Mark Hallett (born November 21, 1947) is an American artist best known for his illustrations of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. Having originally coined the term "paleoart" to refer to science-based paleontological illustration, Hallett remains one of the most influential masters of modern dinosaur imagery. [1] He currently lives in Dallas, Oregon. [2]
Hallett has considered himself a paleoartist since 1974 and he began his work at the San Diego Natural History Museum. He has been published in a number of museums, magazines and books including Life , Smithsonian , and National Geographic . He has worked as a teacher, a designer and an art director, and was also a consultant on the major films Jurassic Park [1] and Disney's Dinosaur . [2] In 1986, Hallett's paleontological paintings experienced a major tour in the United States, the United Kingdom, continental Europe, Japan and Australia, and appeared in numerous museums including the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. He is also the recipient of several major awards, including the annual Lanzendorf Paleoart Prize given out by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, which he won in 2002. [2]
Hallett cites the painter Charles R. Knight as one of his major influences. [2] He describes his process of creating artwork as first preparing for weeks researching the available material including original fossils, consulting with paleontologists on likely behavior, and researching modern analogues before starting sketches of the anatomy and scenes for the final painting. [3]
Gregory Scott Paul is an American freelance researcher, author and illustrator who works in paleontology, and more recently has examined sociology and theology. He is best known for his work and research on theropod dinosaurs and his detailed illustrations, both live and skeletal. Professionally investigating and restoring dinosaurs for three decades, Paul received an on-screen credit as dinosaur specialist on Jurassic Park and Discovery Channel's When Dinosaurs Roamed America and Dinosaur Planet. He is the author and illustrator of Predatory Dinosaurs of the World (1988), The Complete Illustrated Guide to Dinosaur Skeletons (1996), Dinosaurs of the Air (2001), The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs (2010), Gregory S. Paul's Dinosaur Coffee Table Book (2010), The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs: 2nd Edition (2016), The Princeton Field Guide to Pterosaurs (2022), The Princeton Field Guide to Mesozoic Sea Reptiles (2022) and editor of The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs (2000).
Zdeněk Michael František Burian was a Czech painter, book illustrator and palaeoartist whose work played a central role in the development of palaeontological reconstruction.
The Houston Museum of Natural Science is a natural history museum located on the northern border of Hermann Park in Houston, Texas, United States. The museum was established in 1909 by the Houston Museum and Scientific Society, an organization whose goals were to provide a free institution for the people of Houston focusing on education and science. Museum attendance totals over two million visitors each year. The museum complex consists of a central facility with four floors of natural science halls and exhibits, the Burke Baker Planetarium, the Cockrell Butterfly Center, and the Wortham Giant Screen Theatre. The museum is one of the most popular in the United States and ranks just below New York City's American Museum of Natural History and Metropolitan Museum of Art and the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco in most attendance amongst non-Smithsonian museums. Much of the museum's popularity is attributed to its large number of special or guest exhibits.
Charles Robert Knight was an American wildlife and paleoartist best known for his detailed paintings of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. His works have been reproduced in many books and are currently on display at several major museums in the United States. One of his most famous works is a mural of Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, which helped establish the two dinosaurs as "mortal enemies" in popular culture. Working at a time when many fossil discoveries were fragmentary and dinosaur anatomy was not well understood, many of his illustrations have later been shown to be incorrect representations. Nevertheless, he has been hailed as "one of the great popularizers of the prehistoric past".
Charles Whitney Gilmore was an American paleontologist who gained renown in the early 20th century for his work on vertebrate fossils during his career at the United States National Museum. Gilmore named many dinosaurs in North America and Mongolia, including the Cretaceous sauropod Alamosaurus, Alectrosaurus, Archaeornithomimus, Bactrosaurus, Brachyceratops, Chirostenotes, Mongolosaurus, Parrosaurus, Pinacosaurus, Styracosaurus ovatus and Thescelosaurus.
Cultural depictions of dinosaurs have been numerous since the word dinosaur was coined in 1842. The non-avian dinosaurs featured in books, films, television programs, artwork, and other media have been used for both education and entertainment. The depictions range from the realistic, as in the television documentaries of the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, or the fantastic, as in the monster movies of the 1950s and 1960s.
Doug Henderson is an American paleoartist, illustrator and painter specializing in the portrayal of fossil animals and environments. He lives in Montana.
William Stout is an American fantasy artist and illustrator with a specialization in paleontological art. His paintings have been shown in over seventy exhibitions, including twelve one-man shows. He has worked on over thirty feature films, doing everything from storyboard art to production design. He has designed theme parks and has worked in radio with the Firesign Theatre.
