Duria Antiquior

Duria Antiquior

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Date: 1830

Format: Watercolor & lithographed prints

Description: Noted by art critic Zoë Lescaze as the first example art depicting a scene of ancient life (what she terms "paleoart"), De la Beche's 1830 watercolor Duria Antiquior ("A more ancient Dorset") attempts to envision Dorset as it might have been in the Jurassic era. The cliffs of Dorset in southwestern England are where Mary Anning did her collecting. In about 1810 she co-discovered the first ichthyosaur, and decades later found the first complete plesiosaur. The region was producing some of the most exciting fossils finds of the era.  

Duria Antiquior was intended for use as a teaching tool, but it is clearly much more than a dry reconstruction. The scene, though perhaps overcrowded, imagines an entire ecosystem in action. It shows creatures in the process of living -- from a dramatic depiction of "nature red in tooth and claw" to the somewhat less romantic (but still vital) process of defecation. Anning's data on coprolites was used by William Buckland to reconstruct the diets of ichthyosaurs, and coprolites would remain a major part of Buckland's research program. The kinks in the plesiosaur's neck may be a literal representation of the offsets in the neck Anning's plesiosaur.

De la Beche had George Scharf produce a lithograph of the painting, and sold prints to raise money to help Anning during a period of financial hardship.

Duria Antiquior is probably De la Beche's best known piece today. Several renditions and recent reimaginings of Duria Antiquior can be found on the blog of the nature-merch website, Eastern Biological [easternbiological.co.uk].

For information on Anning, see her entry on the biography page.
For more on Buckland, see his entry.

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Other versions:

The lithograph of Duria Antiquior
made by George Scharf
Image from the Wellcome Collection [wellcomecollection.org]
Click image to view larger.

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Sources & further discussion: 

Eastern Biological. (July 4, 2016). "Duria Antiquior, a more ancient Dorset". Eastern Biological blog Link [easternbiological.co.uk]

Lescaze, Z. (2017). Paleoart: Visions of the prehistoric past. Taschen.

Norman, D. B. (2000). Henry De la Beche and the plesiosaur's neck. Archives of natural history, 27(1), 137-148. Link [euppublishing.com]

Veatch, Steven. (Oct 25, 2018). "Duria Antiquior: A Nineteenth-Century Forerunner of Paleoart". Colorado Earth Science blog. Link [coloradoearthscience.blogspot.com].

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Image yoinked from:

The Colorado Earth Science blog [coloradoearthscience.blogspot.com]