“Heartside Through The Geologic Ages”, it’s sort of a timeline that reads left to right. On the right side is a trilobite, coral, and seaweed, which represents Heartside (and most of Michigan and parts of the US) during the Paleozoic Epoch, which was 541 - 252 million years ago. At this time the land that we stand on was close to the equator and covered by a shallow sea, the trilobite was at the top of the food chain. The coral is Rugose coral, which would eventually become petoskey stones.
In the middle is Heartside during the Pleistocene Epoch, which was 2.6 million to 11,700 years ago, more commonly known as one of the ice ages. On the right is a musk ox and on the left is a woolly mammoth.
The right side of the mural is the Holocene, 11,700 years ago to today. Some experts argue that we have been in a new epoch since the industrial revolution, when humans began altering the earth in massive ways. Others argue that the new age, known as the Anthropormorcene, began with the first nuclear bomb test, which spread particles across the entire globe. The idea of the Anthropormorcene is pretty interesting and I could go down a rabbit hole reading about it. Anyway, the right side depicts a flowering tree. It was originally intended to be a catalpa tree but I couldn't get the flower right so I painted more of a lily type of flower. I was planning on adding a butterfly or a bird from today's age in this as well but sheer exhaustion prevented me from that.
