GUEST POST: Felipe Pinheiro and the Raiders of the Lost Palate

2012 has been a good year for pterosaurs, with several new taxa and important papers being published. This trend continued this week with the description of a fragmentary but intriguing pterosaur palate from the famous Cretaceous Santana Formation of Brazil, authored by Felipe Pinheiro and Cesar Schultz of the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul. Avenida Bento Gonçalves, Brazil, and Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie, Germany, respectively (image of the new material is shown above. Image courtesy Felipe Pinheiro). Felipe asked if we could big up the paper here at the Pterosaur.Net bog, but I'm a little too pushed for time to write a post worthy of the article, which not only describes the specimen but sheds much needed light into pterosaur palatal anatomy. Felipe was kind enough to provide his own illustrated summation of the story however, so we could still cover the paper here at the blog. On that note, I'll hand you over to our guest blogger, and be sure to check out his open access paper for more details on this new discovery. 

MPW 24/11/12

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The fragility of pterosaur skeletons is always working against us, the paleontologists devoted to understanding these flying archosaurs. Independently if our research deals with systematics, anatomy or paleobiology, we’re often confronted with the fact that our research subject is badly crushed and a great deal of useful information is simply lost. A very good example of this issue is the pterosaur palate: although new pterosaur taxa are being published all the time, only a handful of well-known specimens have this structure preserved, thus, limiting our knowledge of its anatomy and evolution within the group. Luckily, some rare sedimentary deposits were kind enough and maintained the original, three-dimensional shape of their fossils, allowing the study of otherwise inaccessible anatomical features, like, of course, the pterosaur palates. (Pterosaur specimens showing palatal regions below. Image courtesy Felipe Pinheiro)

Our understanding of pterosaur palatal anatomy changed considerably after the recent work by Attila Ösi and colleagues (2010). Analyzing pterosaur palates under an evolutionary perspective and utilizing the Extant Phylogenetic Bracket as a tool, the authors identified homologue structures between pterosaurs, birds and crocodiles, demonstrating some bones that were misinterpreted throughout the literature. The best example is the conclusion that, in pterosaurs, most of the palate is composed by palatal blades of the maxillae, instead of the palatines. Although this identification was also proposed by some old researchers, like Newton (1888) and Seeley (1901) and, more recently, Peters (2000), common sense was still that the palatines composed most of pterosaur palatal surface.

As the work of Ösi et al. (2010) was mainly focused on stem “non-pterodactyloids”, especially Dorygnathus, a new look on pterodactyloid palate was still needed and this is the main subject of our new paper, titled “An Unusual Pterosaur Specimen (Pterodactyloidea, ?Azhdarchoidea) from the Early Cretaceous Romualdo Formation of Brazil, and the Evolution of the Pterodactyloid Palate”.

Besides describing a new fragmentary (but interesting) palate from the Romualdo Formation (the Early Cretaceous concretion-bearing strata of the Santana Group, northeastern Brazil), we analyzed and redescribed a number of well-known pterosaur specimens with palatal preservation, such as “Pterodactylus” micronyx, Anhanguera and Pteranodon. Also, the palate of the Iwaki Tupuxuara specimen is described and illustrated for the first time. As a result, our work shows that pterodactyloids had often complex palatal morphologies with, sometimes, interesting “reversions” to the non-pterodactyloid condition, with three pairs of lateral openings. Also interesting is the extreme reduction of elements in some taxa, such as the almost vestigial ectopterygoids of anhanguerids. (Possible evolutionary pathways of the pterosaur palate shown below. Image courtesy Felipe Pinheiro.) 

This morphological disparity is probably an evidence of complex feeding habits among derived pterodactyloids, with ecological implications that is, presently, the research subject of our working group, at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

I hope you all read our paper (don’t worry, it’s open access). We’re opened to all kind of criticism and discussions by my personal e-mail: fl_pinheiro@yahoo.com.br.

Enjoy!

Felipe L. Pinheiro

Laboratório de Paleontologia de Vertebrados, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul.

References:

• Ösi A, Prondvai E, Frey E, Pohl B (2010) New interpretation of the palate of pterosaurs. The Anat Rec 293: 243–258.
• Newton ET (1888). On the skull, brain and auditory organ of a new species of Pterosaurian Scaphognathus purdoni), from the Upper Lias near Whitby, Yorkshire. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 179: 503–537.
• Peters D. (2000). A re-examination of four prolacertiforms with implications for pterosaur phylogenies. Riv Italiana Paleontol Strat 106: 293–336.
• Seeley HG (1901) Dragons of the Air: an account of extinct flying reptiles. New York: Appleton & Co.; London: Methuen & Co.

