A couple months ago, I submitted an entry to the Waterhouse Natural Sciences Art Prize, a pretty fancy art contest hosted by the South Australian Museum. This was the piece I submitted, a papercraft lightbox entitled “An Outback of Ice and Sea”, and it’s taken a good month of my life getting it all together!
And I am very excited to announce that I have been selected as a finalist! Any of y’all who are in South Australia, you’ll be able to come and see my work (and a whole bunch of others’) on display at the SA Museum from the 4th of June to the 7th of August!
This piece is a scientific recreation of the Bulldog Shale formation, an opal-rich fossil locality in the desert of my home state of South Australia. 110 million years ago, this place wasn’t a desert, but an icy inland sea near the South Pole that was brimming with life! Every animal species in this artwork is based on fossil evidence from the region, down to the crinoids and brittle stars and bivalves!
The star of the piece is Umoonasaurus demoscyllus, a small plesiosaur with crests on its head that was local to this area. The Umoonasaurusis pursuing Ptyktoptychion eyrensis, a giant relative of modern-day ratfish while belemnites and ammonites bod in and out of the seaweed. And overhead amongst the icebergs, the giant pliosaur Kronosaurus queenslandicuslooms.
I’m so proud of this piece as something that I’ve poured hours of love and research into, and I’m so thrilled to have been selected to be a part of this exhibition! The details on the museum website are here if anyone’s curious, please do let me know if you got a chance to see the exhibition in person!
A couple months ago, I submitted an entry to the Waterhouse Natural Sciences Art Prize, a pretty fancy art contest hosted by the South Australian Museum. This was the piece I submitted, a papercraft lightbox entitled “An Outback of Ice and Sea”, and it’s taken a good month of my life getting it all together!
And I am very excited to announce that I have been selected as a finalist! Any of y’all who are in South Australia, you’ll be able to come and see my work (and a whole bunch of others’) on display at the SA Museum from the 4th of June to the 7th of August!
This piece is a scientific recreation of the Bulldog Shale formation, an opal-rich fossil locality in the desert of my home state of South Australia. 110 million years ago, this place wasn’t a desert, but an icy inland sea near the South Pole that was brimming with life! Every animal species in this artwork is based on fossil evidence from the region, down to the crinoids and brittle stars and bivalves!
The star of the piece is Umoonasaurus demoscyllus, a small plesiosaur with crests on its head that was local to this area. The Umoonasaurusis pursuing Ptyktoptychion eyrensis, a giant relative of modern-day ratfish while belemnites and ammonites bod in and out of the seaweed. And overhead amongst the icebergs, the giant pliosaur Kronosaurus queenslandicuslooms.
I’m so proud of this piece as something that I’ve poured hours of love and research into, and I’m so thrilled to have been selected to be a part of this exhibition! The details on the museum website are here if anyone’s curious, please do let me know if you got a chance to see the exhibition in person!
Megacephalosaurus was a Late Cretaceous pliosaur. It was discovered in the Carlile Shale Formation in Kansas. Megacephalosaurus actually represents one of the last members of the pliosauridae family.
Morturneria lived during the Late Cretaceous, and was discovered in Antarctica. What’s really fascinating is that Morturneria was a filter feeding plesiosaur, using its mouth as a sieve to indulge in marine invertebrates. The filter feeding strategy may have evolved in order to avoid direct competition with its other marine reptiles. Morturneria was once thought to be a juvenile Aristonectes, but paleontologists saw differences in non-ontological characteristics in Morturneria, thus distinguished it from Aristonectes. Fun fact, Morturneria was originally named Turneria, but the name was already taken by a genus of ant.
We have another marine reptile from the Paja Formation in Colombia. Muiscasaurus was a Late Cretaceous ophthalmosaurid, we have uncovered part of its skull, some ribs, and vertebrae. Muiscasaurus had four nostrils, two openings on each side of its snout.Muiscasaurusprobably consumed prey that were soft and small.
Opallionectes was a plesiosaur that lived during the Early Cretaceous of what is now known as Australia. Data suggests that this plesiosaur may have dwelled in very cold waters. Opallionectes may have had blubber as an adaptation for this freezing type of environment. Paleontologists actually found Opallionectes in an opal mine down in South Australia.
