Duria Antiquior

Duria Antiquior, a more ancient Dorset, was the first pictorial representation of a scene of prehistoric life based on evidence from fossil reconstructions, a genre now known as paleoart. The first version was a watercolour painted in 1830 by the English geologist Henry De la Beche based on fossils found in Lyme Regis mostly by the professional fossil collector Mary Anning. De la Beche had the professional artist Georg Scharf produce lithographic prints based on 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. The print was used for educational purposes and widely circulated in scientific circles; it influenced several other such depictions that began to appear in both scientific and popular literature. Several later versions were produced.

By 1830 Mary Anning was well known to the leading British geologists and fossil collectors for her ability to spot important fossils in the Jurassic limestone and shale formations around the resort town of Lyme Regis on the Dorset coast, and for her knowledge and skill in collecting, reconstructing and preparing them. William Conybeare’s scientific description of some of the marine reptile fossils she had found, including the first ichthyosaur skeleton to be recognized for what it was and the first two plesiosaur skeletons ever found, had created a sensation in scientific circles.William Buckland credited Anning with two key observations about certain odd fossils, that they were sometimes found in the abdominal regions of ichthyosaur skeletons, and that they often contained fossilized fish scales and bones (and sometimes the bones of small ichthyosaurs), which led him to conclude that coprolites were fossilized faeces. This discovery led Buckland to write a vivid description of the Lias food chain. It was this description that motivated the geologist Henry De la Beche, who had worked with Conybeare describing the marine reptile fossils, to create a pictorial representation of life in ancient Dorset.

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