Our lives with pterosaurs, part 1

Not many mornings ago the lovely Georgia Maclean-Henry and I were discussing the the topic of 21^st century pterosaurs. Not, you understand, as a discussion of whether the reports of late-surviving, cryptid pterosaurs are genuine (they almost certainly aren’t, for reasons discussed in Darren Naish’s assassination of this idea), but a hypothetical premise that pterosaurs were commonplace components of our modern fauna, and what they would be like to live with. Though obviously speculative and completely juvenile, I thought this may be fun to blog on and discuss with others, so feel free to chime in at the end of the post with your own ideas. Who knows, we may even learn something in the process. (Image, above, shows what we're all now thinking).

Before we get going, though, some ground rules. Aside from the fact that we’re ignoring pterosaur extinction in this discussion, we’re basing everything else on fact as much as possible. For instance, we’re not ignoring the extinctions of specific pterosaur groups: if they went extinct before the terminal Cretaceous (when pterosaurs as a whole got the evolutionary chop), then they can’t exist in the modern day. Pterosaurs are also the only animals we’re hauling into the Modern: the biosphere is otherwise exactly as it is now, so there are no tyrannosaurs or anything running around as well. Also, the goal here is to consider pterosaurs as real animals, not hyper-aggressive movie monsters, so we don’t need to pay any attention to their Modern interactions with people in virtually all Silver Screen outings (which invariably boil down to said people being attacked and/or eaten) and start with a clean slate of ideas. Got that? On we go, then.

UPDATE: 24/04/12
Just one last rule, following on Mike Taylor's comment, below. I'm also focusing on pterosaurs as we know them in the fossil record, not as we may twist them through selective breeding or other genetic tampering. I guess this is an exercise in simply crashing pterosaurs into the Recent, considering what basic pterosaur palaeobiology would lend itself to in our modern world.

Roll call

The first part of this exercise, of course, is to determine what pterosaurs we would have running around today. Which lineages were present at the end of the Cretaceous that could, potentially, have survived until Recent times? Because pterosaur fossils are found within spitting distance, geologically speaking, of Tertiary rocks we assume that the last of their kind died out in the same mass extinction event that ruined the weekends for 75 per cent of life 65 Ma (Buffetaut et al. 1996), but the majority of pterosaur types were not witness to this event. Pterosaur faunas of the uppermost Cretaceous are almost entirely dominated by azhdarchids, the often gigantic, toothless and long-necked forms made famous by the likes of Quetzalcoatlus and Hatzegopteryx (see sketch, above, for a general guide to their appearance). These famous genera, incidentally, are some of the last pterosaurs we find in the fossil record, so giant pterosaurs are very much in for our consideration here. An incomplete nyctosaur humerus (if you’re not familiar with nyctosaurs, think Pteranodon, but weirder) from Mexico is the only record of non-azhdarchid pterosaurs in Maastrichtian strata (that is, name of the time interval representing the last 5 million years of the Cretaceous, 70-65 Ma), compared to literally dozens of azhdarchid occurrences (Price 1953). The pterosaur fossil record is noted for its incompleteness and preservational biases (Butler et al. 2009), but their reduced diversity at the end of the Cretaceous may not be an artifact of the fossil record as the number of pterosaur-bearing rock units at this time is relatively high, but diversity remains low. In short, then, while we may be able to identify dozens of different pterosaur groups across their evolutionary history, it seems that only the azhdarchids and nyctosaurs would have any hope of meeting us in the modern. (Image, below, shows a phylogenetic tree of pterosaurs using the major clades of Lü et al. [2010] mapped across time. The squiggly line shows the number of pterosaur-bearing rock units throughout the Mesozoic [borrowed from Butler et al. 2009] From my book).

With 65 million years separating us from the last pterosaurs, it is not unreasonable to assume that they may have developed into rather different forms by the time modern man appeared. Or would they? Evolutionary stasis spanning 9 – 10 Ma has recently been proposed for several non-pterodactyloid pterosaur clades (Lü et al. 2012) and, although admittedly suggested by rather fragmentary remains, several pterodactyloid lineages also do not appear to change dramatically over longer time frames. This may be true for azhdarchids as much as anything else: a vertebra representing the oldest known azhdarchid is known from Berriasian rocks of Romania (140 Ma) (Dyke et al. 2010) and looks, so far as I can see, no different from the vertebrae of Maastrichtian forms. Note that azhdarchid necks are very derived compared to those of other pterosaurs, so this comparison of their cervical anatomy suggests that the group was already fairly ‘evolved’ very early on in the Cretaceous. Maybe, then, modern pterosaurs would not be so dissimilar from the forms we know in the fossil record.

