Prehistoric Life Illustrated

The 2025 National Fossil Day Artwork features a 29-million-year-old Oligocene assemblage of plants and animals from the Turtle Cove Member of the John Day Formation, inspired by new and old discoveries made at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Oregon.

The 2024 National Fossil Day Art features a scene from the Early Jurassic in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.

One of the largest sharks to have swum the ancient Mississippian seas was Saivodus striatus, which is featured prominently in the 2023 National Fossil Day artwork.

The 2022 National Fossil Day Artwork features a scene from Yellowstone in the Early Eocene (50 million years ago), during a time when the climate was warm and wet and supported a forested landscape.

Celebrate National Fossil Day 2021 with this year's official artwork—Our first featuring a dinosaur! The 2021 National Fossil Day Logo is inspired by the diverse record of Late Cretaceous dinosaur footprints from Denali National Park and Preserve in central Alaska. The logo features an Alaskan tyrannosaur walking under a northern polar night sky, through a mudflat, and encountering a trackway left by a hadrosaur (duck-billed dinosaur).

Learn about the 2020 National Fossil Day Logo which was inspired by the rich diversity of Permian marine fossils found at the Guadalupe Mountains and Glass Mountains of west Texas and New Mexico. The Permian Period (298 to 251 million years ago) represents the last geologic period of the Paleozoic Era, which ended with a massive extinction event at the boundary marking the end of the Permian and the beginning of the Triassic Period and the Mesozoic Era.

The giant ground sloth graphic is the official National Fossil Day 2019 artwork. It can be used to promote National Fossil Day 2019 activities and events and includes the date October 16, 2019.

The Quetzalcoatlus graphic is the official National Fossil Day 2018 artwork. It can be used to promote NFD 2018 activities and events and includes the date October 17, 2018.

The Paleozoic fish graphic is the official National Fossil Day 2017 artwork. It can be used to promote NFD 2017 activities and events and includes the date October 11, 2017.

The 2016 artwork features three iconic Pleistocene ("ice age") animals from the United States—saber-toothed cat, long-horned bison, and a condor flying above. The landscape is an idealized representation of southern Nevada within what is now Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument...