Dinosaurs of China in Nottingham: part 2 - Feathered Flyers

While the reconstructed skeletons of big scaly beasts dominate the main downstairs area of Dinosaurs of China, the real treasures are upstairs, where far more delicate, intricately preserved and altogether fluffy animals await. While some of our scientist readers will have seen these in person before, DoC is a unique opportunity for us mere laypeople to get up close to feathered beauties from China. And yes, many of them are originals, including Stripy Longtail here!

Notice the fish, bottom left.

Interview: Paleoartist Maija Karala

"Forest Green." A dandy paravian, © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

I'm always excited to see new work pop up in Maija Karala's DeviantArt gallery. A Finnish biologist and writer, her enthusiasm for biology also finds voice through her illustrations, which range from fleshed out scenes to charming sketches. I can't remember exactly when I began following Maija's illustrations, but I do remember being particularly struck by her Tarpan fending off a lion.


"Don't Mess With Tarpans." © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

Maija writes:

Here, a young cave lion is about to learn why one should be careful with tarpans. It's July somewhere close to the edge of the ice and the steppe-tundra is blooming. The plants depicted include Betula nana, Viscaria alpina, Rhododendron lapponicum, Orthilia secunda, Pedicularis sceptrum-carolinum and Dryas octopetala. Yes, the latter is the plant that was so common at the time at gave its name to the Dryas climatic periods.

It's a great example of the qualities I admire in much of her work: a sense of drama, subtle and naturalistic color, dedication to research, all wrapped up in an eminently approachable aesthetic. I was happy when Maija agreed to do an interview for Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs, so I could ask her more about how she works.

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What is your background as an artist? Is it your profession or hobby?
For me, art is mostly a hobby. I make my living as a science writer, mostly writing for newspapers and magazines. I do paid illustrations whenever I get a chance, but it's not very often. I'd love to do more of it, but the fact that I always thought it as just a hobby now hinders me a bit. As I haven't really practised my skills systematically, I only became good at the things I like doing.


"Hamipterus." © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

Do you get many opportunities to cover paleontology in your science writing?
I get to cover paleontology fairly often, though not as often as I'd like. A few articles per year or so. On my blog (which is unfortunately in Finnish, but can be found at http://planeetanihmeet.wordpress.com/) I do write a lot about paleontology and use my own illustrations as well.

Do you plan on continuing to do illustration as a hobby, or do you have professional aspirations?
I'm working to become a better artist, and I'd love to do more professional illustrations too. Though writing is probably still going to be my main occupation.

Was illustrating extinct animals always something you did or did you come to it later in life?
I drew dinosaurs as a kid, like everyone else, but stopped somewhere in my early teen years and only started again when I began my university studies, seven years ago (I studied biology). During the gap, I mostly drew fantasy creatures, dragons and elves and stuff. I think the main reason I started making paleoart was to find sort of a compromise between drawing fantasy creatures and being a science student. Illustrating extinct animals is firmly rooted in science, but also lets you use your imagination in a way not really possible with bioillustration.


"Eye Contact." Anurognathus ammoni, © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

At what point in an illustration do you focus on the eyes? It's often a striking element in your work, whether fantasy or paleoart.
I have never really thought about that. I do tend to think the eyes and expressions as the most important part of my drawings, as that's also what I pay the most attention when looking at live animals (or people, for that matter). Though I have no idea if everyone else does that too. After making a general sketch on what I want there to be and where, the eyes (or the facial areas in general) are usually the first thing I focus on.

You seem to be especially drawn to feathery theropods. Is this due to a bird interest or is there some aspect of their form that is especially fun to draw?
I think it's a bit of both. I like birds, sure. I also like drawing small and pretty animals. And feathers are always fun. Anyway, the main reason is probably that there's plenty of references and easily accessible knowledge available on feathered dinosaurs. It was an easy place to start back when I started making paleoart, and once I was familiar with them, it was also easy to continue.

