New Exhibit: Six-Legged Science: Unlocking the Secrets of the Insect World

The exhibit features hundreds of specimens on loan from the Cornell University Insect Collection (CUIC), and aims to educate visitors of all ages about the diversity of insects and the value they provide for life on Earth.

My personal contribution was over 40 spot illustrations that were incorporated into the exhibit panels by exhibits director, Helaina Blume, to highlight human impacts on global insect populations, the history of insect evolution, and examples of individual insect lifecycles.

This exhibit can also be seen online here.

New Work in Nature!

Asteriornis_Reconstruction_Web.jpg

Allow me to present Asteriornis maastrichtensis! A new species from the Maastrichtian of Belgium (~66.8 million years ago), this little guy occupies a position close to the last common ancestor of Galloanserae - the superorder that includes galliformes (including extant land fowl, like chickens) and Anseriformes (waterfowl, like ducks).

The fossil itself included a mostly complete skull and a few post-cranial elements. What is remarkable, is that this is currently the oldest example we have of a modern (or crown) bird, and is a strange mash up of land and water fowl features. Additionally, it is associated with a previously described Ichthyornis-like bird from the same locality, so it provides direct evidence for the co-occurrence of crown and stem birds in the late Cretaceous.

I cannot express what a joy and a privilege working on this sort of project is for me, it is the culmination of a lifetime of looking for a purpose. Special thanks, as always, to Daniel Field for bringing me in to collaborate!

Link to National Geographic article.

Link to original research in Nature.

How did modern birds survive the asteroid impact that wiped out their close relatives?

Our latest paper, just published online, suggests that the global devastation of forests following the end-Cretaceous asteroid strike also eliminated all tree-dwelling birds. Thus, all modern birds that live in trees are descended from non-arboreal extinction survivors! Check it out here: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)30534-7

This was a really fun project to be a part of, and it was a privilege to work with Antoine Bercovici, Regan Dunn, Jacob Berv, Tyler Ranse Lyson, Vivi Vajda, David Fastovsky, and Jacques Gauthier.

Phillip Krzeminski from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology created this amazing and evocative scene, illustrating a hypothetical avian survivor (small, ground-dwelling, and capable of flight) fleeing wildfires set off in the immediate aftermath of the asteroid strike.

Please let me know if you’d like a copy of the PDF! And check out some of the accompanying press:

Updates

Due to publishing/installation timelines, I've been keeping a lot of my work off the web. I just got permission to upload some of my work from last summer - keep an eye open for new updates as I am able to advertise them!

Paleoart

New art created for the Raymond M. Alf Museum

Exhibits

Updated Bird Sculptures

Editorial Illustration

Lots of controversy surrounding the recently published work on the Cerutti Mastodon Site in Southern California, which places some form of genus Homo in the Americas 130,000 years ago! If it is further substantiated, it would topple old ideas about hominid migration! Figured I'd try my hand at a splashy editorial spread that would reconstruct the locality as the researchers see it.