Title: ‘Awful changes’

Creator: Henry Thomas De la Beche (1796-1855)

Description: This cartoon makes fun of the outlandish concept put forward by geologists such as Charles Lyell (1797-1875) that geological and biological history was cyclical and therefore extinct animals could return to the Earth.

‘Professor Ichthyosaur’ is lecturing to a class of ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs about the fossilized skull of a now extinct Mankind, stating that it must have belonged to ‘some lower order of animals’ on account of the poor development of the teeth and jaws.

Date: 1830

Format: Lithograph

Archive reference: LDGSL/905

Image reference: 03-12

Recommended print size: Up to 16 x 12 inches (40 x 30cm)