Lately, I have been moving on to other critters as a part of trying to learn new things. My DeviantArt gallery is now starting to have more things like fossil mammals and non-dinosaurian archosaurs than feathered theropods on the first pages.

When illustrating an animal that has been covered by other illustrators, in what ways do you try to make it your own?
I always try to find other sources of inspiration besides other people's depictions of the same animal, sometimes actively avoiding looking at them when planning to make my own reconstruction. I often look up modern animals with somewhat similar ecology and use their soft tissues and behaviour as inspiration, but try never to directly copy anything. I mostly avoid using the most obvious colour themes or soft tissue ideas. That's not to say I never stumble on paleoart memes, but I do try to avoid it.


"The Feathered Yeti." Xiaotingia zhengi, © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

How much do comments on dA influence your work? For instance on your "Feathered Yeti," the comments get into some serious detail about integument. When posting work do you post with the expectation that you'll receive critique on areas you're not sure about?
To be honest, DeviantArt comments have probably been the most important thing pushing me to get better at making paleoart. These days I usually do my research before drawing, but especially earlier it was a great motivator to make embarrassing mistakes and get someone tell it to me. I'm pretty sure I never made the same mistake twice.

As I have mostly learned paleontology and anatomy on my own (for years, I had no paleontologically oriented friends nor any education on either subject), the criticism has been invaluable. I still greatly appreciate all the experts who go through the trouble to nitpick on amateur drawings.


"I Immediately Regret This Decision." Thalassodromeus attempting to eat Mirischia, © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

So, who are some of your favorite expert paleoartists? Is there a particular piece of advice or critique you received that has stuck with you?
I really like the works of people like Alain Bénéteau, Ville Sinkkonen, Carl Buell and Mauricio Anton, just to mention a few. My favourites are the people who can combine an expert understanding of science with truly beautiful art and get the animals to really come to life. I also really like Niroot's style. And John Conway's. And... ok, I'll stop here before the list becomes ridiculously long.

I don't think there's any particular piece of advice that has been especially memorable. It has been more about the general message that I need to know more. It's something I simply didn't get elsewhere for most of the time. As nobody I knew personally had the expertice to tell me the feet of my Quetzalcoatlus are wrong, most feedback was more like "oh, a nice dinosaur. What do you mean it isn't a dinosaur?".

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Thank you to Maija for answering my questions - and patiently waiting for me to have time to put the post together! I hope you'll stop by her DeviantArt gallery and leave some support and constructive criticism on her illustrations. Also check out the recent post at i09 featuring Maija's Protoceratops/ Griffin illustration.


"Go Home, Evolution." Atopodentatus, © Maija Karala and used with her permission.

Carl Zimmer's Feather Evolution video

Science writer Carl Zimmer narrates a recent TED educational video summarizing our knowledge about the evolution of feathers. Part of a lesson at the TED-Ed site and animated by Armella Leung, it's a really well done crash course in current thinking on feather origins.



Did you note the derivatives from different pieces of paleoart? The Epidexipteryx is clearly based on the Qiu Ji and Xing Lida reconstruction, and the displaying Caudipteryx is Sydney Mohr's.

Those bits aside, I love the way the idea of deep time's mysteries and evolution's imperfect and haphazard processes are illustrated with the sketchy illustration style, and the use of the white feather silhouettes when Zimmer discusses the early functions of feathers is inspired.

Jurassic Park 4: The Lost Cause

Photo by Juliana Cortés, via Flickr.

I don't hate Jurassic Park. I may have a complicated relationship with it, but that's pretty common. Even if Colin Trevorrow had announced feathered theropods would be part of JP4, anyone would be wise to keep their expections low for a long-delayed continuation of a franchise of such severely diminishing returns. If you're one of those who has no problem with naked dromaeosaurs in the next movie, more power to you: I hope you enjoy it. I really do!

