The Story of Life is a ceramic

Ceramic art

In art history, ceramics and ceramic art mean art objects such as figures, tiles, and tableware made from clay and other raw materials by the process of pottery. Some ceramic products are regarded as fine art, while others are regarded as decorative, industrial or applied art objects, or as...

 mural by Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 artist Lorraine Malach, located just inside the entrance to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology

Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology

The Royal Tyrrell Museum is a popular Canadian tourist attraction and a leading centre of palaeontological research noted for its collection of more than 130,000 fossils....

, Alberta

Alberta

Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

, Canada. The mural consists of ten panels, each four feet wide and eight feet high; ten tons of clay were used.

It depicts life forms from the Precambrian

Precambrian

The Precambrian is the name which describes the large span of time in Earth's history before the current Phanerozoic Eon, and is a Supereon divided into several eons of the geologic time scale...

 to the Cretaceous

Cretaceous

The Cretaceous , derived from the Latin "creta" , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide , is a geologic period and system from circa to million years ago. In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period of the...

, as told by human-based figures.

After the death of Lorraine Malach in 2003, the two remaining pieces were fired in a kiln and the mural was completed by Janet Grabner.