Reconstruction Tips: Flukes Part 4

Yet another installment of...

Craig brings you the next chapter of his...

Flukes go on Whales... NOT in your Art!

Part: 4

Flukes of times past...

Part 1- I decided to try and create some palaeo-art for New Zealand Palaeontologist Ewan Fordyce. This was unrequested art, and this is probably a good thing considering what I first produced! Find out the HUGE mistake I made and the first lesson you should learn from my folly.

Part 2- After regrouping from my first embarrassing version of the Shark Toothed Dolphin, I proceeded to try and rework it. However in this second attempt my strengths and preferences working on Dinosaurs created an odd reptilian-whale hybrid. This has yet another key lesson to learn here.`

Part 3- Tracking down as many references as I could get my hands on, I reworked the "Dolphinsauriod" into something that roughly resembled a Shark Toothed Dolphin! Find out how important references were to my process...

Now for Flukes of times present!

So I'd managed to get my Squalodon looking something like a Dolphin should. Showing it to Dr. Fordyce I got my first passing grade on the restoration! It got a C- so to speak. All the details were wrong, but I'd gotten the general layout right. Which was a first!

However my set of renders were not overly helpful for Dr. Fordyce to go into the models details. Like this one above, all my renders were in a 3D environment, which I quickly learned weren't useful for critiques. I was going to need something better for the good doctor to look at...

This is the format I came up with. A schematic of my Shark Toothed Dolphin from ever basic view available.

Rule #5 of Scientific Restorations: Before getting your piece reviewed by an expert make sure you prepare some easy to approach material for them to look at. If you can (or have the time to) make a schematic view of your creature. This allows the expert to look at preciously what you are doing in your restorations, and thus give you useful feedback.

Dr. Fordyce much preferred these to my original in water shots.

I for the first time got some immediate feedback directly on my model. Before I'd been given some verbal suggestions, but with print outs of the schematic Dr. Fordyce could directly mark where and often what he wanted the Dolphin to look like.

So with these modifications in mind I set off to work on upgrading my mark ;P

By this point in late 2009 I had been making some big breakthroughs across the board in my 3Ding (in large part thanks to ART Evolved). I now had a better method of creating underwater effects, which I promptly plopped my Squalodon into.

By now I also had a firm grasp on 3D rigging, so the Shark Toothed Dolphin became my first model to be rigged by a single skeleton! (I typically rig each part separately, and simply pose them relative to each other).

Even before Dr. Fordyce's changes, my Squalodon was starting to look pretty sweet!

With the changes this is what it looked like. I hadn't managed to get in the neck folds Dr. Fordyce had wanted (and I still haven't...), but tried to tweak everything else.

I got a B. Which was huge for me. Still not publication worthy, but Dr. Fordyce was starting to believe he might want to use my Squalodon for his description!

I got a very cool anatomy lesson on the very precise details of how he thought these whales went together. From this point I was armed with the most up to date view on Squalodon ribs, flippers, and echo locating melon organ.

This was the "final" version (at least as of the time I write this).

Before I took this version in to Dr. Fordyce I wanted to test out my than new direct fossil comparison technique. This was the second 3D model I tried it on.

So taking the skull above, I cut it out of this photo and than laid it over my model semi-transparent.

I was amazed to discover it was a perfect match! Through my hard manual work, and input from Dr. Fordyce, I'd modelled my Dolphin exactly in line with the fossil. Even most of the teeth were the same! Though I will never be waiting to the end of the modelling process to do this test ever again!!!

Showing it to Dr. Fordyce, I got the highest mark to date. An A-!!!

Apart from the neck wrinkles and removing some of the model induced lines from the skull area, this Squalodon met with Dr. Fordyce's standards!

It was now time to develop a scene for this critter to steal!

Building some test Penguins I toyed with updating the main picture of Squalodon used at the University of Otago. Sadly, Dr. Fordyce has asked me not to post this picture, but it is of two (older style) Squalodons chasing some of the giant penguins that lived alongside them.

This was the "final" test shot I came up with. In principle Dr. Fordyce rather liked it. Some of the scene, like the Dolphin, need some fine tuning (the bubbled and Penguins basically), but overall this is the direction I'll be going in with the final piece.

`

This is now currently where the project stands. It has been on pause since December 2009. When is the final piece due? I hear you asking. We are not sure.

