Teutobochus

Teutobochus or Theutobochus[1] was a legendary giant and king of the Teutons. Large bones discovered in France in 1613 were claimed to be his skeleton.[2]

History

In 1869 W.A. Seaver wrote: "In times more modern (1613), some masons digging near the ruins of a castle in Dauphiné, in a field which by tradition had long been called 'The Giant's Field,' at a depth of 18 feet discovered a brick tomb 30 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 8 feet high, on which was a gray stone with the words 'Theutobochus Rex' cut thereon. When the tomb was opened they found a human skeleton entire, 30-1/2 feet long, 10 feet wide across the shoulders, and 5 feet deep from the breast to the back. His teeth were about the size of an ox's foot, and his shin-bone measured 4 feet in length."[3]

The bones were displayed in Paris by Pierre Mazurier, a surgeon who claimed to be one of the finders.[4]

After the finding of the bones, the legend of the king Teutobochus, which was thought to be the Teuton king defeated by Caius Marius, spread despite analysis by anatomist Jean Riolan the Younger, who ascribed the bones to one of Hannibal's elephants. The French scholar Peiresc also demonstrated that such bones belong to elephants.[1] Theutobochus mentioned by Robert Plot in his Natural history of Oxfordshire, 1677, along with other purported giant skeletons.[5]

Much later, the zoologist Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville analyzed the bones and concluded they came from a mastodon. Finally in 1984, the paleontologist Léonard Ginsburg analyzed a plaster mold from the Paris Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, that came from the giant bones, and identified a Deinotherium.[6] The bones are housed in the Gallery of Paleontology and Comparative Anatomy.[7]

See also

References
  1. Godard Gaston (March 2009). "The fossil proboscideans of Utica (Tunisia), a key to the 'giant' controversy, from Saint Augustine (424) to Peiresc (1632)". Geological Society London Special Publications. 310 (1): 67–76. doi:10.1144/SP310.8. S2CID 130560933.
  2. Claudine Cohen (April 2, 2002). The Fate of the Mammoth. Fossils, Myth, and History. University of Chicago Press. pp. 29–30. ISBN 9780226112923.
  3. W.A. Seaver, "Giants and Dwarfs", Harper's New Monthly Magazine, 39:202-210, 1869.
  4. "Famous Giants". The Inter Ocean. Chicago, Illinois. 2 Jun 1889. p. 3. Retrieved 18 December 2016 – via Newspapers.com.
  5. Plot, R. (1677). "The Natural History of Oxford-shire, Being an Essay Toward the Natural History of England". Mr. S. Miller's: 136–137.
  6. Adrienne Mayor (2001). The First Fossil Hunters: Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Myth in Greek and Roman Times. Princeton University Press. p. 77. ISBN 0691058636.
  7. "Mammal fossils". National Museum of Natural History, France.
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