A nasty little carnivorous dinosaur called Dryptosaurus pounces on one of its kin that has fallen flat on its back, feet kicking and tail flailing. Most people have probably seen this image in movies at some point — but probably not in 3-D.

This is the work of Charles R. Knight, one of the most influential artists in shaping the public’s perception of prehistoric creatures and the artist featured in the “Conquering the Darkness” display at the Museum of the Earth.

“Probably nobody has influenced our view of the past more than Charles Knight,” said Jim Baines, a volunteer at the Paleontological Research Institute’s Museum of the Earth.

From the 1890s until his death in 1953, Knight filled the public imagination with larger-than-life monsters at a time when paleontologists knew dinosaurs as more than just giant lizards, but not yet as the lithe, lively relatives of modern birds.

“Conquering the Darkness,” though, does not show the same old paintings and displays for the umpteenth time. The exhibit has showcased rarely seen sculptures, preliminary paintings and group images since October. These include many from the collection of Knight’s granddaughter, Rhoda Kalt.

The idea started last year when Kalt read an article about the museum in The New York Times, said Robert Ross, Ithaca College lecturer of biology and the Paleontological Research Institute’s director of education.

“She was interested in displaying this artwork and in selling some of it,” Ross said. “Based on what she read and what she learned about it, she decided that PRI and the Museum of the Earth were the perfect place to begin.”

Supplementing the exhibit are sculptures from the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, including dinosaurs and giant mammals.

“The sculptures are interesting in part because although they’re nice works of art in their own right, they were created in order to observe them,” Ross said.

Knight used these sculptures as models for his paintings.

Kalt worked with the museum to write placards explaining the history of most of the pieces.

Paleontology, an unusually artistic science that tries to reconstruct extinct life, holds a fascination for the public, Ross said. PRI tries to show how this fascination has influenced public understanding of the field and contrasts these classic images with more recent ones to show how scientific ideas change.

“There’s work from a fairly broad spectrum of his career, ranging probably from the early middle part of his career right up to near his death,” Ross said.

Ross’s favorite, though, is a model on which Knight based his famous Dryptosaurus painting.

“It shows dinosaurs that are active and agile as we interpret them today,” he said.

These are unlike most of Knight’s dinosaurs, which look sluggish and clumsy.

Another aspect attracted Jim Baines — Knight’s “masterful command of his technique.”

“He was legally blind for most of his life, and yet he painted these huge murals,” Baines said. “Holding [the murals] in his mind to that extent, to be able to envision those while working so intricately six inches from his paintings, created a kind of mental duality in him that comes through in his work sometimes.”

Baines also appreciates the paintings of early humans, such as a group of Neanderthals in a snowstorm, which was Knight’s favorite.

“His granddaughter said that he had a special passion for early humanity and what they had to go through to produce us,” Baines said.

Though many visitors know Knight’s work, Baines said, few know of Knight himself.

Ted Kwasnik stopped to take some photos of the exhibit while on vacation from Sparta, N.J.

Though he said he recognized the art from studying prehistoric life in school and college, Knight’s name was new to him.

“There was a lot of stuff I didn’t really know that I read about in the Museum, about Earth and the different periods of the past,” Kwasnik said.

The exhibit runs until Sunday at the Museum of the Earth, 1259 Trumansburg Road. Admission is $8 for adults, $5 for senior citizens and students with I.D., $3 for children ages 4 to 17 and free for ages 3 and under. Call the museum for daily hours, 273 -6623.