The Ancient Colorado paintings are displayed at the Colorado Convention Center in Denver.
These evocative landscapes, based on geology and fossil evidence, show what Colorado has looked like over the last 300 million years. Artist Jan Vriesen and Denver Museum of Nature & Science paleontologist Kirk Johnson collaborated to produce these scenes from Colorado's distant past:
Pole Forest
What Garden of the Gods looked like 300 million years ago
In the Pennsylvanian Period, Colorado was home to a long-lost mountain range known as the Ancestral Rockies. The Fountain Formation is a layer of dark-red sandstone that formed when rivers flowed from the mountains, whose foothills were forested with scaly lycopod trees. Fossil lycopod roots are found at Garden of the Gods near Colorado Springs.
Slimy Shoreline
What Red Rocks Park looked like 250 million years ago
At the start of the Triassic Period, Colorado bordered an ancient sea. Single-cell bacteria and algae, living together in mounded colonies known as stromatolites, lived along the coast. Cream-colored layers of wavy limestone in the Lykins Formation, which are the remains of ancient stromatolites, stick out like short, white walls at Red Rocks Park.
Triassic Thickets
What Telluride, Colorado, looked like 225 million years ago
In the Triassic Period, large armored plant-eaters—known as aetosaurs—and small, carnivorous dinosaurs roamed among dense Sanmiguelia plants beneath thickets of giant scouring rushes. Near the town of Telluride, the brick-red Dolores Formation contains evidence for this ancient landscape.
Stegosaurus Snacks
What Dinosaur National Monument looked like 145 million years ago
Jurassic Period landscapes covered with brambles of bennettite bushes and tree ferns were home to some of the largest animals ever to walk the planet. Stegosaurus and other dinosaurs browsed the flat terrain. A magnificent outcrop of dinosaur bones is found in the Morrison Formation at Dinosaur National Monument.
Maritime Colorado
What Lake Pueblo State Park looked like 85 million years ago
Colorado was under water during much of the Cretaceous Period. Marine reptiles roamed the waters, and schools of fish attracted soaring pterosaurs. A mile-thick layer of marine mud and limestone lies beneath Denver. Several formations that contain fossils of marine life can be seen at Lake Pueblo State Park.
Triceratops Swamp
What Marshall Mesa looked like 68 million years ago
Triceratops dinosaurs foraged in Colorado swamps near the end of the Cretaceous Period. Deposits of underground coal found in the Laramie Formation are the remains of these ancient swamp forests. Coal deposits rise to the surface near Boulder, where they are exposed at Marshall Mesa.
After Armageddon
What the West Bijou Valley looked like 65.5 million years ago
A giant asteroid struck Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula 65.5 million years ago. Dinosaurs and their ecosystems vanished in a flash. Within a few years, there were fern meadows and alligator-infested creeks in Colorado. At West Bijou Creek, paleontologists found the layer of debris—the K-T boundary—from the asteroid impact.
Rainforest Eruption
What North and South Table Mountain looked like 64 million years ago
Volcanic eruptions poured lava across the tropical rainforest of Paleocene Epoch Colorado as the Rocky Mountains were formed. The flat tops of North and South Table Mountain near Golden, Colorado, are the remains of ancient lava flows, and erosion has sculpted the mesas into their current form.
Redwoods and Roses
What Florissant Fossil Beds looked like 34 million years ago
Huge redwood trees grew in Colorado during the Eocene Epoch. Timid oreodonts, distant relatives of today's goats, nibbled rosehips among palmetto shrubs and giant trees. Tree trunks, foliage, insects, birds, and other fossils are preserved in the Florissant Formation at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument.
Ghost Predator
What Wray, Colorado, looked like 30,000 years ago
Prehistoric lions once hunted camels in eastern Colorado, among Pleistocene Epoch sand dunes. The landscape was in constant motion, as windy conditions caused dunes to migrate across the dry, sparse terrain. The lightly vegetated remains of the Wray dune field are best seen from the air, but you can also see them near the town of Wray.
