This incredible graphic is by @maijakarala.bsky.social and is an excellent crash-course in bird (and honestly animal) color/pigmentation. Check it out! I’ve continually come back to this for reference and always love sharing it with others 🐧🐦🐤🏳️‍🌈

Anybody recognize this trilobite? Even family level or time period would be cool to know. Was a gift

Feast your eyes on DOMINO! Potentially the world's first warty frogfish (Antennarius maculatus) successfully reared in human care 📍Shedd Aquarium

To anybody that knows fossils- do these look like brachiopods? From the limestone tiles of Shedd Aquarium. I believe quarried in Illinois

One of the most bizarre animals I've ever seen in person - the bowmouth guitarfish (Rhina ancylostoma). Front of body, while ray-like, is fairly deep with several isolated rows of spikes. Back of body has taller fins and a weirdly "dipped" caudal peduncle. ~8-9ft long

Another Megalodon reconstruction by Charles R. Knight from the book "Great White Shark" (Ellis & McCosker, 1991). I've never seen this before, very cool to feature specific taxa like spotted eagle rays (right) & tiger sharks (left). #sciart #paleoart

An interesting camera effect I noticed when taking a pic of a bigtooth river stingray at Shedd Aquarium: from a distance their creamy-white spots look normal, but when you zoom in there's this crazy blue and orange halo. Is this a camera effect to make the spots pop? Or something else?

I recently searched "goblin shark" on Instagram and was disgusted by the ubiquity of generative AI slop masquerading as actual footage of living goblin sharks. So here's a thread on how to spot the bullshit (examples below) #scicomm #sharks

Photo of a captive sandbar shark at Shedd Aquarium - those parallel diagonal lines running along the tail are the shark's muscles!!! Even animals we think of as "simple" or "smooth" can reveal a lot if you know what to look for

For #EndangeredSpeciesDay, a type of shark I had no idea existed until very recently: the daggernose shark (Carcharhinus oxyrhynchus). This is a super weird, poorly known requiem shark that is Critically Endangered. I'm not sure if it's ever been photographed alive/underwater

Another great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) portrait study in pencil. The individual I referenced had some interesting damage/scarring to the lower jaw

January vs April- portrait studies of great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in pencil. Starting to get a feel for sharks and how to accurately depict all that character they have in their faces! 🦈 #sciart

If you ever feel like humans have a solid grasp on animals, do some research on sharks & whales. You'd be amazed how little documentation there is. Some species have never even been photographed, or even seen, alive! pics of some rarely-seen weirdos

Looking at photos from the NOAA Voyage to the Ridge 2022 Expedition and this is crazy - is it just me or does this sea star look like it was knit by hand?!

The undisputed #1 greatest photo of a person with a fossil: Paleontologist Altangerel Perle, with the Museum of Natural History in Ulan Bataar, Mongolia, stands between the forearms of Deinocheirus

Watching a video from the Smithsonian on the making of Gary Staab's 50ft-long Megalodon sculpture. Something about seeing artists/workers climbing on and around it like insects really leaves you with a sense of how big this thing would've been

This might be a first in the world of #paleoart

Regarding potential virtual paleontology meetings. (I built and ran the 2023 SVP virtual meeting.)

Question for fellow paleoartists: When creating #paleoart to be featured on the cover of an academic journal, how do you decide the dimensions of the piece? Do you reach out to the folks at the journal and ask them? Design a vertical composition and let them crop? Or something else? #sciart

Not my sweaty ass being part of an exhibit panel at The Museum of the Rockies!!! I volunteered last summer to help dig up a new chasmosaurine ceratopsid (horned dinosaur somewhat related to Triceratops).

Detail of the Triceratops reconstruction I made for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences' award-winning research project, Cretaceous Creatures Coloration is meant to match a mural/reconstruction by Julius Csotonyi #paleoart #sciart

A paleoart meme/trope that kind of bugs me is giving Sinosauropteryx a bushy, fluffy, squirrel-like tail. I am not saying this is implausible, and I appreciate speculation, but it's not what the fossil evidence seems to reflect.

Okay in hindsight not the best angle but for reference I am 6ft6in (2m) tall and the horns extend past where I was standing

Timeline cleanse: The gorgeous, masterful fossil photography of Andre Gogol (in collaboration with the Royal Tyrrell Museum collections) #paleontology #photography #paleoart

Biggest surprise of #DinosaursAndMOR so far: Yoshi’s Trike (long-horned Triceratops specimen) is WAAAY bigger than I thought! I’ll try to get a pic with me for scale before the conference ends 📍Museum of the Rockies

Brodavis, the freshwater hesperornithiform bird from the Hell Creek Formation of Late Cretaceous North America. Composition loosely inspired by The Birds of North America by John James Audubon. Done for the Cretaceous Creatures Project at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences #paleoart

