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Plesiosaur palaeoart: thoughts for artists
Jurassic plesiosauroid Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus with a controversially dipped left hindfin. Nothing like a little drama to start a blog post.Among the first animals to feature prominently in...
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Scientist-palaeoartist collaborations – what palaeontologists can, and...
Last month I posted a complaint about poor scientist-led palaeoart - those artworks of extinct animals produced under direct control of scientists to promote research, without any interference from TV...
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New paper: pterosaur palaeoecology, as told by the fossil record
A female Pteranodon tries to explain the new Silverstone et al. (2017) paper on Pteranodon taxonomy to the Cretaceous shark Squalicorax. Unfortunately for her, the sharks quite liked the 'Dawndraco'...
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Walking with ichthyosaurs: the amphibious ichthyosaur hypothesis
Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkin's (1858?) sketch of amphibious marine reptiles, including a large shambling ichthyosaur. Image borrowed from Frank T. Zumbach's Mysterious World. One of the most charming...
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Armoured theropod faces, rhino horns and pterosaur skin crests: how artists...
Abelisaurid Kryptops palaios recieves some TLC in Early Cretaceous Niger, while duck-faced Anatosuchus minor sneaks out of the water. But what's with the swollen, bulging look to the abelisaur's face?...
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Revenge of the scaly Tyrannosaurus
Reworked version of my 2012 Tyrannosaurus painting, now in it's third guise. There's something about this painting which recalls reconstructions from 1906 rather than those of 2016. The skeletal...
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Palaeoartist interview: Johan Egerkrans
Palaeoart has never been a particularly diverse artform. Since the early 1800s most palaeoartists have pursued art attempting to depict fossil animals in realistic ways, with stylistic variation mostly...
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The convention of shrink-wrapping: thoughts for artists
Europasaurus holgeri - twice. These portraits are of the same animal using the same specimen and the same view, but one is restored with extreme shrink-wrapping (above) and the other has a more...
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The horns of Arsinoitherium: covered in skin or augmented with keratin sheaths?
1.5 Arsinotherium zitteli trotting about Eocene Egypt, looking a bit like they could be advertising farm products. But what's with those more elaborate than usual horns?The horns of the giant,...
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The appearance and lifestyle of Thalassodromeus sethi, supercrested pterosaur
Thalassodromeus sethi, a juvenile Mirischia asymmetrica, and half a spinosaurid hang out in Cretaceous Brazil. The spinosaurid wants to go home.One of my favourite pterosaurs is the Brazilian...
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Can we predict the horn shapes of fossil animals? A thought experiment...
Triceratops horridus with some crazy long and curving brow horns. Just speculation, right? Surprisingly, maybe not...For palaeoartists, animals with flamboyant headgear are among the most rewarding to...
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Did tyrannosaurs smile like crocodiles? A discussion of cranial epidermal...
Brain 1: "Right, you need an image for your tyrannosaurid facial tissue post."Brain 2: "OK, here're some Tyrannosaurus rex in a really dark and back-lit scene. Their faces are in shadow, and you can't...
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A mural for Dippy: restoring a celebrity Diplodocus in art
My mural of a Diplodocus carnegii herd,currently keeping Dippy, the Natural History Museum's Diplodocus cast, company in Dorset County Museum. At 4 x 2 m, it's the third biggest picture I've ever done,...
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Dinosaurs in the Wild: a review
Dinosaurs in the Wild's Quetzalcoatlus. OK, it's not a dinosaur, but it is in the wild.If you travel to London's Greenwich Peninsula before the end of July 2018 you might find Dinosaurs in the Wild, a...
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Unicorns, dragons, monsters and giants: palaeoart before palaeontology
Quick painting of Polyphemus, the Homeric cyclops, taking very literal inspiration from elephant face anatomy in reference to the well-known idea that fossil elephant skulls inspired the cyclops myth....
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Why we think giant pterosaurs could fly
Giant azhdarchid pterosaur in flight. Images like this virtually always trigger discussions about the validity of giant pterosaur flight hypotheses.Every so often the idea of flightless giant...
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Ricardo Delgado's Age of Reptiles at 25: a palaeontological retrospective
With the 25th anniversary of Jurassic Park cascading through dinosaur social media you could be forgiven for overlooking another influential dinosaur franchise celebrating the same vintage this year....
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Introducing The Palaeoartist's Handbook: Recreating Prehistoric Animals in...
In just under a month I have a new book out: The Palaeoartist's Handbook: Recreating Prehistoric Animals in Art, published by Crowood Press. This is a big (280 x 220 mm, 224 pages), full-colour,...
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Those terrific pelagornithids
Miocene pelagornithid Pelagornis chilensis parents and chicks, what fantastic animals they must have been. Note the lack of pseudoteeth on the chicks, recent work suggests they didn't develop until the...
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An interview with Katrina van Grouw, author and artist of The Unfeathered...
If you're the sort of person who's interested in cool stuff like anatomy, evolution and functional morphology, you can't have missed two incredible books published in recent years by author and artist...
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