A Natural Selection

William Neave Parker (1910–1961) spent much of his career working for the Natural History Museum in London and his illustrations were regularly reproduced in the London Illustrated News. He is particularly known his illustrations of prehistoric flora and fauna; his ambition was to bring scientific theories of natural selection and animal evolution to a non-specialist audience.

Parker's work has become highly collectable, not only for its remarkable precision and detail, but also its place in the history of popular science. In these impressive examples he illustrates theories of evolution through such concepts as vestigial organs, species diversification, and bodily protection in the form of horns, spines, body plates and shells. Beautiful and instructive!