Connecting Fossil Inclusions with Artistic Representations to Approach Scientific Questions

INTRODUCTION TO PALEOARTThe interactions at different levels between art and science have been well documented as illustrated in these publications of my authorship [1][2][3][4][5][6][7].One of these interactions is paleoart, which is considered to have originated in early 1800s in England [8].Paleoart was defined by Ansón et al. [9] as any original artistic work that attempts to depict prehistoric life according to scientific evidence or public perception.Although paleoart was defined as being bound by scientific data involving biologically informed restoration to fill in missing data and relating to extinct organisms, ancient (pre-1800) protopaleoart may include pieces that do not rigorously adhere to scientific evidence or may be inspired by ancient fossils [8].Accordingly, paleoart-inspired pieces may represent fossil remains or imagined depictions of the living creatures and their ecosystems [10].These pieces could include both vertebrate and invertebrate representations. PALEOZOIC ERA BIODIVERSITYEchinoderm paracrinoid, Oklahomacystis tribachiatus, from Oklahoma, USA (Figure 1A), and Amecystis sp. from Canada (Figure 1B) are fossils of the Ordovician period (Paleozoic era, 293 mya).A crinoid stem is also present on the plate (Figure 1B).The visual art piece illustrates the diversity of echinoderms in the Paleozoic era (Figure 1C).An interesting assemblage of fossils illustrates the biodiversity in the Devonian of Oklahoma, USA(Paleozoic era, 345-395 mya) (Figure 1D).Three different trilobites and a brachiopod are represented on this plate.A large cephalon of Huntonia, a trilobite with a strange cephalic process, an unidentified brachiopod, a complete enrolled Paciphacops campbelli and the "horns" of a Dicranurus trilobite.There is also another cephalon of Paciphacops and several other different brachiopods exposed on the large plate.The visual art piece recreates biodiversity and interactions between different organisms since ancient times (Figure 1E).Multiple crinoids are found in a plate from the Mississippian of Missouri, USA (Paleozoic era, Carboniferous Mississippian period, 320 -345 mya) (Figure 1F).The Uperocrinus pyriformis crinoid on the left has a long, smooth-plated cup and a multi-plated tegmen.The Macrocrinus konincki in the center of the slab is an unusual came rate crinoid with very nodose plates.The ornate example of Platycrinites sp. is at the bottom of the plate.There is also a partial Steganocrinus and many crinoid stem fragments (Actinocrinites spp.-?) on the matrix block.The art pieces from different artists inspire the importance of the seabed on the habitat diversity (Figures 1G and 1H).

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