`

At moment I need to do some work fixing the Squalodon's neck, but overall we are awaiting Dr. Fordyce getting the chance to finish his publication. However hopefully that day will come soon. Until it does though, I'm forced to leave you and Flukes on this art note.

`

Don't despair though. I have a side part to Flukes about my experience working with Dr. Fordyce, and some suggestions on how to start doing work for actual palaeontologists. So watch for this Going Pro edition of Flukes soon!

Reconstruction Tips: Flukes Part 3

We present for you yet another edition of...

Time for another installment of Craig's ongoing palaeo-art (mis?)adventure...

Flukes go on Whales... NOT in your Art!

Part:3

Previously on Flukes (imagine catchy suspense music, just like an awesome cliffhanger multi part TV show)
`
Part 1- I decided to try and create some palaeo-art for New Zealand Palaeontologist Ewan Fordyce. This was unrequested art, and this is probably a good thing considering what I first produced! Find out the HUGE mistake I made and the first lesson you should learn from my folly.
`
Part 2- After regrouping from my first embarrassing version of the Shark Toothed Dolphin, I proceeded to try and rework it. However with this second attempt my strengths and preferences from usually creating Dinosaurs created an odd reptilian-whale hybrid. This has yet another key lesson to learn here.
`
Now the continuation...
`

So after two months of playing with my Squalodon, I ended up with this the "Dolphinsauriod"...
`
At the time, I just viewed this particular incarnation of the model as just another mistake.

Looking at it now, the Dolphinsauriod marked the end of an era in my art. This was my last truly amateur approaches to reconstructions. As of April 2009 onward I would use one sort of reference or another when recreating anything, and thus have some degree of credibility in it.

However when starting the project in early 2009 I did not have many references for Squalodons. Even now having done extensive research on the family I've only managed to come up with a dozen or so. Of those only a few are worth looking at.
`
Bringing me to the first lesson of today's post...
`
Rule #3 of Scientific Restorations: There is no such thing as "enough" references. Track down as many pictures, drawings, photos, and restorations of a prehistoric subject's skeleton, body, and fossils. There is always another aspect or idea to be found in a new reference (even if it is just not to do it like a different recreation), so get as many as you possibly can!
`
This can be hard with less popular and obscure critters, like say Shark-Toothed Dolphins. So I'll take you through the useful references I managed to track down, and why I thought they were worth looking at.

There were several overly simplistic restorations, and of these I found this cover page by Alton Dooley for his description of Squalodon whitmorei to be any good.

Though the prey dolphins in this particular piece are a little too minimalist to reference, the Squalodon chomping down on them is surprisingly accurate. The overall proportions of the skull, fins, and body are all perfect. Making this useful for scaling my model.

If for nothing else, this picture also gave me some confidence. If this was among the top 50% of Squalodons out there, then I had a good shot at creating a new addition to this elite group of artwork.

Perhaps the most influential of all Squalodon recreations was this one by Geoffrey Cox. This comes from his amazing little popular science book Prehistoric Animals of New Zealand. (Though sadly out of print, this book is by far one of the best ever released on New Zealand fossils, and definitely has the best palaeo-art to accompany it. So if you are interested in the subject try to track down a copy).

I consider this the "type specimen" artwork of Squalodon from which most other palaeo-art restorations are based. Often in palaeo-art I find that someone will do one key version of an animal, and then 90% of later artists approaching the same subject tend to copy or borrow heavily from this first "type specimen". I'm planning on doing a post on this phenomenon later, but that is the general idea.

One of the most clear examples of this derivative referencing (which is not necessarily a bad thing, I point out, but it is just important to acknowledge) is Arthur Weasley's Squalodon from wikipedia. It is a nice piece, but where it is accurate it incorporates all of Cox's features.

Weasley's body and fin proportions are not very well measured, and so I didn't really use this picutre at all. It is worth crediting this piece with a pretty accurate skull though. At the same time I didn't use it as it rehashs all of Cox's ideas. It has the same skinny long slender snout, and the relatively spherical melon organ (what makes a whales forehead) as Cox's.

My favourite of the "Cox"ian Squalodons is Rob van Assan's version here. Again we see the same general head configuration with the long beak and very small round melon organ.

