The Paleozoic or Palaeozoic Era (from the Greek ''palaios'' (παλαιός), "old" and ''zoe'' (ζωή), "life", meaning "ancient life") is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Paleozoic spanned from roughly (ICS, 2004), and is subdivided into six geologic periods; from oldest to youngest they are: the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian. Fish populations exploded in the Devonian. During the late Paleozoic, great forests of primitive plants thrived on land forming the great coal beds of Europe and eastern North America. By the end of the era, the first large, sophisticated reptiles and the first modern plants, (conifers) had developed.

The Paleozoic Era ended with the largest mass extinction in Earth's history, the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event. The effects of this catastrophe were so devastating that it took life on land 30 million years to recover. Recovery of life in the sea may have been much faster.

Geology

During the hiatus between the late Precambrian and the Paleozoic most of the evidence of the earth's early history was destroyed by erosion. From the beginning of the Paleozoic, shallow seas began to encroach on the continents, large parts of North America were completely submerged.

In North America, the era began with submerged geosynclines, or deep basins of the Earth's crust, along the eastern, southeastern, and western sides of the continent, while the interior was dry land. As the era proceeded, the marginal seas periodically washed over the stable interior, leaving sedimentary deposits to mark their incursions. During the early part of the era, the area of exposed Precambrian, or shield, rocks in central Canada were eroding, supplying sediment to the geosynclines from the interior. Beginning in the Ordovician Period, mountain building intermittently proceeded in the eastern part of the Appalachian geosyncline throughout the rest of the era, bringing in new sediments. Sediments washing from the Acadian Mountains filled the western part of the Appalachian geosyncline to form the famous coal swamps of the Carboniferous Period.

Paleoclimatic studies and evidence of glaciers indicate that central Africa was most likely in the polar regions during the early Paleozoic. During the early Paleozoic, the huge continent Gondwanaland had either formed or was forming. By mid-Paleozoic, the collision of North America and Europe produced the Acadian-Caledonian uplifts, and a subduction plate uplifted eastern Australia. By the late Paleozoic, continental collisions formed the supercontinent Pangaea and resulted in some of the great mountain chains, including the Appalachians, Urals, and mountains of Tasmania.

Animal Life

A noteworthy feature of Paleozoic life is the sudden appearance of nearly all of the invertebrate animal phyla in great abundance at the beginning of the Cambrian. A few primitive fishlike invertebrates, and then vertebrates, appeared in the Cambrian and Ordovician, scorpions in the Silurian period, land invertebrates and amphibians in the Devonian, land reptiles in the Carboniferous, and marine reptiles in the Permian.

Amphibians were the dominant vertebrates until the mid Carboniferous, then climate change greatly reduced their diversity; meanwhile reptiles prospered and continued to increase in number and variety by the late Permian.

Plant Life

Plant life of the Paleozoic era reached its climax in the Carboniferous, when towering lycopsid rainforests dominated the tropical belt of Euramerica. Climate change caused the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse which fragmented this habitat, diminishing the diversity of plant life in the late Carboniferous and Permian.

Tectonics

Geologically, the Paleozoic starts shortly after the breakup of a supercontinent called Pannotia and at the end of the global Varanger glaciation and Snowball Earth. Throughout the early Paleozoic, the Earth's landmass was broken up into a substantial number of relatively small continents. Toward the end of the era, the continents gathered together into a supercontinent called Pangaea, which included most of the Earth's land area.

Climate

The Ordovician and Silurian periods were warm greenhouse periods, with the highest sea levels of the Paleozoic (200 m above today's); the warm climate was interrupted only by a ~30 Ma cool period, the Early Palaeozoic Icehouse, culminating in the Hirnantian glaciation.

