Bringing Prehistory to Life
Art by Peter Trusler
A unique exhibition with paintings and drawings of prehistoric life opens this week at the Australian Fossil and Mineral Museum in Bathurst.
The exhibition, Upstream/Downstream – the Flow on effect of Peter Trusler’s Paleoreconstruction Art, demonstrates the extraordinary work of Monash University's School of Geosciences' Emeritus Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich, Dr Tom Rich, and artist Peter Trusler.
Professor Vickers-Rich, who curated the exhibition, said visitors would see a diverse collection of paintings and drawings for - or inspired by - the biological and geological sciences.
“These works are a multidisciplinary approach and include Peter Trusler’s vivid illustrations of extinct species, combined with fossils on display,” Professor Vickers-Rich said.
“Importantly, this exhibition provides a context for the place that spectacular life forms, such as dinosaurs, have held in the history of life and the means by which we attempt to understand them.”
Curated by Professor Vickers-Rich, the exhibition is based on the publication, The Artist and the Scientists: Bringing Prehistory to Life, which follows the development of selected works of art covering the last 600 million years of the geological record. Told from the viewpoints of both scientist and artist, the reader is given a unique insight into the process of preserving and recording the evolution of prehistoric life.
Over more than thirty years, Professor Vickers-Rich, Dr Rich and Mr Trusler have travelled across Eastern Europe, Asia, the Americas, Africa, Australia and New Zealand in search of the remains of early life, including fish, dinosaurs, birds and mammals. Their successful expeditions, and the many publications and exquisite artworks that have ensued, are a testament to their scientific methodology, thirst for knowledge and eye for detail.
Dr Rich’s area of research is ancient mammals that lived alongside the dinosaurs, Professor Vickers-Rich’s is the Precambrian and the Earth’s first animals and Mr Trusler’s current research is in the Precambrian and the Pleistocene, the latter on reconstructing how the skull of an ancient marsupial functioned.