Not that I'm saying one has to reinvent the wheel with palaeo-art, especially if a pioneer artist captures something scientifically critical to an animal in their earlier version. However Squalodons' heads did not necessarily look like this. Dr. Fordyce has directed me to create a completely novel vision of Squalodon compared to the Cox idea (wait for this in Part 4).

Highlighting the fact that the look of Squalodons is not completely agreed upon, you'll notice Mr. Assan has put his own spin on the Dolphin. Instead of a dorsal fin he has added a river dolphin (the closest living relatives of Squalodons) ridge along the back. This gave some food for thought, and prompted Dr. Fordyce's opinion on the fin (again coming in Part 4).

A radical departure from the Cox model, is this rather Bottlenose Dolphin looking Squalodon by the Aquaheart Museum (as the majority of this site is in Japanese which I don't read, I couldn't find an artist's name. If you know the artist who created this piece of art please let us know in the comment section or email us at artevolved@blogspot.com.)

Though pretty much everything about this piece runs against what we know of the Shark Toothed Dolphins (in particular the lack of said shark-like teeth) as it is trying to mimic a modern Dolphin, the extant looking melon organ turns out to make this one of the key Squalodons I came across.

The best two sets of references I found combined aspects of both styles. The one set of pieces by Chris Gaskin I was asked not to post, as they are the property of Otago University. Chris Gaskin created the pieces for Dr. Fordyce in the 1990's, and so I found them a good guide to what the good doctor would want in his renditions (though as I'd find out, Dr. Fordyce's views on Squalodons have changed in the last 15 years).

The other pictures, such as the Waipatia above (a relative of Squalodons), came from a book accompanying a fossil whale exhibit from Japan. Sadly I only had access to Dr. Fordyce's copy, and the majority of the writing was in Japanese, so I was unable to get the artists name. If you know the artist who created this piece of art please let us know in the comment section or email us at artevolved@blogspot.com.

In both sets of pieces the long unusual snout of Squalodon and its enormous teeth are mixed with a much more modern Dolphin face (unlike the basketball Cox look).

Of course had I not been working with Dr. Fordyce my decisions as what to take from these different interpretations would have been difficult. It illustrates the common problem with palaeo-restorations already covered here at ART Evolved. When looking at references with no proper scientific input, it can be tricky.

The most trust worth reference you are ever going to get is the fossil material itself. In my case this was just the skull. Only a few complete Squalodon skeletons have ever been collected, and none were from NZ or easy to access from here.

With each new approach I've taken on the whale since the first (in Part 1 of Flukes) I have ended up referring to the skull more and more. By my last rendition of the Squalodon (coming up in Part 4) the skull was my centre referral point. Which would be my other key piece of advice...

Rule #4 of Scientific Restorations: No matter how other references you find and how much you like other artists takes on a subject, always make sure the original fossils are your main guide. This way you can separate the "facts" in your other references from the "artistic licence and/or style" flavouring the artists may have injected into their piece.

So coming back to my art. This was the Dolphinsauriod. Despite its reptilian flavour, many of the key Squalodon features were starting to take form. I had the long snout, I had the large teeth (though at this stage they were a little too exaggerated), I had something of a melon organ (though not correct in Dr. Fordyce's opinion).

A rough comparison between the Dolphinsauriod and the skull showed that my snout was not quite long enough, and a new factor not mentioned on the other restorations before (as they all got it correct) was the eye was far too high on the face.

The other key issue, causing my whale to look more like a marine reptile, was how I was lacking a proper Dolphin cheek.

After referencing the Japanese artwork and Gaskin, plus some modern Dolphins, this is the fix I came up with.

Though it is quite rough in these early pics, already my Squalodon was looking a lot more mammalian. It was these finer tune details that I would learn much more about in the coming months and attempts.

For the time being (at the time) putting the teeth back into the skull made difference between mammal version 1 and Dolphinsauriod quite remarkable, despite the lack of polish on version 1.

Using my very crude model to fossil comparison, the new model was looking good. This technique however was very crude, and i was going to find out that I needed a lot more fine tune work. You can check out a preview of my new method of art to fossil comparisons here.

Finally I was onto the base of the good copy...

Of course that still wasn't quite the same as having the good copy...

More on that in Part 4!

Reconstruction Tips: Flukes Part 2

Welcome back to Reconstruction Tips!

Today I bring you the next installment of my ongoing Palaeo-art adventure...

Flukes go on Whales... NOT in your Art!

