Christoph Hoppenbrock

A brief preface, as is to be expected in this era of decreased activity here at the blog. I am very much committed to continuing it, but I expect that its focus will continue to shift. When I was a nine-to-fiver, I found it much easier to be up the latest research. I could spend lunches and breaks writing posts. Though they often betray my status as a novice in paleontological knowledge, this type of post has been very satisfying for me, and writing about hot new taxa is a perennial source of traffic.

As a freelance designer and full-time student though, it's simply not something I can do anymore, so those sort of posts have faded considerably. I feel like it's turning into much more of a paleoart-focused blog than a paleontology blog, and that's just fine with me. I'll keep sharing my work (of which I have loads needing to be photographed). Maybe Marc will even share some of his, if we nudge him persistently enough!

One thing I'd like to do is share more work of more recent artists. One of my greatest regrets was not being conceived a decade or two later, so I could have taken advantage of the social web when young. I'm envious of you whippersnappers who get to grow up with the access to paleontologists and artists that today's web allows. The era of open-access and the participatory web is going to drive scientific discourse, which is a really exciting thing. To that end, I think I could do more here to help give contemporary dinosaur artists a bit more presence online.

Enough navel gazing though, let's look at the illustrations of Christoph Hoppenbrock!

I became aware of Hoppenbrock's work at Flickr. He's a designer and illustrator with an impressive range of work, including wonderfully intricate 3/4 view worlds illustrated for the German Playboy. When I wrote to ask permission to feature him here, he added a disclaimer I have read on his illustrations before. Some of it is a bit out of date; in particular Christoph is hungry to illustrate some feathered theropods and fix the pronation issues in some of his pieces. Those bits aside, his work is certainly worthy of dinosaur lovers' time. And like I told him in my reply back, there are plenty of scaly theropod fans who will appreciate his lizardy compsognathids. When he expressed his mild shame at the outdatedness of some of his work, I told him that to me, what's more important is the unique character and aesthetic of the work; anyone can learn the fundamentals of anatomy, but not everyone has arrived at a style that will invite viewers in. That ability to imbue a work with an inviting narrative - whether subtle or expicit - is a lot harder to teach, and I think he's got that aspect covered. The small body of work he's shared online features a slice of Jurassic life, focusing on his home country's paleontological heritage. Enjoy!


Anurognathus and Allosaurus


A sleek and colorful Compsognathus


Pterodactylus grandis


Inside and outside Compsognathus


A mesozoic croc gets a dinosaur for dinner.

Check out more of Hoppenbrock's work at Flickr and his personal website.

The City Museum

The other major stop of our weekend trip to St. Louis was the utterly wickedly wondrous and splendid City Museum. I won't get into the whole history of it; suffice to say that it's a giant indoor playground made of salvaged building materials, and is completely bananas. I didn't go expecting a lot of Mesozoica, but I figured there had to be at least a little. I was happily surprised at what I found.

First, there's this great sauropod staircase, leading from the entry level to the mezzanine and second floor. You can barely make out her head in the first shot...

...so here's a close-up.

On the second floor is a small room of natural history type stuff, presumably from other institutions' defunct displays. I was thrilled to find a glass case containing a bunch of fossil casts, including Tapejara, Velociraptor and Masiakasaurus skulls, and some others I didn't get good pictures of. Not that these are hot stuff; I've never been good at snapping photos through glass.

Opposite the display case is a diorama containing various reconstructions, including Bambiraptor, Compsognathus, Sordes, and Anurognathus. They were created by Missouri's Fossilsmith studios; unfortunately, it doesn't look like they've done a lot in the last few years (or maybe they're so busy they haven't had time to update their site). Their work here is excellent. Seeing that extravagantly feathered bambi when I walked into the room was such a great surprise.





The room also has a case full of other assorted fossils and casts, including various pterosaurs and a reproduction of Archaeopteryx. Really, its a lot of paleo crammed into a pretty small room. There's also a Pteranodon hanging from the ceiling on the ground level, somewhat out of place as the rest of the area has an undersea theme. But I'm not complaining.

Seriously, this is a must-see if you're ever in St. Louis.