paleoart

Flower Dance

Parksosaurus dances in front of a field of flowering Cretaceous era plants

An electric blue Parksosaurus warreni “dances” among a wide variety of flowering plants known from different locations across Alaska and Russia during the Cretaceous era. While we are most familiar with the Pleistocene-era Bering land bridge connecting North America and Eurasia, evidence of many shared fossil plant and animal species show Alaska also bridged the continents during the late Cretaceous.

Alice in Wonderland

Nanuqsaurus in the Garden of Ancient Plants.
A female Nanuqsaurus took a strange turn along the ancestral Colville River and finds herself feeling very small indeed among the towering giant plants of an ancient garden forgotten by time - a remnant of a warmer, wetter period of Alaska dominated by ferns, cycads, Bennettitales, dawn redwoods, and Ginkgoes, with interloping stands of flowering ginger plants as a reminder of the changing order of things.

Fishing in the Land of Giants

Scene depicting Pleistocene California with Oncorhynchus rastrosus, Arctodus simus, and Larus californicus.

A scene of the estuaries of Pleistocene era California depicting a scavenging short-faced bear, Arctodus simus, feeding off a spawned-out female Oncorhynchus rastrosus, the "saber-toothed" salmon, with an entourage of ancestral California gulls, Larus californicus. In the water, a pair of speculative ocean-phase Oncorhynchus enters the estuary looking for food, while a pair of spawning males jockey for status and position, ready to meet their fate upstream.

2016 #Sciart Tweetstorm Day 4: Fossil (Reconstruction) Friday

Tonight's serving of #sciart - three reconstructions of some of my favorite fossil critters. First up, Helicoprion with her modern relative, the Galapagos ratfish. Second, an outdated reconstruction of Thallattosaurus from the side and top, after the original Merriam fossil sketch. Last, we have a troodon with corvid-esque feather patterns from a much larger piece I've been working on for the past couple of years.

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