Part: 2

Previously on Flukes, I'd decided to attempt a restoration of a Prehistoric Whale for use by New Zealand Palaeontologist Dr. Ewan Fordyce. I started on this mission without asking Dr. Fordyce if he wanted any such art. I'd also dove in without much idea of what a Shark Toothed Dolphin looked like or how they were put together...

Giving me this initial version of such a beast.

Looking at it right now, I can't believe I actually showed this to Dr. Fordyce thinking he'd be even slightly impressed. That alone wish me to create anything for him. Fortunately for my sake he is a very kind man, and humoured this my first (but not last) botched attempt.

I knew that the dolphin's head was the weak link, but I had hoped that the post cranial 3Ding would save me. The body for the most part, except the Dorsal fin, didn't make Dr. Fordyce's attention at all. All we talked about was the skull, and how utterly I'd gotten it wrong!

Again I hadn't referenced any material what so ever, and tried to go off my fleeting memories of the Sharked Toothed Dolphin skulls I'd seen in New Zealand museums. Sadly it showed. A lot!

For round two on the Dolphin I made sure to go and get some references before I started.

Due to its being easily accessed and photographed, I snapped about 20 pictures of this skull here (skull C from my last articles skull challenge). Not because Dr. Fordyce wanted a reconstruction of this particular animal mind you. Rather it was the easiest for me to access on that day from the University of Otago's collections. This would lead to some minor problems with the second take on the Dolphin.

As Dr. Fordyce was most concerned by my complete miss on the teeth, this was where I redoubled my efforts. Funny enough they do make all the difference in the world...

Despite the fact it is quite amateurish, the shift toward accuracy helped Dr. Fordyce take me more serious on my offer of creating a reconstruction for him. If I had to venture, though he is far too much a gentleman to have said it out loud, Dr. Fordyce thought I had nothing to offer with my first version. I don't blame him.

This new version showed I could take criticism and feedback, and fix my restoration. Granted not all at once like a pro... However Dr. Fordyce didn't give up on me, and welcomed a third take.

I even took this second edition of the whale and created a very quick and rough "scene" to show that the model could be used in a number of contexts. This intrigued Dr. Fordyce somewhat. Though the whales themselves didn't.

Understandably, Dr. Fordyce, while encouraging of my improvements, was not entirely es tactic about my products. Don't get me wrong, Dr. Fordyce has been nothing but supportive of me in these efforts. If anything he has been overly patient, and honestly the one at fault has been me with my crappy whales...

At least I write this observation in hindsight. The art did get better (I save this for Part: 3 and 4).

One of the big changes in direction that Dr. Fordyce requested was that I model my whale on this skull here.

For those of you who partook in my skull ID challenge last post, this is skull B. Oddly no one guessed it. Skull C, the challenge favourite, though not formally the subject of current restoration project, did play a key role in my early efforts (as already mention). I used Skull C in my flukes banner simply due to having better photographs of it. Skull B is so much larger I have not been able to pull it out for a good photography session... yet hopefully.

Though both skulls are similar, there are still quite a few subtle differences. Some of which I've only managed to correct in my model this month!

A slightly different view of the skull (well actually a cast). Though I've seen the skull (or cast of it) in 3 museums across New Zealand (it is on permanent display in 2 of these), the skull is undescribed and the animal does not have a proper name as of yet.

It seems at moment highly likely this animal is a species of the genus Squalodon, but if not then it is definitely a part of the Squalodontidae family. However the point is at moment it is not current recognized by science, but odds are good that Dr. Fordyce will at some point will be doing a formal study and description of it.

Meaning I have a chance of him considering the use of one or more of my restorations with such a description. That is if I can get my Dolphin correct. So we enter into take: 3.

One of the first major changes I made was to the teeth arrangement. Though I got their essential placement correct, up until this month I had some critical mistakes in the actual teeth themselves. More on that in part 4 of Flukes...

`

This was the version I returned to Dr. Fordyce with. You'll note superficially it looks closer to the Squalodon skull. Yet it doesn't quite feel like a whale or dolphin... Which I knew, but not having a lot of experience recreating them I couldn't figure out what was missing.

`

Dr. Fordyce acknowledged my improvements, but then sagely summed up the problems I was having with the model. In reference to where my whale's lower jaw connects to the body and skull, Dr. Fordyce noted. "The teeth are much better," he paused. "but the jaws are just wrong. This whole animals looks almost reptilian, how you've recreated it."