Bird brains

What sort of behaviour would we expect of our modern pterosaurs? To best answer this we may want to assess some likely basic aspects of pterosaur physiology and neurology, as this may provide  an insight into how active and intelligent they may have been. There’s scant discussion of pterosaur physiology in pterosaur literature, but their flight adaptations, erect carriage (in at least pterodactyloids, and probably some non-pterodactyloids too), insulating fuzz and relatively large brains all seem to correlate with modern animals that have elevated metabolisms. Pterosaur brains are known from specimens spanning much of their phylogenetic range, and they all seem fairly bird-like, but especially so in later forms (e.g. Witmer et al. 2003; image and caption, below, from this study). There are some differences, such as the pterosaur flocculus (the region of the brain primarily dedicated to motor coordination) being relatively enormous, (perhaps because the muscle-laden wing membranes of pterosaurs were being directly controlled and shaped during flight, requiring some extra computing power [Unwin 2005]), and bird brains are, on the whole, a little larger, but they are otherwise fairly similar. 

It may not be unreasonable, then, to predict that all pterosaurs – including our hypothetical modern ones – would be active, fairly intelligent beasties that, with warm bodies and big brains to fuel, may spend much of their time foraging. This leads us to a further analogy with birds: the requirement for lots of food does not sit well with flight, as a full belly is more mass to shift about. Hence, pterosaurs – like birds – may have dumped their waste as often as possible, presumably in the same form of acidic paste that common to all archosaurs. Such waste can be very damaging to architecture and car paint, so the existence of giant pterosaurs dropping vast quantities of crap on our cool stuff is not an appealing one. Plus, we’ve all been hit by stray bird guano on occasion, which is unpleasant enough, but imagine the same experience when the offending animal is several hundred times the size…

My pet pterosaur, and pterosteaks

As with most things in life, it probably wouldn't be long before the economic potential of Modern pterosaurs was tested. Could we farm them for meat and eggs, or breed them as household pets? Pterosaurs would probably be lousy sources of food for several reasons. The amount of meat offered from pterosaur carcasses is tiny compared to their overall size, providing minimal returns to pterosaur farmers for the space required to rear them. Pterosaurs have tiny, tiny bodies, with their edible soft tissues tightly concentrated around them. Even the biggest azhdarchids probably only had bodies 70 cm long (Witton and Habib 2010) with around 60 kg of flight muscle (Paul 2002), despite standing tall enough to look into a first floor window. Ornithocheiroids are even more disproportionate, with torsos barely longer than their humeri (near-enough the shortest bones in their wings). Some pterosaurs may offer better options, such as the relatively long bodied ctenochasmatoids, but they were long gone before the KT boundary, and therefore out of the game here. 

Keeping ourselves stocked with pterosaurs may require a lot of careful planning as their development times appear more extended than we're accustomed to with modern livestock. Because pterosaurs lay parchment-shelled eggs like most modern reptiles, it’s assumed that they required similarly long incubation periods of two or three months (Unwin and Deeming 2008). Once hatched, it seems that neonate pterosaurs did not rocket to full adult size like modern birds (a trait we’ve artificially enhanced in poultry to have large, fully-grown chickens within weeks of hatching), instead slowing their growth rates once they reach half size (Chinsamy et al. 2008). It's predicted that, for some pterosaurs, this threshold may take several years to reach (Bennett 1995; Chinsamy et al. 2008) As such, we could be looking at several years between pterosaur generations, which is a little on the slow side for big business. We don’t know much about pterosaur clutch sizes or reproductive rates, so it’s not clear how many animals you’d need to sustain a harvestable, breeding population but, regardless, it seems that you’d need a pretty substantial operation to get any profit out of space-demanding animals with awkward reproductive mechanisms.

