Georg Wolfgang Knorr (1705–1761)

• Was a German paleontologist, painter, draftsman, engraver, collector, and art dealer.
• He was born in Nürnberg.
• Knorr was trained in the technique of engraving by J. L. Blank.
• He achieved his first great success with his illustrations for Johannes Jacob Scheuzer's "Physica sacra" (1731).
• In the 1750s, Knorr began issuing his own sumptuous folios.
• One such work, Sammlung von Merkwürdigkeiten der Natur (Collection of Curiosities of Nature, 1755), was an illustrated encyclopedia of fossils, all beautifully engraved and colored by Knorr.
• It was one of the first such books to recognize that all these fossils are the remains of once-living creatures, and it set the stage for the later discovery that one could use such fossils to order and date the rocks that contain them.  
• Knorr spent his whole life in Nuremberg, passing away on September 17, 1761. 

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