`

I didn't know what to say. Obviously I'd messed up, and this was still a crap Dolphin.

`

Yet in a way I took out of this a compliment. Up until this time I'd only really created and made Dinosaurs and Marine Reptiles. Clearly I was getting good at those, if Dr. Fordyce could pick up on their influence in my Whale.

Of course it was also a huge problem! I'd taken my pre-existing strengths, techniques, and knowledge of reptilian subject matters and squeezed the whale into that mold. I wasn't going to be able to pretend to be a versatile palaeo-artist till I could get past my reptile only skill base...

`

Thus teaching me a new key lesson of Palaeo-art!

`

Rule #2 of Scientific Restorations:

Do not force a subject into your comfort zone. Take the risk, and abandon what you usually do. Reinvent yourself and your art around each and every new subject.

`

So I embarked on the task of abandoning my comfort zone, and tried to learn how to make a whale of my whale! See how that went in part 3...

Reconstruction Tips: Flukes Part 1

Welcome to the first installment of Reconstruction Tips. Though these articles are bound to take many forms, but my first few entries are going to be a series that follows my real life "adventures" trying to do a palaeo recreation for an actual palaeontologist.


Given the many mistakes I've made along the way, and that it is a whale I'm recreating (well okay Dolphin technically, but they are just small toothed whales in the end...) I've opted to call these tales (or did I mean tails :P)...

Flukes go on Whales... NOT in your Art!

Part: 1

For (nearly) the last year I have been volunteering at the University of Otago's geology department here in Dunedin, doing both field and prep work whenever I can manage the free time (which has become less and less sadly as of late). The fact I'm based here in Dunedin is a real fluke itself, as the Otago University's head of geology, Dr. Ewan Fordyce (pictured here helping out Traumador the Tyrannosaur), is New Zealand's only professional vertebrate palaeontologist, and the University hosts the countries only publicly funded fossil lab.


Dr. Fordyce has been incredibly supportive and patient with me. As an active supporter of popular geology education, Dr. Fordyce has been instrumental in helping me with several projects aimed at kids. For which I can't thank him enough. He has also guided me in improving my fossil collecting and preparation skills to the next level.

For our purposes here on ART Evolved though, it has been my voluntarily trying to do a restoration of one of his prized "shark toothed" dolphins that we will be concerning ourselves with.

As I established a working relationship with Dr. Fordyce, I saw this as an opportunity to collaborate with a real research scientist and try and get insights into what goes into legitimate scientific reconstructions. Let's say I've learned a lot more then I expected!

It is important to keep in mind that throughout this story, Dr. Fordyce never solicited me for this art. Rather it was I who approached him, and he has been kind enough to indulge me and my mistakes throughout the process. I am not, and was never expecting, to be compensated for these efforts. I simply wanted the chance to work with a real palaeontologist, and get feedback that could eventually help me one day seek out similar gigs. Dr. Fordyce has been more than kind enough to provide me with this "payment"!


Despite not seeking this art out, Dr. Fordyce has expressed an interest in using it in some sort of official capacity. As to what this is I am not currently sure, but I'll be happy with anything!


So with the scene established, we shall start at the only natural point a part 1 of anything can...

The Beginning

Last December I began my volunteer efforts by assisting Dr. Fordyce and a team of honour's students do some field work around Northern Otago. On the drive home I had the privilege of riding shotgun with the good doctor and was able to discuss many things with him on the 2 hour drive (though all his students were too intimidated to sit with him to challenge me for the seat!). One thing that came up was how there were relatively few restorations done of Oligocene whales.

Of course this makes sense, prehistoric whales are not particularly reported unless they still had clear links to their terrestial origin. By the Oligocene period, whales were extremely aquatically adapted and are thus (for whatever reason) not of interest to the general population. This got me thinking that Dr. Fordyce might be in need of illustrations for his specimens.

A Prosqualodon by Geoffrey J. Cox from his excellent, but sadly out of print, book Prehistoric Animals of New Zealand (1991)

It turns out there wasn't the complete void of art as I'd imagined from this brief tangent of the car conversation, but regardless this interpretation got my creative juices flowing. I decided I'd throw together a prototype whale over my X-Mas holidays to impress Dr. Fordyce when I started prep work in the lab after New Years.