So, pterosaurs would probably make for lousy food sources, but what about pets? It would certainly be cool to keep your own little azhdarchid that you could take out for a flap, train to fetch the morning paper and perform tricks, but the ‘little’ part may be a problem. Pterosaurs are said to demonstrate Cope’s Rule, the controversial idea that the average body size of individuals within a given lineage will increase over time (Hone and Benton 2007; see graph from this study, above, showing the increase in average pterosaur wingspans over time). Whether you agree with the notion of Cope’s Rule or not, it’s hard to ignore the steady increase in average pterosaur body size throughout the Mesozoic, leading to the smallest known Maastrichtian taxon (the oddly-proportioned Montanazhdarcho) being 2.5 m across the wings. A 2.5 m span may seem small compared to its 10 m span contemporaries but, for a homeowner, it would still be far too large to have in the house. Standing upright, said diminutive azhdarchid would have a shoulder height of over a metre and, with its long neck, be nearly as tall – if not taller - as you. That’s hardly a little animal, and probably one that would scare the bejesus out any other pets you have, and may even see them as potential lunch. Perhaps best to leave the pterosaur wrangling to zoos, then.

The biggie: could I ride a pterosaur to work?

Almost certainly the most important consideration in this concept: were pterosaurs strong enough fliers that we could saddle them up fly them places? Well, possibly.

Pterosaur.Net regulars are no doubt aware that some pterosaur workers now think that pterosaurs launched quadrupedally, using their powerful flight muscles to propel themselves into the air (Habib 2008). Part of the rationale for this idea is the strength of the forelimbs compared to the hindlimbs, as the launching limbs tends to be proportionally large in any flying vertebrate you care to look at over a certain mechanical threshold. As with most animal skeletons, it seems that the pterosaur forelimbs came equipped with large mechanical safety factors to accommodate for any atypically heavy loads that may be placed on the limbs. The humeral safety factors against bending in the largest azhdarchids – which we would possess in the Modern in our hypothetical scenario here, remember – are around 2.5 – 1.8, depending on how heavy you consider the animal to be between 180 - 250 kg (Witton and Habib 2010). Thus, the pterosaur skeleton could take weight of a person without crumpling, but could it take off? It seems so: Marden (1994) calculated that a giant azhdarchid would find launch no more strenuous than a 1 kg vulture, suggesting that one could, theoretically, take on the extra burden of a person on its back. Perhaps only relatively small folks would be suitable pterosaur jockeys to reduce the strain as much as possible but, hey, that’s still something, right?

This is not the end of the story, however. While the azhdarchid may be able to sustain flight with a jockey when flapping vigorously, it would not be able to endure this indefinitely. Mike Habib predicted for our 2010 study that a giant would have a few minutes of burst flight, tops, before it had to rest in a gliding phase. To avoid merely landing at the end of this, an alternative source of lift would be needed, and this is where a potential fly in our ointment appears. Long distance travel for azhdarchids was probably achieved by soaring (Witton and Habib 2010), which would be reliant – as it is with modern birds and bats – on climbing to high altitudes (many thousands of metres in some cases) on uplifts of air before gliding on. This would be a significant problem for our jockeys. Mammals are far less tolerant of hypoxia than birds (and, perhaps, by extension, pterosaurs) and, at altitudes that even little birds like sparrows are alert and lively, mammals are comatose (Faraci 1991). Hence, to fly with azhdarchids we may have needed to curb their flight styles a bit, keeping them at lower altitudes and, presumably, making more frequent use of areas of uplift. Alternatively, we supply them with oxygen tanks and warm clothing to keep them alive, but this all adds weight and reduces our azhdarchid's flight ability. Hmm... perhaps this is more complex than we thought.

Gosh, look at the time. There’s a lot more we could mention about riding pterosaurs, but I think we’ll stop there for now. This has already gone on too long and I’ve not even covered the most exciting bit: living alongside wild pterosaurs. Would we be potential pterosaur prey? Could they be pests of annoyances to us? All things to be discussed soon...

References

Buffetaut, E., Clarke, J. B. and Le Lœuff, J. 1996. A terminal Cretaceous pterosaur from the Corbiéres (southern France) and the problem of pterosaur extinction. Bulletin de la Societe Geologique de France, 167, 753-759.

Butler, R. J., Barrett, P. M., Nowbath, S. & Upchurch, P. 2009. Estimating the effects of the rock record on pterosaur diversity patterns: implications for hypotheses of bird/pterosaur competitive replacement. Paleobiology, 35, 432-446.

Bennett, S. C. 1995. A statistical study of Rhamphorhynchus from the Solnhofen Limestone of Germany: year-classes of a single large species. Journal of Paleontology, 69, 569-580.

