genuine mastodon skeleton, in 1843 the eminent British zoologist Prof. Sir Richard Owen from London's British Museum arranged for the latter establishment to purchase Koch's Missourium from him for £1300 (a very sizeable sum back in those days), plus an additional yearly payment of approximately £650. It was then dismantled, and a complete standard mastodon skeleton reassembled from its components, which is still on display at London's Natural History Museum today.

 

A mounted American mastodon skeleton (© Ryan Somma/Wikipedia – CC BY-SA 2.0 licence)

Handsomely reimbursed for his multi-mastodon Missourium, what did Koch do next?

Why, construct an even more enormous pair of fossil sea serpent skeletons, of course – as revealed here in Part 2 of this ShukerNature blog article, so be sure to check it out!

An advertisement for Koch's Missourium exhibition at London's Egyptian Hall in 1843 (public domain)