There was just one "tiny" thing I didn't do before jumping into this project. I did not once remotely think about referencing anything to base my whale on... (in my defence when I did look for some [the subject of Flukes part 2] there were not many!)

Which leads to first Flukes lesson for anyone wanting to create professional level scientific Palaeo-Art:

Rule #1 of Scientific Restorations: Don't ever recreate any organism simply from memory. Even if you think you know it well!

An obvious point when you think about it, but it is a very important one I've been learning over and over this year! I'm sure many of our more experienced artist readers are saying "duh!", but you need to start with the basic rules before you can worry about the more complicated ones (which I will get to in later articles). That and, I have found even with things I personally know well, I can still never find enough reference pictures and photographs to work off!

Sadly in December of 2008 I had not yet learned this lesson (or any of the others to be covered in Flukes). So we start here on an accidental journey through my development as an artist throughout the year of 2009. This year has seen my skills and capabilities grow at a rate I never would have imagined. A great deal of this is thanks to the challenge of ART Evolved's galleries, and the support and input of our many readers and visitors (a big thank you to you all!).

I hope as you read Flukes and look at my art you'll see the same transformation in my work that I have. More to the point, though this particular post's included artwork will no doubt hurt my credibility as an "expert", as we go installment to installment, hopefully you'll see how the lessons in each Flukes add up to drastically improve my art to the current form that Dr. Fordyce has given tentative approval too!

So with that in mind, perhaps shooting myself in the foot as an authority, I give you my work from 10 months ago (and 3 month pre-ART Evolved forming)...

This was the first take. Though I didn't reference any fossil material, I did model the odd thing after my favourite extent Dolphin species the Pacific White Sided Dolphin (otherwise known as a Lagenorhynchus obliquidens). So things like the colorization and the dorsal fin were based on "something". However when I actually did my research it would turn out this was among my worst options for a living Dolphin to go off...

Here is a close up on the jaws and the teeth. Even at the time I knew they were the weakness of this creation. I had tried to make the body, tail, and fins impressive enough to show what I was capable of. Yet it is the head and its details that make or break any restoration!

For a off the cusp conjuring of a shark toothed dolphin I guess it isn't as bad as you could get. It is painful to look at now, and I wish I'd never shown them to Dr. Fordyce. I created them off of nothing more then what I could remember of some skulls on display at museums around NZ, but whales had never been my primary focus when looking...

I got next to nothing right in these prototype versions. Well okay, other then the tail flukes, which Dr. Fordyce has never once asked to be changed, making them accidental flukes! A big inspiration behind the articles title.

As we'll see in part 2, I paid for this foolish charge in blind strategy. However do not think too cruelly of me please. I'd never worked with anyone on my palaeo-art before, that alone a real scientist. There also aren't that many good easy to access visual references on shark toothed dolphins out there either.

Topping this all off, I hadn't yet consulted Dr. Fordyce on my intention to recreate the whale, so I had no idea which genus of Dolphin he might want me to do. I rendered the above restoration going off my fleeting recollection of several random skulls I'd seen here and there. Though they share the same general make up, they surprisingly differ on the fine details (as all animals do on the genus and species level).

Here were the three shark toothed dolphins that were kicking around in my head. I at the time didn't really have any good photos of any of them, and had no idea which would be Dr. Fordyce's priority.

So I'll end part 1 of Flukes with a guess gaming. Which one of these three skulls would Dr. Fordyce wish to be restored when I finally approached him?

The only hint I'll give you, is that my article's banner may not be as helpful as you think! There are bonus points to anyone who can roughly identify these skulls. Only one has been formally named and described, but a rough comparison to other well known Squalodontoidea will count.

Choice A

Choice B

Choice C

Stay tuned for Part 2, telling the story of my showing these embarrassing first versions of the Dolphin to Dr. Fordyce and through the aftermath learn yet another key lesson in proper scientific restoration!

As a final note, if you were wondering how many parts this series will be, I can not at moment tell you. There are 4 more parts I can do at moment, but my efforts on this project are not yet complete. The dolphin has not been finished to Dr. Fordyce's final specifications, and so I have no idea what the outcome of it all will be!

So I invite you to join me in creative suspense... Can my art meet the final approval of a real palaeontologist? Will my dolphin ever see publication in print or on display someday?

Obviously I have no answers for you now, but hopefully I will in the future...