De la Beche's friend William Conybeare published a description of these species, together with a fourth one. The type species was Ichthyosaurus communis, based on a now lost skeleton. Conybeare considered that Ichthyosaurus had priority relative to Proteosaurus. Although this is incorrect by present standards, the latter name became a "forgotten" nomen oblitum. In 1821, De la Beche and Conybeare provided the first systematic description of ichthyosaurs, comparing them to another newly identified marine reptile group, the Plesiosauria. Much of this description reflected the insights of their friend, the anatomist Joseph Pentland. In 1835, the order Ichthyosauria was named by Henri Marie Ducrotay de Blainville. In 1840, Richard Owen named an order Ichthyopterygia as an alternative concept. Popularisation during the 19th century The discovery of a hitherto unsuspected extinct group of large marine reptiles generated much publicity, capturing the imagination of both scientists and the public at large. People were fascinated by the strange build of the animals, especially the large scleral rings in the eye sockets, of which it was sometimes erroneously assumed these would have been visible on the living animal. Their bizarre form induced a feeling of alienation, allowing people to realise the immense span of time passed since the era in which the ichthyosaur swam the oceans. Not all were convinced that ichthyosaurs had gone extinct: Reverend George Young found a skeleton in 1819 at Whitby; in his 1821 description, he expressed the hope that living specimens could still be found. Geologist Charles Lyell to the contrary, assumed that the Earth was eternal so that in the course of time the ichthyosaur might likely reappear, a possibility lampooned in a famous caricature by De la Beche. Public awareness was increased by the works of the eccentric collector Thomas Hawkins, a pre-Adamite believing that ichthyosaurs were monstrous creations by the devil: Memoirs of Ichthyosauri and Plesiosauri of 1834 and The Book of the Great Sea-Dragons of 1840. The first work was illustrated by mezzotints by John Samuelson Templeton. These publications also contained scientific descriptions and represented the first textbooks of the subject. In the summer of 1834, Hawkins, after a taxation by William Buckland and Gideon Mantell, sold his extensive collection, then the largest of its kind in the world, to the British Museum. However, curator Koenig quickly discovered that the fossils had been heavily restored with plaster, applied by an Italian artist from Lucca; of the