The album contains the coloured drawings that served as models for the woodcuts in the *Fossilienbuch* and in another work from the anthology *Über jede Art der res fossiles*. After Gessner’s death, the drawings came into the possession of his godson, Felix Platter. He cut out the drawings, pasted them onto sheets of paper and labelled them by hand. The fossilised crab is depicted in its entirety in both the drawing and the woodcut.