Andrea Cau's comment on my recent post about the latest JP4 news is one that I've seen others raise in other places on-line. I'll quote it here fully:

There is no reason to show feathered raptors in JP4, because in the world of JP raptors are those seen in JP1 (and I'm not among those mentioning genetic mutations or frogs as a justification of that look: simply, JP is a 1993 movie and represents that epoch iconography).

I hated the "crested" raptors in JP3 because they differed from those in the first movies. I'm happy dinosaurs in JP4 will retain the look of the first movies: JP is not a documentary, and should not be forced to be "updated" to the "real world". In the JP-verse the dinosaur look is the one shown in JP1 and must remain that one until the end of the saga.

Sequels must follow the original style, since they are part of the same "universe". Otherwise, they are not sequels.

Do you want feathered dinosaurs based on 2013 science? Ask for a reboot.

These are fair enough points, and as I said above: if this is your expectation for a new JP movie, I hope this one satisfies you. For my part, I don't really care about the Jurassic Park universe or canon or iconography (now that I think about it, changing the design of the Jurassic Park visual identity would offend me more than altering creature design). In his post at Laelaps, Brian Switek ably shows that neither, apparently, do the filmmakers.

...the franchise has already changed its dinosaurs several times with no explanation. The first sequel introduced new color palettes for the dinosaurs, as did the third film. (Not to mention the fact that Jurassic Park III raises the mystery of why Site B contains species that InGen didn’t clone, and never actually resolves this point.) If the dinosaurs are changing from film to film to start with, why not take a jump and show audiences something they have never witnessed before?

If it's intricate world-building I'm looking for, I've got plenty of other places to find that these days. Still: there are plenty of ways that a good writer could not only incorporate the new science of feather origins in Jurassic Park 4, he or she could make it work thematically. One general scenario that springs to mind would be that the film could use changing science as a way to mirror uncertainty and progress in the lives of human characters. The characters are now faced with animals that blur the line between "reptile" and "bird," animals InGen rejected and hid from the public. How would Grant - if he was part of it at all - react to this? How would he transition from his "I'm out of a job" attitude to a realization of just how twisted from reality the animals he faced on Isla Nublar were? What wonder would he feel faced with a resurrected but abandoned ecosystem of feathered, fuzzy, prickly, spiny, dinosaurs?

Though Andrea dismisses it, the fact is, Jurassic Park contains the seeds of changing creature design in the canonical fact that the animals were engineered to satisfy public perception. There's terrific stuff there to write for! After all, suspense and fear are a huge part of the cinematic experience of Jurassic Park, and fear of the unknown, of the ground shifting under our feet, is a big reason a large part of the public distrusts, rejects, and ignores science. If you think this is all too heady for a Jurassic Park film, I'd disagree: a book and film that introduced me as a teenager to paradigm shifts and chaos theory has plenty of room for such philosophical content. The fact that Jurassic Park III lacked this element is part of what makes it such a forgettable movie. Trying something like the concept I sketched in broad strokes above could result in a Jurassic Park movie as meaningful to its time as the first one. That's not something worth shooting for?

The fact that I've written three posts about this new revelation about JP4 should show how much I really do love the original Jurassic Park. I was a confused, awkward kid when the book came out. I read it repeatedly during the summer of 1992. In the summer of 1993, I saw the movie repeatedly. I was in love with the SNES game. As I wrote almost three years ago, regarding the scene at the lagoon right after the party arrives on the island,

The moment seared into my memory, when a movie actually made me see the world differently, was the first time I saw that shot. Certainly, Mr. Brachiosaurus showing off by standing on two legs was impressive. Absolutely marvelous. But it was just a set-up. When that shot was projected onto the screen, it was a punch to the gut. Suddenly, dinosaurs were alive again, and how I'd always dreamed of seeing them: casually going about their lives. Moving like animals move, with weight. Rendered a bit hazy by the distance. Put into better perspective by little white specks of birds flying over sparkling water. As if I was out hiking, and happened across the scene upon cresting a hill. It was a rush. A deep, satisfying realization of a wish I knew was foolish. And I realized it as it was happening: this is the closest you'll ever get to it.

