King Francis I’s <i>dracunculus</i>: Further solutions to the mystery of an infamous museum piece

Abstract Taxidermy, first practised in the sixteenth century, was often used to preserve animal remains in museums of the European Renaissance, and was soon deployed to create dragon hoaxes. Many such specimens were displayed in museums and were cited by naturalists as evidence that dragons were real animals. The dracunculus of King Francis I of France (r. 1515–47) was an internationally famous case. The specimen is now lost, but a previous investigation of contemporary drawings and a written description showed that the specimen had the skull of a weasel and the tail skeleton of an eel. This continuation of the investigation reveals that the limbs, skin and ribcage were those of an ocellated lizard (Timon lepidus), with the skin shifted over the lizard’s skeleton into an unnatural position. This study elucidates the materials and methods that were used to produce an astonishing category of biological fraud in which early museums unwittingly participated.