The Early Cambrian climate was probably moderate at first, becoming warmer over the course of the Cambrian, as the second-greatest sustained sea level rise in the Phanerozoic got underway. However, as if to offset this trend, Gondwana moved south with considerable speed, so that, in Ordovician time, most of West Gondwana (Africa and South America) lay directly over the South Pole. The Early Paleozoic climate was also strongly zonal, with the result that the "climate", in an abstract sense became warmer, but the living space of most organisms of the time—the continental shelf marine environment—became steadily colder. However, Baltica (Northern Europe and Russia) and Laurentia (eastern North America and Greenland) remained in the tropical zone, while China and Australia lay in waters which were at least temperate. The Early Paleozoic ended, rather abruptly, with the short, but apparently severe, Late Ordovician Ice Age. This cold spell caused the second-greatest mass extinction of Phanerozoic time. Over time, the warmer weather moved into the Paleozoic era.

The Middle Paleozoic was a time of considerable stability. Sea levels had dropped coincident with the Ice Age, but slowly recovered over the course of the Silurian and Devonian. The slow merger of Baltica and Laurentia, and the northward movement of bits and pieces of Gondwana created numerous new regions of relatively warm, shallow sea floor. As plants took hold on the continental margins, oxygen levels increased and carbon dioxide dropped, although much less dramatically. The north-south temperature gradient also seems to have moderated, or metazoan life simply became hardier, or both. At any event, the far southern continental margins of Antarctica and West Gondwana became increasingly less barren. The Devonian ended with a series of turnover pulses which killed off much of Middle Paleozoic vertebrate life, without noticeably reducing species diversity overall.

The Late Paleozoic was a time which has left us a good many unanswered questions. The Mississippian epoch began with a spike in atmospheric oxygen, while carbon dioxide plummeted to unheard-of lows. This destabilized the climate and led to one, and perhaps two, ice ages during the Carboniferous. These were far more severe than the brief Late Ordovician Ice; but, this time, the effects on world biota were inconsequential. By the Cisuralian, both oxygen and carbon dioxide had recovered to more normal levels. On the other hand, the assembly of Pangea created huge arid inland areas subject to temperature extremes. The Lopingian is associated with falling sea levels, increased carbon dioxide and general climatic deterioration, culminating in the devastation of the Permian extinction.

See also

Geologic timescale

Precambrian

Cenozoic

Mesozoic

References and further reading

''British Palaeozoic Fossils'', 1975, The Natural History Museum, London.

Category:Geological history of Earth

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Zdeněk Michael František Burian (February 11, 1905, Kopřivnice, Moravia - July 1, 1981 Prague) was a Czech painter and book illustrator whose work played a central role in the development of palaeontological reconstructions during a remarkable career spanning five decades. Originally recognised only in his native Czechoslovakia, Burian's fame later spread to an international audience, and a number of artists later attempted to emulate his style. He is regarded by many as the most influential palaeo-artist of the modern era.

Introduction

Burian was an extremely prolific artist whose works are estimated to number between 15,000 and 20,000 paintings and drawings (pen and pencil). He illustrated over 500 books (including natural history subjects and numerous classic novels such as Robinson Crusoe, Tarzan, Plutonia) and some 600 book covers, but it is within the fields of palaeontology and palaeoanthropology that Burian's influence has been most notable. Since the late 1950s and early 1960s when Burian's work became known in the west through a series of large-format books released by the Artia publishing house, numerous scholarly and popular books on prehistoric life have featured his work, either as originals or as art based closely on them.

Early career and influence on palaeontology

Burian worked in initial cooperation with university palaeontologist Josef Augusta from 1938/39 (during World War II all universities in Czechoslovakia were closed due to the German occupation) and subsequently (following Augusta's death in 1968) with Zdeněk Špinar, painting accurate and magnificent reconstructions representing all forms of prehistoric life from many parts of the globe, from the earliest invertebrates to a vast array of fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds, as well as panoramic vistas of the landscapes in which they lived. Close to 500 prehistoric images were painted by him between the early 1930s and the late 1970s.

