The Fritz Zerritsch/Erich Thenius suite of paleontological wall roll-ups and the pageant-of-life-through-time genre of paleontological art

ABSTRACT Here I rescue from obscurity a mid-twentieth-century sequence of ten paintings representing biotas and ecosystems present in different periods of geologic time. They were used to illustrate a 1955 book titled The History of Life on Earth by University of Vienna paleontologist Erich Thenius. The paintings were also mass produced as classroom teaching aids in the form of wall chart roll-ups. Thenius collaborated with Viennese landscape artist Fritz Zerritsch to produce these scenes from Deep Time. In terms of the selection and arrangement of animals in some of the scenes, Thenius and Zerritsch were probably influenced by well-known paleoartists Rudolph Zallinger and Charles R. Knight. I corresponded with Professor Thenius concerning his collaboration with Zerritsch, and his answers to my questions illuminate some of the choices he made. The Zerritsch/Thenius collection of paleo-scenes is a good example of the pageant-of-life-through-time genre of paleontological art. I use this sequence of prehistoric tableaux to examine artistic conventions within this genre.