Two tiny trilobites in a vast Cambrian ocean drift past sea cucumber
parasols and a shaggy, tree-like sponge. Snail tracks loop enigmatically
against brushed-gray Silurian slate, and ghostly white crinoids feather
a Devonian seascape. A delicate pterosaur flies bravely into the
Jurassic gloom, while a Tyrannosaurus rex so big that its teeth fill
our field of vision stalks the deep orange sands that mark the end of
the Cretaceous period.
These are just a few scenes from the magnificent drama that unfolds in
glorious full color and three-dimensional texture in Rock of Ages,
Sands of Time. Each of Barbara Page's 544 contiguous painted panels
represents a million years of the history of life on earth, with fossil
plants and animals depicted at the same scale and in association with
each other just as they might be found by a paleontologist in the field.
A muted rainbow of background colors evoke the rocks in which the
fossils were found--the Texas Red Beds, for instance, or the yellow
Solnhofen limestone--and keystone events are shown metaphorically, with
fat rolls of paint marking major extinctions or continental drift.
To fully experience the awesome impact of an eon's worth of time spread
across 500 feet of bas-relief panels, you'd have to visit the Museum of
the Earth in Ithaca, New York, where Page's specially commissioned work
will be installed when the museum opens in 2002. But this book is the
next best thing. Not only does it contain crisp color reproductions of
each painting, but it also includes an accessible essay from
paleontologist Warren Allmon giving the scientific context behind the
art.
For fossil lovers of all ages, and anyone interested in the merging of
art and science, Rock of Ages, Sands of Time will be the find of a
lifetime.