Chinsamy, A., Codorniu, L. and Chiappe, L. 2008. Developmental growth patterns of the filter-feeder pterosaur, Pterodaustro guiñazui. Biology Letters, 23, 282-285.

Dyke, G., J., Benton, M. J., Posmosanu, E. and Naish, D. 2010. Early Cretaceous (Berriasian) birds and pterosaurs from the Cornet Bauxite Mine, Romania. Palaeontology, 54, 79-95.

Faraci, F. M. 1991. Adaptations to hypoxia in birds: how to fly high. Annual Review of Physiology, 53, 59-70.

Habib, M.B. 2008. Comparative evidence for quadrupedal launch in pterosaurs. Zitteliana, B28, 161-168.

Hone, D. W. E. and Benton, M. J. 2007. Cope’s Rule in the Pterosauria, and differing perceptions of Cope’s Rule at different taxonomic levels. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 20, 1164–1170.

Lü, J., Unwin, D. M., Jin, X., Liu, Y. and Ji, Q. 2010. Evidence for modular evolution in a long-tailed pterosaur with a pterodactyloid skull. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 277, 383-389. 
Lü, J., Unwin, D. M., Zhou, B, Chunling, G, and Shen, C. 2012. A new rhamphorhynchid (Pterosauria: Rhamphorhynchidae) from the Middle/Upper Jurassic of Qinglong, Hebei Provine, China. Zootaxa, 3158, 1-19.

Marden, J. H. 1994. From damselflies to pterosaurs: how burst and sustainable flight performance scale with size. American Journal of Physiology, 266, 1077-1084.

Paul, G. S. 2002. Dinosaurs of the Air: The Evolution and Loss of Flight in Dinosaurs and Birds. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 472 pp.

Price, L. I. 1953. A presença de Pterosáuria no Cretáceo superior do Estada da Paraiba. Divisão de Geologia e Mineralogia Notas Preliminares e Estudos, 71, 1-10.

Unwin, D. M. 2005. The Pterosaurs from Deep Time. Pi Press, New York, 347 pp.

Unwin, D. M. and Deeming, D. C. 2008. Pterosaur eggshell structure and its implications for pterosaur reproductive biology. Zitteliana, B28, 199-207.

Witmer, L. M., Chatterjee, S., Franzosa, J. and Rowe, T. 2003. Neuroanatomy of flying reptiles and implications for flight, posture and behaviour. Nature, 425, 950-953.

Witton, M. P. and Habib, M. B. 2010. On the size and flight diversity of giant pterosaurs, the use of birds as pterosaur analogues and comments on pterosaur flightlessness. PLoS ONE. 5, e13982. 

OFF-TOPIC: Mark Witton’s handy-dandy guide to making it as a palaeoartist

OR A most unexpected dose of possibly unsolicited, hopefully none-too-preachy advice

Not long ago I received an Email from ex-University of Portsmouth student Dominic Shaw asking for some pointers of how to get involved in palaeoartistry. As my reply got longer and longer, I wondered if anyone had ever published any general guidelines online as to how break into palaeoartistry and, to my surprise, I found nothing. Hence, I thought I could share my reply here – punctuated with a few pterosaur piccies to keep in with the décor of Pterosaur.Net – for all to see (reconstruction, above, shows Tupuxuara leonardii). Apologies to those understandably expecting something pterosaury from this post, and to my colleagues for abusing Pterosaur.Net’s status, but I figure this will reach a wider audience here than elsewhere, along with allowing free commentary below (something not afforded at other venues I regularly post in).

Before we begin though, a quick caveat. While I’ve had some success as a palaeoartist, my palaeoart has largely been done on the side of other employment. I’ve had an 18 month stint as a designer/sculptor with the UoP London pterosaur project and enjoyed brief periods in 2011 as a designer for the BBC’s upcoming Walking with Dinosaurs 3D movie, but I’ve never had to support myself for sustained periods with palaeoart commissions. Please bear this in mind as you read the words below: others may paint a very different picture of the palaeoart industry to my own. The points made here aren’t given in any particular order.

1. Develop a portfolio, and get it online

In this day and age, if you don’t own a website as a creative professional, you may as well not exist. Deviantart is probably the best first step: a limited service is free and it’s designed for viewing artwork, so it’s a good place to start building up a portfolio and start making a splash. Make sure your palaeoart work is kept distinct from anything else you do: there’s nothing wrong with having other work on the same site, but you want to make it easy for palaeoart aficionados to home in on their target.