Whilst some of Burian's earliest palaeo works depicting North American species were inspired by the pioneering American palaeo-artist Charles R. Knight (see for example, his first renditions of ''Stegosaurus'' and ''Brontotherium''), partly because Burian lacked access to skeletal material for such reconstructions, Burian's work was less stylised and more convincing with respect to both the subjects and their landscapes, and soon became highly regarded amongst palaeontologists, especially in Europe. Previous palaeo-artists had often produced speculative works reflecting 19th century views of large dinosaurs as lethargic reptiles akin to giant lizards with sprawling limbs, but Burian convincingly painted them as active animals with parasagittal (mammal or bird-like) limb-movement and musculature.

Burian depicted the American sauropods ''Apatosaurus'' [1940], ''Diplodocus'' [1952 & 1965?], and ''Barosaurus'' walking on land in elephantine fashion, and his 1941 reconstruction of the East African sauropod ''Brachiosaurus'' (the only image showing the main subject in water) became one of the most reproduced dinosaur images in history. Although it is now considered unlikely that ''Brachiosaurus'' could have inhaled in deep water (unless it had a strengthened pleural cavity as do some whales), the reconstruction is remarkably realistic and was still being reproduced 60 years after it was painted.

As with many of his works, Burian's sauropod reconstructions reached iconic status, with the celebrated palaeontologist William Elgin Swinton (1900–1994) noting: "The ideas as well as the pictorially beautiful restorations of Zdenek Burian, done under the direction of the late Joseph Augusta (1962), create a lasting impression that appears to be decisive. The Czechoslovakian experts have placed us all in their debt and the life-restorations of ''Brontosaurus, Diplodocus'' and ''Brachiosaurus'' provide debating points as well as aesthetic satisfaction" (''The Dinosaurs'', 1970: 189).

Another famous Burian painting (dated 1938) shows the dynamism of his work with a ''Tyrannosaurus Rex'' rushing to attack one of a pair of startled duck-billed ''Trachodon'' as fleet-footed ornithomimids bound off in the distance. Following subsequent palaeontological evidence, the predator was later modified by adding skull protuberances and a stiffer tail. This painting is one of his few works that show dinosaurs in direct conflict.

Many of Burian's early paintings appeared in a series of large format books with text by Augusta, the first of which, ''Prehistoric Animals'', was originally published in Czechoslovakia by Artia (1956) and later in many other countries including Italy, France, Germany, England and Japan. The late S.J. Gould, who was an enthusiast of the work of Charles R. Knight, described it as one of the 20th Century's three most influential visual books on prehistory (many would suggest that it was the most influential), and it was followed by a series of other landmark titles: ''Prehistoric Birds & Reptiles, Prehistoric Sea Monsters, The Book of Mammoths'', and ''Prehistoric Man'', all of which became famous and collectable in their own right. The influence of Burian's work is clearly discernible in many later films depicting dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, right up to the Jurassic Park series.

Partial bibliography

''Life before Man'' Zdeněk V. Špinar, illustrated by Burian. Prague: Artia, 1972. Reprinted by Crescent Books, 1981. ISBN 0-517-34722-9

Artistic style

Although Burian's reconstructions of extinct life are very convincing, his often-reproduced dinosaur reconstructions were all the more remarkable in that he did not have access to skeletal material, but rather depended largely on drawings and photographs provided by his collaborators Augusta and Špinar (although Czechoslovakia had a notable history of palaeontological research, it lacked dinosaur fossils). In many cases, he undertook anatomical reconstructions of his subjects before depicting life restorations, and sometimes painted more than one version of an animal (particularly if the first version had been painted in b&w;), examples being ''Dimetrodon'', ''Tylosaurus'', ''Brachiosaurus'', ''Diplodocus'', ''Stegosaurus'', ''Brontotherium'', ''Arsinoitherium'', ''Phororhacos'', ''Archaeopteryx'' amongst others.

Many of Burian's early works were accompanied by text from Augusta (often in an almost story-book fashion) and it is within this context that Burian produced his most memorable and famous works which were used as educational aids in schools across Czechoslovakia to show the succession of life on Earth. His style reflected a classic, almost romantic imagery that rarely showed animals fighting or preying on each other (some paintings did show carnivores with their prey, but generally either before the confrontation or after it had been dispatched). Two years after Augusta's death, Burian painted what is regarded as his last classic image, the famous 'heroic' ''Tarbosaurus bataar'' of Mongolia (an image that was also widely reproduced and copied).