In my brain, I'd be happy for JP to die and let someone new figure out a way to make a big Hollywood dinosaur movie. Forget reboots, forget sequels, leave Jurassic Park trapped in the amber of the 1990's. Reinvent big dinosaur adventure totally. In my heart though, I'd like to return to Jurassic Park. I just think we've grown apart.

Reverse Jurassic Park

What if it was Velociraptors - in all of their feathered, pint-sized glory - digging up the fossilized remains of humans? TKToons has an idea of how it would go. Two episodes of Reverse Jurassic Park, AKA Quarternary Park have been shared at Youtube.





I wholeheartedly approve. Bobbing, fully feathered Velociraptors. Enough to bring a tear of joy to my eye. Son of a Baryonyx, they've done it!

What I done been up to

I haven't been able to post much lately, mainly because I had an influx of much-needed freelance work this month. I'm also working on a huge batch of photos I took during my trip to the Western US. I'll be doing some posts about that as I get the time and the photos uploaded to Flickr. I've also been getting ready for something I'm really stoked about, my upcoming exhibition at Wonderlab, a children's museum here in Bloomington, IN. I'll also be doing a science-art night there on August 3, which will be a lot of fun - every kid who comes by will get to ask questions about dinosaurs and the evolution of birds, and will take home their very own printed "fossil" feather.

I've started sharing some of the illustrations, which will be on exhibit from the middle of July until the end of August. I've been working on these since last year, when Wonderlab first approached me. I've learned a lot about my process as an illustrator in how these have evolved. So, here are the first three in the series.

First, a trip to Cretaceous China to visit a thirsty Beipiaosaurus. There's a Psittacosaurus in there, too.


I couldn't resist the bizarre Epidexipteryx, and included a golden orb weaver, which are known from its Jurassic habitat. I shared it on Facebook this week, and found that I'd inadvertently made a very caption-able illustration, which I'll take as a form of cosmic justice for the many times I've poked fun at illustrations on this blog.


Last (for now), Anchiornis. It was kind of awesome to work with an animal for which we have a decent idea of its coloration in life.


I've got more in the works, a good mix of animals that have been important in our understanding of feather and bird origins.

Bow to Yutyrannus, your great feathered overlord

Yutyrannus huali, illustrated by Brian Choo.

In what is undoubtedly the dinosaur news of the year, we finally have a giant theropod sporting unmistakable feathers. Described in Nature, Yutyrannus - so new Google tries to correct it to Eotyrannus - hails from Early Cretaceous China, and destroys Beipiaosaurus's claim as the largest feathered dinosaur. It's going to take a massive story to top this one this year. Which, naturally, I hope happens.

This is a paleontological jackpot already, but add to it the fact that there are three individuals and they are quite complete and the importance of this discovery is greatly magnified. "Multiple specimens are always great and animals this size being preserved at all are quite rare in the Jehol, so it’s pretty impressive we have three of them," writes Dave Hone.

Creating an image that's sure to inspire paleoartists everywhere, Ed Yong relates an hypothesis on the use of Yutyrannus's feathers from paleontologist and lead author Xu Xing:

Xu speculates that Yutyrannus’s feathers might have been a winter coat. While most giant tyrannosaurs enjoyed warm climates during the late Cretaceous, Yutyrannus lived at a time when the average yearly temperature was a nippy 10 degrees Celsius. Maybe it was the tyrannosaur equivalent of woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos, whose shaggy coats protected them during the Ice Age. “The idea of woolly tyrannosaurs stalking colder climates in the Cretaceous is kinda mind-blowing,” says Witmer.