That fish in the background of every single shark photo you've seen: the pilot fish, Naucrates ductor. It's almost hard to find pics of oceanic whitetip sharks *without* pilotfish in them

#FossilFriday & happy to see coworker & coauthor Erin Fitzgerald’s culmination of fierce fieldwork, ace preparation of difficult material & great paint job on the display-skull, out now w/ Spinosaurus mirabilis, debuting @ Chicago Children’s Museum on March 1 #SciArt

Looking forward to my very first Dinosaurs and MOR! conference at the @museumoftherockies.bsky.social!!! Excited to reconnect with friends from fossil digs and see the Cretaceous Creatures exhibit #ThrowbackThursday to the last time I was in Montana

Portrait of the iconic Jurassic pterosaur Rhamphorhynchus #sciart #paleoart

I find it can be sometimes difficult to develop an original composition, color palette etc for aquatic #paleoart. Here's a thread of some inspiring #wildlifephotography: "The Night Shift" - molluscs moving on coral reef to graze as night falls & grey reef shark cruises (Laurent Ballesta)

This is crazy: platypus hairs have unique, hollow melanosomes (pigment cells) that may have an additional function unrelated to the brown color they produce: A unique hollow melanosome morphology in the hairs of the platypus Ornithorhynchus anatinus royalsocietypublishing.org/rsbl/article...

I've been looking for references on the morphology of scombrid fishes (mackerel, tuna, bonito etc) and came across this AMAZING resource: Scombrids of the World. An Annotated and Illustrated Catalogue of Tunas, Mackerels, Bonitos and Related Species Known to Date (link below)

Just heard on the latest episode of the Tetrapod Zoology podcast that John Conway is effectively “retiring” from paleoart for the foreseeable future to pursue other passions. I’m happy for him & hope he finds success, and also profoundly saddened by this news. #paleoart

You could put a gun to my head and I'm sure I'd still confuse the names of Scelidosaurus & Scutellosaurus

Statement from Paul Sereno / University of Chicago Fossil Lab regarding Nathan Myhrvold: paulsereno.uchicago.edu/news/fossil_...

Thought I'd do a thread of some of my favorite #paleoart - inspired by watching an old Skeleton Crew podcast episode "Sinopteroberries" - uncertain pterosaur, possibly Nemicolopterus, but probably a juvenile Sinopterus enjoying some red podocarp berries (John Conway) #sciart

Scott Williams at the Museum of the Rockies gave a talk a couple years ago where he demonstrated pretty clearly that Tyrannosaurus is like, exponentially more popular and well known than any other dinosaur. Not even close. Not sure where people got this idea but it's ludicrous

Congratulations to all involved in Netflix's #TheDinosaurs! Here are some of my thoughts after finishing the series that nobody asked for #PrehistoricPlanet #LifeOnOurPlanet #paleoart #paleontology

For those who are not familiar with paleontologist Nick Longrich: michael-balter.blogspot.com/2018/08/univ...

From El Hossny et al., 2020: Spathiurus, a Cretaceous relative of bowfins. This specimen is at a museum tied to the Lebanese University. One of the university’s campuses has been bombed, and the director of the Faculty of Science has been killed You can support Lebanon here: gofund.me/40b24e072

The Ordovician gastropod (aka sea snail) Trochonema, paleoart I made as part of an internship reconstructing Ordovician invertebrates with Paul Mayer, curator of fossil invertebrates at the Field Museum of Natural History. #sciart #paleoart

Proud to have contributed to Evolving Planet's evolution! In 2019 I created #paleoart of Helicoprion, Teleocrater, Parringtonia, Desmatosuchus, Asilisaurus, Deinonychus, Buitreraptor, Citipati, Archaeopteryx & Anchiornis. Still a major highlight of my career and an honor

Reconstruction of the bizarre branching crinoid Iocrinus. Done as part of an internship reconstructing Ordovician invertebrates with Paul Mayer, curator of fossil invertebrates at the Field Museum of Natural History #sciart #paleoart

I wouldn't call it a "highlight" of #PaleoFest but basically being thrust into running one of the auctions (I have 0 experience or even affiliation with the Burpee Museum) was certainly a memorable experience. Glad I could help and hope I didn't make a complete fool of myself, lol

Also for #PaleoFest2026, look for my wall-hanging mini-bust of a famous Chicago zoo gorilla, now taxidermied @ FMNH www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/bushman... Please bid this up at the weekend auction to benefit the Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois #SciArt 🦍 Painted plaster cast

I can’t make it to #PaleoFest2026 this year, but the wonderful @paleobyliam.bsky.social is transporting two small sculptures of mine I’m donating to the Burpee Museum for the auction at this weekends event. Faux metallic painted wall-hanging casts, here‘s a peek #sciart

*clicking intensifies* #sciart