Eventually, it’s probably worth transferring your portfolio to your own personal webspace. Make it stylish, but let people enjoy it in their own time: flashy movies of your portfolio seem like a good idea, but they tend to be more frustrating than dynamic. Visitors are there to see your work, after all, and having it whizz past while some ‘atmospheric’ music plays (which probably just makes most people turn the volume knob down) means your audience cannot appreciate what they logged on to see. Watermarks, restricted image resolutions or other means of blocking downloads are a much better way to showcase your work without it being ripped off.

2. Get in with the community

Perhaps one of the most important things you can do as an aspiring palaeoartist is to become integrated with the internet palaeocommunity. A truly international institution, it’s a terrific place where well-known professionals converse and rub shoulders with amateurs of all levels. As someone trying to get their work noticed, you need to get involved with it. Why not start a blog about your work, and keep visitors turning up with regular updates? To my mind, an ‘in progress’ shot of a painting or sculpture is the perfect excuse for a blog and invites discussion and advice from others about aspects of the reconstruction. Use forums like the Dinosaur Mailing List or ARTEvolved to keep people informed with what you’re up to. That way, when someone has an image in mind to be drawn, your work will be fresh in their mind. This, ultimately, is what you want: when a palaeontologist needs a reconstruction of species X or landscape Y for whatever reason, you want to be the guy they consider as the only person for that job.

Plus, these sites are great ways to directly talk to experts about any aspect of a reconstruction you’re having problems with (the Ask a Biologist website may also be of use in this regard) and keep up to date with the latest discoveries. Speaking of which…

3. Keep up to date with the latest discoveries, and do your homework

Others may disagree, but I think there’s definitely a ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ aspect to palaeoart. Your work should reflect the most up to date thoughts on the appearance and habits of whatever organism you’re depicting. If it doesn’t, it’s incorrect relative to our knowledge of that time. One of my favourite examples of glaringly inaccurate palaeoart is not a vertebrate at all, but stalked crinoids. These chaps, which should be ten-a-penny in some scenes of Mesozoic seas, are always shown with their brachials arranged in a cup-shape, waiting for detritus to fall from the seas above. The majority of modern stalked crinoids, by contrast, do quite the opposite when feeding, angling their calyx into currents with their arms fanning out behind them. Despite being known for decades (Macruder and Meyer 1973), this rather glaring error has yet to filter out of mainstream palaeoart. As such, we could most crinoid reconstructions as ‘incorrect’ with respect to our current knowledge of rheophilic crinoids*. Likewise, there is little excuse for getting the proportions of well-known species wrong, drawing soft-tissues volumes that could not fit their skeleton , depicting the wrong form of integument or, essentially, contradicting things that we have considerable evidence for. Learn and understand anatomy from modern animals (I particularly endorse this book in this regard) and apply it appropriately to fossil species: the trained eye can easily spot palaeoartists who appreciate relationships between skeletons and soft-tissues and those who’re making it up on the fly. It’s important that you do this to be taken seriously by the scientists you may one day be working with: they want to know that you’re keen on reconstructing extinct critters with as much accuracy as they are with their science. (Below: not a pterosaur)



*A get-out clause, I suppose, could be that a minority of modern stalked crinoids do feed in the ‘classic’ pose. Still, the fact that hardly any crinoids in palaeoart behave like the majority of extant crinoids is a bit of an oversight. Hmm… best stop talking about crinoids before I get lynched by my tetrapodophile colleagues.

4. Be your own PR agent

If the sniff of an opportunity wafts past your nose for high-profile or paid work, make sure you get an offer of your services in. Work is hard to come by in palaeoartistry (see below), so you want to grab opportunities with both hands if they’re available. The only reason I ended up working on Walking with Dinosaurs 3D is because, when approached as a consultant for their pterosaurs, I said I can also draw pretty pictures and was available for hire if they needed me. There’s obviously a need for tact in your approach to this (you don’t want to annoy any potential employers or commissioners) but be sure to seize any opportunities that come your way.