This is that rarest of stories in which it's actually appropriate to invoke the name of T. rex in a headline, as now we have much better evidence that the giant tyrants at the end of the Cretaceous could very well have worn plumage of their own. This will further alienate those who can't stand the thought of the scales of their favorite Mesozoic monsters giving way to feathers, but as someone who has devoted a lot of time over the last six months to studying feathers, I'd encourage you to look at it this way: feathers are by far the most amazing integumentary structure ever evolved. There's no comparison. The tyrant lizards deserved nothing less.

Now excuse me as I go lose myself in Mesozoic reverie. Endorphins, take me away...

More on my new favorite dinosaur:
Green Tea and Velociraptors
Theropoda
Tetrapod Zoology
Archosaur Musings
Nature News
Not Exactly Rocket Science
Carl Zimmer
Why Evolution is True
Wired
NeuroLogica
Brett Booth
The Independent
Telegraph
LiveScience by way of HuffPo
MSNBC

On crests and feathers

People have long wondered what exactly the quite weird and wonderful head crests of both dinosaurs and pterosaurs were doing there. Why did they evolve - what were they for? Today Lethaia published (online) a paper by David Hone, Darren Naish and Innes Cuthill entitled Does mutual sexual selection explain the evolution of head crests in pterosaurs and dinosaurs? In the paper, Hone et al propose that a potential key evolutionary factor has so far been largely overlooked - that of mutual sexual selection.

Citipati, an animal unusual in combining a large, bony head crest with feathers. While the display feathers here are speculative, similar structures are known from the oviraptorosaur Caudipteryx. Art by Niroot Puttapipat.

'Mutual sexual selection' is pretty self-explanatory. While 'sexual selection' is a one-sided process, with one sex selecting for highly dimorphic traits in the other (Hone himself gives the "endlessly repeated" example of peacocks), 'mutual sexual selection' is, well, mutual. As such, it is likely that both genders of the animal concerned will have ornamentation, or similar sexually selective traits. As is noted in the paper,

"An instructive example is the crested auklet, Aethia cristatella...in which both sexes bear feather plumes on their heads [and] both sexes prefer mates with longer crests" (p. 3)

The authors contend that palaeontologists are largely ignoring this idea and failing to realise its changing status in behavioural ecology. They propose that since "there are many circumstances under which male mating time and effort are limited", and given the varying quality of females, it makes sense that males should be selective rather than simply trying to copulate with everything in sight (pp. 11-12).

In formulating this hypothesis, the authors run through a number of others that have been proposed down the years. Some, such as the evolution of crests as weaponry or thermoregulatory devices, can obviously be ruled out for a lot of species. However, what's probably going to raise people's heckles is the authors' rejection of the 'species recognition' hypothesis, that is to say the idea that (some) crested dinosaurs and pterosaurs evolved their displays so that members of the same species could recognise one another. As the authors point out, this idea doesn't explain why "lambeosaurine hadrosaurs required large crests for species recognition, when...members of [the] closely related iguanodontian lineage did not" (p. 10). They also note that a lot of animals today don't require such obvious signals to be able to differentiate between even very similar species. For example:

"...tyrant flycatchers notorious for showing little to no morphological variation exhibit clear boundaries between species, despite sympatry" (p. 9)

Mutual sexual selection also neatly solves a problem as regards ceratopsians - that although sexual dimorphism has been proposed for certain species, "the proposed degree of sexual dimorphism is weak" (p. 5) with all mature individuals in a species seemingly being near-equally well-adorned with fancy head ornaments. The same has been found to be true of certain pterosaurs and theropods. As far as theropods go, the authors note the prevalence of crests in relatively basal clades (like the coelophysoids and ceratosaurs), but hypothesise that feathers might have replaced head crests as a sexual display in more advanced coelurosaurs and especially maniraptorans (the clade that includes dromaeosaurs, troodonts, oviraptorosaurs and birds). The known presence of display feathers on animals like Caudipteryx and Epidexipteryx would appear to back up this claim (pp. 12-13).

