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paleoart
Royal Mint celebrates Mary Anning with paleo-art 50p coins The Royal Mint, the original maker of UK coins
launched a new commemorative coin collection celebrating Mary Anning - historic fossil collector and paleontologist. This is the second coin collection in The Royal Mint’s series ‘Tales of the Earth’. The first coin released shows Temnodontosaurus, one of the largest of the ichthyosaurs. This apex predator once roamed the ocean that covered much of southern Britain. The other coins show more of Anning’s discoveries - Plesiosaurus and Dimorphodon. We can see Plesiosaurus to the bottom right - a genus of large marine reptiles from the early Jurassic, known to be found in the Lias rocks exposed along the ‘Jurassic coast’ of England. Many have long associated the Plesiosaurus with the mythical ‘Loch Ness Monster’. Plesiosaurus is a genus of extinct, large marine sauropterygian reptiles that lived during the early part of the Jurassic period, commonly observed in the Lias rock formations of England with nearcomplete fossil skeletons. These paleoart coin designs were created by paleoartist Robert Nicholls along with the help of Sandra Chapman of the Earth Sciences Department at the Natural History Museum. They achieved a scientifically accurate reconstruction of the species and their surrounding environments of the past. © NatureVolve digital magazine. All rights reserved.
All images above. © The Royal Mint. All rights reserved. p23