5. Go to conferences, and pimp yourself out

Palaeo conferences are terrific: day after day of interesting talks, the chance to catch up with rarely seen friends, a plethora of beer and, most importantly, the chance to meet lots of new contacts at the same time. Whatever aspect of palaeo you’re into, there’s a conference for you somewhere. Most palaeoartists, I suspect, are more interested in vertebrates than invertebrate fossils, so dates for SVPCA (held annually and almost exclusively in Britain) and SVP (annually and almost exclusively in the US) are dates to pop into your diaries. Take a portfolio of work along and show yourself off a little. Have some business cards made up (it doesn’t cost much if you design them yourself: I had mine printed for around £15) and distribute them accordingly. Talk to scientists about their work and, if they’re interested, offer your services for a PR image or whatever. Again, be tactful - be sure not to push yourself too hard on potentially interested parties (conferences are busy places: if someone looks distracted and busy, choose another time) – but make the most of these rare chances to meet people who you may one day be working with. Don’t forget: you can make much more of an impression in person than you can as a faceless Email.

UPDATE: 07/01/12: Having never done it myself, it slipped my mind that a number of palaeoartists use conferences to showcase and sell their work. Most palaeoartists I can think of that do this are, admittedly, fairly big names, but this may not necessarily mean relative newcomers are unwelcome or unable to have their own stalls. This may be a really worthwhile pursuit if you're looking to make it big: it provides an opporunity for people to introduce themselves to your cataglogue without it being pushed directly to them, and nothing says 'I've arrived' more than having your own little piece of real estate at a big international conference. In addition, these stalls are a great opportunity to track down and ask advice from other palaeoartists, who are nothing but friendly in my experience.

6. Be unique

A good way to get some attention is to reconstruct some critters that the rest of the world ignores. Lovely as they are, there are probably enough pictures of Tyrannosaurus and Velociraptor now that, laid end to end, they’d stretch to the Moon and back. Other animals - even well-known beasties within charismatic clades like Dinosauria – are frustratingly neglected. Fill your portfolio with good restorations of ignored critters (many of which do cool things that would make for ace pictures: where are all the images of burrowing ornithischians, head-butting schizotherines or virtually anything outside of the Mesozoic?) and you may stand out from the crowd of artists presenting the umpteenth picture of theropod X attacking dinosaur Y.

Of course, this is something of a double edged sword: there are probably so many images of certain animals because some critters are very popular. Perhaps, then, it may be good to have a few well-known critters scattered through your portfolio as well: it’ll keep the masses happy and, more importantly, has the benefit of web surfers being more likely to pick up your artwork. Far more people will stumble across your site by Googling ‘Camarasaurus’ than ‘Baculites’. Ultimately, an increase in web traffic can’t damage your profile.

Additionally, let yourself develop your own distinctive style: don’t merely imitate others or, even worse, copy them outright. I think this can take some years to do (I notice that my own style has changed a lot over the years – for the better, I reckon - judge for yourself with the reconstructions of Tupandactylus, above) but it’s worth it: your work will stand out a lot more and be recognisable even without reading your name scrawled at the bottom.

7. Make sure you’re credited

It sounds obvious, but politely insist that whoever displays your work makes it clear who the artist is. A lot of palaeoart is commissioned for press work, and successful press releases can run and run: this is a great opportunity for your name to be seen and generate more buzz about your work. Most folks are very happy to whack your name next to an image, save for newspapers. It’s all ‘an artist’s reconstruction of so-and-so’ instead of the artists actual name. Still, there’s no point putting your work out there to attract attention if people don’t know who drew it, so make sure it’s clear that it belongs to you.

8. Do not quit your day job, and be aware that you may never be able to

Professional and amateur palaeonerds surround ourselves with palaeoart: it’s plastered on our office walls, throughout the books in our libraries, on computer desktop backgrounds and wherever our better halves will let us have it around the house. This gives the impression that the market for this stuff must be lucrative, but the truth is quite the opposite. The number of employers who can pay reasonably for good palaeoart (primarily some museums, a minority of magazines and books, some film makers) is tiny compared to the number of people who could supply it. The internet has revealed just how many excellent palaeoartists there are around the world, and the market is being increasingly diluted with easily contactable talent. For an idea of your competition, take a look at Wikipedia’s list of palaeoartists working nowadays: it’s huge. With such a large amount of competition, it’s going to be a while before you land enough commissions to stand out from the crowd and start demanding the big bucks that you can make an honest living off, and even longer if you’re a grown up with dependents and financial obligations.

Finally, and at the risk of sounding overly negative, it’s worth considering that the career of dedicated palaeoartist may be on its way out. A heated exchange on the Dinosaur Mailing List in 2011 hinted at this: established professionals stated that the number of modern palaeoartists working for lower wages was seriously undermining their livelihoods. The opinion of some folks in this discussion was that a lot of modern palaeoart is done by kids working in their parent’s basements, not functioning adults with mortgages and families, and that said children should either charge sensible money (which is difficult for young upstarts to do without a reputation to barter with) or quit professional palaeoart altogether.