Of course, one problem with this is that some oviraptorosaurs have well-developed crests, but were presumably fully feathered. While acknowledging this as an "anomaly", the authors point out that the clade is very unusual among coelurosaurs in this respect. Furthermore, they also contend that modern birds that possess bony head crests - like cassowaries and certain hornbills - are also very unusual in having them (p. 13).

Noting that ornithodirans (dinosaurs and pterosaurs) likely relied heavily on vision - with a great deal of evidence backing this up - Hone et al also propose that

"...the evolution of the flight-capable feather and of flight itself may well have its roots in the evolution of ornithodiran sociosexual display." (p. 14)

It's an idea that's been proposed before, but here it's presented in the context of mutual sexual selection. Could it be that, in maniraptoran dinosaurs, it was a case of both sexes trying to impress each other that sped along the evolution of the flight feather?

Obviously, this is really just scratching the surface of what's in the paper and, knowing me, I've probably cocked up somewhere along the line (cf. some of the Planet Dinosaur reviews). I'd urge you to get hold of a copy of the paper for all the information - it's actually very accessible for laymen (I should know!).

Do People Want Feathered Dinosaurs?

In its tenth anniversary this year, the Lazendorf Paleoart Award is teaming with Nat Geo to present an award for a new category: Digital Modeling and Animation. As the website says, "with this new category, the Lanzendorf committee and the SVP recognize the importance of this rapidly growing frontier of scientific visualization for furthering science and public understanding."

As feathered dinosaurs have risen in prominence I've been thinking a lot about the need for them to be popularized on a huge scale. While the CG pseudo-documentary genre catches its share of flack, and animated narrative movies sacrifice science for story, I think it's high time for another big, culture-penetrating piece of dinosaur entertainment. Ideally, I'd like something that helps the image of the feathered dromaeosaur take prominence in the mind of the general public over the very reptilian faux-Velociraptors of Jurassic Park.

But the longer I hope for this, the more I fear that it may be wishful thinking: slimy, scaly reptiles are an archetypal "other" in mythology. There are the dragons, the gorgons, the sea serpents, the snake that tempts Eve. In modern times, there is the coo-coo for Cocoa Puffs "reptilian" conspiracy theory (there are plenty of certified nutjob sites I could link to, but I'll opt for this relatively benign Wikipedia page). Though our understanding of dinosaurs has become more and more nuanced, increasingly setting them apart as unique creatures of their own, there's no denying that the "giant lizards" image is in large part responsible for their enduring popularity.

Do feathered dinosaurs carry the same subconscious weight? Is the idea that the turkey on the table and the cardinal on the feeder are derived theropods compelling to the average person? In other words: do people want feathered dinosaurs? It's easy to say that it doesn't matter what they want: they'll take their lavishly adorned Deinonychus and like it. But scientific ideas have a funny way of progressing fitfully through human cultures. See Darwin, Charles.

As I was writing this post, Brian Switek conveniently posted something relevant over at Dinosaur Tracking. A smartass blog has started a semi-serious campaign against feathered dinosaurs. Or maybe it's a clever parody of boneheaded creationist anti-evolution propaganda (it even uses the stale old "theory" vs. "fact" dichotomy). Maybe it's a bit of both. Would reactionary anger over feathers on dinosaurs surprise me? Not so much, no. I imagine it's kind of like fanboy grumbling over the new designs of the Transformers or any other old franchise that finds itself subject to modernizing. People are used to geeking out about things in their own way, and who are these scientists to slap a bunch of dumb old feathers on Velociraptor?

I don't know of any organization that conducts polls on popular conceptions of dinosaurs, so I have no data to look to. I just wonder. And I'll be interested to see if any pieces based on the new melanosome research are up for the Lazenby award this year. The artistic renderings we've seen so far have been pretty arresting, and I'm sure it's just the beginning.

Now, to start figuring out my own tongue-in-cheek pro-feathers campaign...