FRANZ UNGER AND THE PRIMITIVE WORLD IN ITS DIFFERENT PERIODS OF FORMATION

Franz Xaver Unger was an Austrian botanist, paleontologist, and plant physiologist known for his research in paleobotany (1800-1870). In collaboration with artist Josef Kuwasseg, the two embarked on a project entitled “The Primitive World in Its Different Periods of Formation” which was published in 1851. The title was unique in that it combined the concepts of a “primitive world” or the widely accepted contemporary idea of undifferentiated deep time with our modern concept of different periods of earth history. Unger selected periods for this project based upon major formations of strata, but his botanical roots led him to emphasize the importance of plants in each lithograph. The series begins with the period in which Unger felt the most fossil evidence was available in order to develop a reconstruction that depicts the “Transition Period.” This first scene is a reduced form of a Carboniferous coal forest and culminates with lithograph 14 that depicts the “Present World” which is a rendition of the Garden of Eden. In the series, one lithograph that is of particular interest is the seventh that depicts the invasion of plants onto land. Unger and Kuwasseg utilize this scene to depict time during the Keuper Sandstone. The scene depicts plant life that consists of Calamites arenaceus, Equisetum sylvaticum, Preisleria antiqua, Anomopteris mougeotii, and Equisisetites columnaris. Animal life consists of Labyrinthodon crawling across a sandy surface. This lithograph stands out in the series because it offers one of the earliest depictions of plant diversity within 19^th century art especially given the diversity of trees, fruit-bearing plants, and ferns that are represented. This series of lithographs offers a unique contribution to the history and philosophy of geology as Unger recognized the importance of plants to our understanding of geology and deep time in the 19^th century. This series also has important implications for helping others to recognize the importance of plants in paleontology and for assisting members of society in overcoming plant blindness (Wandersee & Clary, 2006). The development of our modern understanding of the evolution of plants can also be attributed to this series as Unger was one of the first to propose a theory of evolution that began to characterize our modern understanding of the evolution of plants.