Such an attitude, though, does not consider that palaeoart may not be the sole livelihood of many modern practitioners, meaning they can afford to take the financial hit of a low-cost commission. After all, it’s extremely flattering and exciting to be asked to reconstruct a new taxon or an exciting new behavioural hypothesis, and why should these artists not be allowed that opportunity? It’s not the 1990s any more: excellent palaeoart is no-longer synonymous with Sibbick, Paul, Henderson and a smattering of others in the way it was two decades ago. There’s a world of artists, each with their own style and expertise, that are slowly dispersing the contents of the palaeoart moneypot far and wide, which ultimately means a less reliable income for each individual. This is not to say that it’s not worth chasing the ambition of being a professional, dedicated palaeoartist, but you will be in a very lucky, and very tiny, minority if you achieve that goal. The take-home message here, then, is that aspiring palaeoartists, and perhaps palaeoartists in general, have to be realistic about the scant nature of our work in our field.

UPDATE: 07/01/12
9. Let’s talk money

The sticky topic of money is one that palaeoartists are a little cagey about: I suppose people are afraid of giving their costs away for fear of being undercut by others. It’s one that we should discuss a little more openly, however, to ensure that we’re being treated fairly by commissioners. So, when should you start charging, and how much? I don’t think there’s a straight answer to either of those. For reasons mentioned above, a new artist may not be able to charge anything of note: until you have something of a reputation, it may be better to think of establishing yourself than putting people off with high price tags for your unproven, unknown art. Some folks will, no doubt, scoff at this idea, but it’s no different from being in a band: you have to do a lot of free or poorly-paid gigs before there’s enough buzz about your show to start demanding higher fees.

Perhaps the time to start charging is when requests for your work start appearing frequently (and your time, therefore, is increasingly valuable to others), and definitely when you’re approached by Big Names with large amounts of funding. These, to my mind, includes film companies, larger magazines and publishing houses, and perhaps large research labs. While the latter may irk some – palaeontological science is hardly overfunded even in the best instances – I’m sure the scientists working in these labs appreciate that budding artists need to earn a living too, and, though they’re basically being paid for drawing a pretty picture (and probably having a ball doing it), they’re still executing a piece of work that can represent a substantial time investment, and should be reimbursed (for the record, I’ve a number of commissions from research labs and often been offered money before asking for any). In all instances, once you’re a known name, do not be afraid to ask for money: sometimes bringing this issue up yourself is the only way you’ll get paid. Money may not be the deal-clincher in your decision to take on a commission (it’s not for me, for one) but it’s good to ensure that you’re financially rewarded where possible.

Still, this doesn’t answer the big question: how much can you expect to make as a palaeoartist? There’s a lot to consider here, which means there may not be a straightforward answer for many scenarios. Are you merely being asked for the right to print an older image, or is the commission entirely new? How complex is the piece (considering backgrounds, number of taxa and individuals, use of colour, size etc.)? What is the timeframe you’ve got to work with? Importantly, are you retaining the copyright to the work? And where are you in your career? Is your name established yet? The bigger your name, the larger your price tag can be. As someone with perhaps some reputation as an artist (though still several country miles from the big leagues), my rough guide for imagery use and commissions is thus. The right to print an image in a profitable magazine should fetch you at least £100 – 200, the exact cost really depending on who’s asking you. If the magazine is a tiny one with small circulation, you may have to forgo any money at all. In an ideal world, the price of new commissions should fetch you many hundreds of pounds at least, and thousands if the work is particularly large, complicated or you’re surrendering your copyright with the work. The latter point is an important one: once the copyright has left your hands, that image will never make you any money again. Generally speaking, I suggest retaining the copyright to your work unless you have no choice: a successful press release image can turn into a little money spinner if popular, and you also get more control over what your work is associated with. Because I’ve never made a sculpture to order, I’ll refrain from commenting on their costings. In all instances, be friendly, sympathetic but assertive in your negotiations for money: you may be doing your hobby in exchange for cash, but that doesn’t give people a right to take you for granted.


Reference

• Macurda, D. B. and Meyer, D. L. 1974. Feeding posture of modern stalked crinoids. Nature, 247, 394-396.