Following Augusta's death, conditions were increasingly placed on Burian's artistic licence and the scientific detail of what he painted, whilst he was also being asked to depict different species within the same scenes but as individual, non-interacting animals as in a montage. Given his background as a novel/action-scene illustrator, and the close collaboration with Augusta the 'story-teller', Burian viewed the subjects of his paintings as very real animals (as would a natural history artist), and the new restrictions did not sit well with him. An example of how his work was compromised is evident in another version of ''Brachiosaurus'' that he painted in his later years under the direction of Vratislav Mazak; the animal, now shown on dry land, appears oddly out of proportion and fails to compare to the 1941 version. In his later years, Burian was in demand by publishers requesting bland, catalogue-like stand-alone prehistoric animal images as illustrations for reference books, a style that Burian neither favoured nor excelled at.

Burian's works, which vary in size from A4 to several square metres, were mostly executed in oils, both in colour and black and white, and exhibit keen attention to detail and unmistakable realism whilst maintaining a strong sense of atmosphere. Whilst his style was very traditional, it was combined with a dynamism that represented a break with the often staid palaeo-reconstructions of previous artists. A feature of many of the paintings, and one that is missing from the work of other palaeo artists, is the realistic effect of movement and action which was achieved not only by the dynamic positions of the subjects, but by a clever blurring of the edges of moving objects (such as the tips of waves or palm fronds in the wind) to produce a clever effect of photo-realism. It has often been noted that Burian's renditions appear to have been painted from life, so close is the perceived association between the subject and its environment. This is perhaps not surprising given that Burian was already well accomplished at painting natural history subjects before he began painting prehistoric scenes.

Legacy

Many Burian paintings have become celebrated images of palaeontology and palaeoanthropology, especially the frequently reproduced images of Mesozoic reptiles (pterosaurs, dinosaurs, mosasaurs and plesiosaurs) whilst his evocative depictions of proboscideans, Ice Age mammals, and a remarkable series of paintings of early hominids through to modern man are without equal. He also painted extant native peoples of the world, including those of Africa, South America and the South Pacific. Original Burian paintings are on exhibit at Dvůr Králové Zoo (especially his large oil canvas), at the National Museum (Prague) and at the Anthropos Museum in Brno (particularly his anthropological reconstructions).

Initially released by Czech publishers followed by western publishers Paul Hamlyn and Thames & Hudson with translated texts, Burian's work was later widely reproduced (often as teaching material) by European and American authors (including Edwin Colbert). Images based on his paintings have featured on postage stamps issued by many countries, and the pioneering director/animator Karel Zeman used Burian paintings to produce models and 2-D animated images for his 1955 landmark feature film ''Cesta do Pravěku'' (Journey to the Beginning of Time).

Burian's work has probably inspired more imitators in the field of palae-reconstruction than any other artist, and his prehistoric paintings have frequently been copied, and not always with acknowledgement. A notable case is ''A New Look at the Dinosaurs'', by Alan J. Charig (1979), British Museum Natural History, which featured thinly-disguised ink copies of Burian paintings that were inversed as mirror images. Another example is the many Adèle Blanc-sec comic strips which depict dinosaurs closely resembling Burian's work (e.g. the ''Tarbosaurus'' [tome 2] and the pterodactyl of 'Adèle and the Beast').

The 1992 video game ''Ecco the Dolphin'' features in-game artwork inspired by Burian and recreated in pixels by Zsolt Balogh.

External links

Gallery of 31 paintings with descriptions Gallery of 152 paintings Gallery of 60 paintings

Zdenek Burian Museum (Czech)

Zdenek Burian memorabilia

Category:1905 births Category:1981 deaths Category:People from Kopřivnice Category:Czech painters Category:Paleoart

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