  Given the many recent advances in our understanding of the star formation
history (SFH) of the Local Group and other nearby galaxies, and in the
evolution of star formation with redshift, we present a new comparison of the
comoving space density of the star formation rate as a function of look-back
time for the Local and Distant Universe. We update the Local SFH derived from
the analysis of resolved stellar populations (``fossil records'') in individual
nearby galaxies, based on our own estimations as well as available in the
literature. While the preliminary comparison of SFHs is found to be broadly
consistent, some discrepancies still remain, including an excess of the Local
SFR density in the most recent epoch.

Astrophysics