IThe first edition in English of Jules Verne's Voyage au centre de la Terre (1864), published in 1871 as A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, like the original features an epic combat between two enormous marine reptiles but identifies one of them as "the world-renowned ichthyosaurus".1 One of many alterations this British rendition imposes upon the second, expanded edition of Verne's novel (1867), the spurious "world-renowned" was added not only to heighten interest, but also, quite likely, to appeal to nationalism since ichthyosaur fossils were first identified, described, and publicized in England. The story of early ichthyosaur discoveries has been told often enough, with recent stress upon the scientific acumen and potential, once downplayed because of gender and class, of fossil collector Mary Anning.2 At Lyme Regis, Dorset-the epicenter of paleontological shocks and excitement that radiated out to Britain and beyond-beginning in 1811 Anning discovered and excavated the first fossilized ichthyosaur skeletons recognizable as "an important new kind of animal". Her once undervalued scientific credentials, however, represent but one of the ways in which the ichthyosaur of scientific and popular imagination swam in unsettled cultural waters.As the first large prehistoric reptile discovered and identified in England, the ichthyosaur ("fish-lizard") built upon and furthered the British enthusiasm for natural history, geology, and fossil collecting that flourished especially in the first half of the nineteenth century. It also participated in the century's contentious scientific-religious confusions about the earth's age, the origins of species, the causes of extinctions, and how to comprehend ancient, gigantic animals unaccounted for by the Bible. This essay concerns how the nineteenth-century idea of the ichthyosaur "evolved", changing as scientific discovery overlapped other cultural arenas. Fossilized ichthyosaur remains, initially almost inexplicable, haltingly but progressively took on the flesh of scientific knowledge about the form and behavior of the thing itself, while