Some strange Fuegian creatures. Copyright © 2010 by Austin Whittall
The image above is just a detail of an ancient map, Tabula Magellanica qua Tierrae del Fuego drawn in 1671 by John Ogilby and Jan Janssonius. The Strait of Magellan can be seen just above the two central blue colored arrows. The Pacific Ocean is on the lower left side, by the green arrow.
The map shows several animals and some natives too, on the island, named Magellanica.
Normal people and animals
The map shows some Rhea or ñandu being hunted by the local natives (though there are no "South American ostriches" on the island - see my post about the intriguing ohi for more on this matter). The "ostriches" are marked with blue colored arrows and are roughly to scale.
Then there are two penguins (green arrow), also drawn to scale.
Weird creatures
But then, there are two bulky bodied animals with long swan-necks and also long tails (marked with the red arrows), which have a bird-like (or reptilian) look.
They are quite similar to an image that I posted some time ago in my post Patagonian living dinosaurs.
I wonder what they are. They are big, about the size of an adult person. Too big to be any of the known Patagonian birds.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia
I enjoy reading your blog - great content! I found a map with better resolution:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/32396/tabula-magellanica-qua-tierrae-del-fuego-cum-celeberrimis-fr-ogilby
You can zoom in quite far there.
I first want to adress the problem of proportion:
If you want to draw something remarkable, that is not just "a small bird", you will draw it bigger automatically, in order to depict its charakteristics. Logically, the smallest way to depict a sparrow is a point. Then comes a point for the head and a bigger one for the body and - if it flys - lines for wings. If the animal is small compared to a bigger one, you must then switch scale, as you can see in a lot of recent printed books, for example of Birds.
The animals depicted, if they really existed, might be as large as oxen, goose or as large as dove. I doubt that it is possible to just use the humans or Rheas as scales. At least, when I look at the animals intuitively, they don't strike me as very big.
One more obvious thing, when you got the good image of the map:
You correctly identified the animal on the right as some kind of bird. It looks like a dodo with a longer pheasant-like tail, though it might be possible that the large beak consists only of the brighter line above and carries just something dark. In that case, the bird has a goose-like face. If it was not for the large tail and neck, I'd think f. e. of a Macronectes giganteus.
Well, the other animal, however, is something totally different.
Take another look! What you misstook for a neck is a bushy tail, like a squirrel or some dogs might have it. The rest of the drawing depicts an animal with small head and long snout, ardvaark- (ears) or ammardillo-like; maybe belonging to Manis (Scale-Animal), Eulipotyphla (Insectivora) or Marsupinalia.
I am not aquaintened to the South American fauna, sadly, and can't really guess or maybe even tell. Take another look, maybe you can tell immediately!
Best regards and thanks for your content!