A Series of Research Interviews on Paleoart and Paleontology
Mario Coiro
Interviewed on June 10, 2022
Mario Coiro is a paleobotanist, whose research interest lies in the evolution of form and function in plant lineages through macroevolutionary time. After having earned his PhD in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Zürich, Switzerland, Mario became a Lise Meitner Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Paleontology at the University of Vienna, Austria. He is the co-creator of the "Extant Plants Paleoart Database" and the author of a blog series "Palaeobotany for Paleoartists" both aiming at improving the representation of fossil plants in paleoart.
Luis V. Rey
Interviewed on December 2, 2021
Luis V. Rey is a Spanish-Mexican professional paleo-illustrator based in Mexico, Barcelona, and London. He has received a Master's Degree in Visual Arts from San Carlos Academy (UNAM), Mexico. His work can be seen all across the world and in various publications. He has collaborated with numerous paleontologists, such as Robert Bakker and Thomas Holtz. He is the author of two monographies: Extreme Dinosaurs (2001) and Extreme Dinosaurs 2: The Projects (2019). Among his many accomplishments, he also contributed to the seminal BBC documentary series Walking with Dinosaurs. He is currently curating an itinerant exhibition titled Dinosaur rEvolution.
Julio Lacerda
Interviewed on November 2, 2021
Julio Lacerda is a paleoartist from Brazil. He began to practice paleoart around ten years ago as a hobby after finding out there was a community of people dedicated to that on the Internet. He eventually found himself leaving his previous job as a graphic designer and photo editor at a company to become a self-employed paleoartist. Some of his most notable contributions, besides a series of books published in Brazil, have been to museums. He has provided pterosaur illlustrations for Japan's Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum and Oregon's ScienceWorks Hands-On Museum, worked with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences for their announcement on the discovery of Siats meekerorum, and was responsible for several murals and graphics for the Fossils Uncovered exhibit, in Seattle's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. He collaborates regularly with PBS's Eons Youtube Channel, producing varied illustrations for their educational videos.
John Meszaros
Interviewed on September 14, 2021
John Meszaros has always been a drawer and a writer since he was young. And when he’s not, he’s usually exploring and gathering inspiration for more drawings and writings. Museums have been a huge influence on John’s work, particularly old natural history museums packed with cases of fossils, dioramas, and maybe a Mastodon skeleton or two (every natural history museum needs a Mastodon, in his opinion). John grew up in Michigan where he got a Bachelor’s in Biology and Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. His biology background has greatly influenced his art- as have those old natural history museums. Really, he’d probably live in a natural history museum if he could. Or a library. Or a botanical garden. Heck, he’s already halfway there with all the bookshelves, fossils, and plants filling up his house. He likes to think of his body of work as his own personal museum. Or at least his own personal Cabinet of Curiosities. He currently lives in Connecticut.
Steve Jabo
Interviewed on June 21, 2021
Steve Jabo received his bachelor’s degree in Bio-Geology from The Pennsylvania State University in 1984, and has worked as a surveyor and permit agent in the field of seismic exploration for oil and gas in the eastern United States, and as a geologist in the investigation of soil and ground water contamination by industrial waste. He started working at the Smithsonian Institution in 1989 as a fossil cataloguer for the Department of Paleobiology in the National Museum of Natural History before finally landing in his current position in the Vertebrate Paleontology Preparation Lab as a fossil preparator. In this position, Steve has been able to collect and work on fossils all over the United States, particularly in Wyoming and Montana, and all over the world including Slovakia, Kazakhstan, and Kenya. In 1999, Steve was an integral part of the team that created the first fully 3D digitized dinosaur skeleton – that of the Smithsonian’s iconic Triceratops, “Hatcher”.
Esther van Hulsen
Interviewed on June 10, 2021
Esther van Hulsen is a wildlife artist and paleoartist living in Norway. She received her Bachelor in Communicative Design and Scientific Illustration from the Art Academy Minerva in Groningen. She has illustrated numerous award-winning books, which have been published in countries like Norway, The Netherlands, Russia, China, Japan and France. Some of her works can also be seen in Nature Magazine, National Geographic, as well as in various natural history museums worldwide.
Caitlin Wylie
Interviewed on May 11, 2021
Caitlin Wylie is Assistant Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the University of Virginia. After having studied at the University of Chicago, she received her Master and PhD from the University of Cambridge. She then served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science. She has published a series of articles on the topic of fossil preparation and its role in shaping paleontological knowledge. Her first book, Preparing Dinosaurs. The Work Behind the Scenes (2021), explores the most often unappreciated creativity of fossil preparators.
Joschua Knüppe
Joschua Knüppe is a paleoartist based in Germany. He is attending the Academy of Fine Arts Münster. His artistic production ranges from paleoart to speculative zoology. He published two volumes of some his paleoart sketches made during online live stream sessions or "paleostreams". In collaboration with Dr. Oliver Wings, he also published the graphic novel Europasaurus (2020).
Interviewed on April 27, 2021
Mark McMenamin
Interviewed on April 12, 2021
Mark McMenamin is Professor of Geology at Mount Holyoke College. He received his Bachelor from Stanford University and his PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara. In the 1990s, he served as a Sigma Xi National Lecturer. Apart from an extended number of scientific papers, Mark McMenamin also published several books, such as Hypersea (1994) in collaboration with his wife Dianna McMenamin, The Garden of Ediacara (1998), Dynamic Paleontology (2016), and Deep Time Analysis (2018).