Fossil Art An Exhibition of the Geologisches Institut Tübingen University Germany

About this book

Bedding planes of rocks carry the lithographs of eons bygone. They have been modeled by waves and currents and early creatures have inscribed their trackways and burrows on them. Deciphering such documents is the task of sedimentologists and paleontologists. These structures have an intrinsic beauty that also fascinates non-professionals as raw images, some of which were made long before the first eye could see. The specimens on this display span more than a billion years of earth history and bracket the Cambrian revolution (543 million years ago), the greatest turnover in the history of life. Funded by the Crafoord Prize 1992, a research group from Tubingen University, Germany and Yale University, USA, has studied rock slabs on five continents, and produced casts of perfect fidelity – an art in itself.

For students of geology, sedimentology, images in Fossil Art authentically depicts sedimentary structures on the left side of a spread, while the text on the right side explains the structures and their genesis, you could call it an image-textbook on sedimentary structures.
 

Contents

#1-2 Mud cracks 10
#3 Ripple marks 12
#4-6 Palimpsest ripples 14
#6a Coxsackie dinosaur skin 16
#6b-d Carpet patterns 18
#7 Stromatolite garden 20
#8-9 What looks like jellyfish 22
#10-11 The strange world of Ediacara 24
#12-13 Ediacaran snapshots 26
#14 Vendobionts underground 28
#15 photo Scratch mat of mat scratchers 30
#16 photo Independence Day 32
#17 Stars of sand 34
#18-19 Trilobite traces 36
#20a-b Trilobite pirouettes 38
#20c-f The trilobite circus of Penha Garcia 40
#21-22 Traces of giant slugs 42
#23 Lasso trail 44
#24 Worm burrow jungle 46
#24a Utah shred bed 48
#25 Ahrimp burrow jungle 50
#26 Jurassic tatzelwurm 52
#27 Witch broomings 54
#27a Amuri umbrellas 56
#27b Japanese flowerbed 58
#28a Ikebana 60
#29 Ornaments on a deepsea bottom 62
#30 Life and death in Dinosaur Park I 64
#31 Life and death in Dinosaur Park II 66
#31a First steps on land 68
#31b-c Cambrian beach party I - II 70
#31d-f Jellyfish or petroglyphs? 74
#32a-b Permian undertracks 76
#33 Wrong-sided hands 78
#33a Plaited fin prints 80
#33b Signatures of the mountain builder 82
#34 Nature as fingerpainter 84
#34a-b Waves of Petra 86
#35-38 (photos) Examples of human art 88

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