Duria Antiquior

Duria Antiquior, meaning a more ancient Dorset, is considered the first pictorial representation of a scene of prehistoric life grounded in fossil evidence, in a genre now known as paleoart. The first version was a watercolor painted in 1830 by the English geologist Henry De la Beche, based on fossils found at Lyme Regis in Dorset, most of them collected by the professional fossil collector Mary Anning, and it is now held at the National Museum Cardiff. De la Beche commissioned the professional artist Georg Scharf to produce lithographic prints from the painting, which he sold to friends to raise money for Anning's benefit. It was the first depiction of a scene from deep time to see even limited publication, and it was widely circulated in scientific circles, influencing several later depictions of prehistoric life in scientific and popular literature. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/