Paleoart is any original artistic work that attempts to depict prehistoric life according to scientific evidence. Works of paleoart may be representations of fossil remains or imagined depictions of the living creatures and their ecosystems. While paleoart is typically defined as being scientifically informed, it is often the basis of depictions of prehistoric animals in popular culture, which in turn influences public perception of and fuels interest in these animals. The word paleoart is also used in other informal sense, as a name for prehistoric art, most often cave paintings. Alternative concept of this term is the domain of archeological society.
John Gurche is an American artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and sketches of prehistoric life, especially dinosaurs and early humans. Gurche is currently an Artist in Residence at the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, New York. Gurche studied Anthropology and Paleontology at the University of Kansas, but his study of art was limited to his days in middle school. Also while in middle school, Gurche attempted to create a "family tree for all animal life," and fashioned an evolutionary series of heads from clay while in fourth grade.
John J. Lanzendorf was an American hairstylist who amassed one of the world's largest collections of dinosaur-themed artwork. The collection is now owned by the Children's Museum of Indianapolis.
Julius Thomas Csotonyi is a Canadian paleoartist and natural history illustrator living in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He specialises in photo-realistic restorations of dinosaurs, paleo-environments and extinct animals. His techniques encompass both traditional and digital media. His art is included in museum displays in many countries. Csotonyi also created the design of the reverse side of the commemorative 25 dollar silver Royal Canadian Mint coin called 50th Anniversary of the Canadian Flag.
Mauricio Antón Ortuzar is a paleoartist and illustrator specialized in the scientific reconstruction of extinct life, well known for his influential paintings of hominids, extinct carnivores and other vertebrate fossil groups. His works illustrate a great number of books, scientific papers, private collections and museums in many parts of the world. He currently works in association with the Natural Science Museum in Madrid.
Brian Cooley is a Canadian sculptor, specializing in dinosaurs.
Raúl Martín is a Spanish illustrator specializing in paleoart, the branch of science illustration that deals with artworks of subjects of paleontology. He is best known for his dinosaur paintings which appear in museums all over the world including the American Museum of Natural History, the Maryland Science Center, and Fort Peck Paleontology Inc. His works also notably appear in popular magazines including Scientific American, Science, and the International Edition of National Geographic. As of 2001, he works with the paleontology department at the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid, Spain, where he currently lives, as well as with the paleoanthropological team of the Atapuerca Mountains excavations.
Michael Trcic is an American sculptor best known for his paleontological models of dinosaurs. He worked for many years as a special effects artist for films and television programs, and was one of the lead animators and puppeteers for the famous Tyrannosaurus rex model featured in Steven Spielberg's 1993 film Jurassic Park. He has also worked in television animation, including for Discovery Channel's 2002 documentary film When Dinosaurs Roamed America. For models and other artwork outside of special effects, Trcic commonly consults with paleontologists in order to achieve a high standard of accuracy for his work. His sculpture has been compared to that of Brian Cooley, but with a "somewhat more traditional" style. He has provided dinosaur sculpture work for a variety of media and institutions, including IMAX, The University of Chicago, The National Geographic Society, Disney, and the Arizona Museum of Natural History, where his life-sized bronze Dilophosaurus sculpture is featured. His statue of the sauropod dinosaur Jobaria can be viewed at the Navy Pier of Chicago, Illinois. Trcic's work has also been published in a variety of written media, including Random House's book Hunting Dinosaurs and the magazines Earth Magazine and Prehistoric Times.
Mark Paul Witton is a British vertebrate palaeontologist, author, and palaeoartist best known for his research and illustrations concerning pterosaurs, the extinct flying reptiles that lived alongside dinosaurs. He has worked with museums and universities around the world to reconstruct extinct animals, including as consultant to the Walking with Dinosaurs franchise and BBC's Planet Dinosaur, and has published several critically acclaimed books on palaeontology and palaeoart.
Michael W. Skrepnick is a Canadian palaeoartist best known for his illustrations of prehistoric animals. He has produced illustrations featured in natural history museums, scientific journals, books and magazines. He lives and works in Alberta, Canada. Skrepnick is noted for his acrylic paintings of dinosaurs, such as his rendition of the 2016 discovery of the ceratopsian dinosaur Spiclypeus shipporum.
Sergey Krasovskiy is a Ukrainian freelance paleoartist best known for his artistic reconstructions of dinosaurs. He was awarded the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's John J. Lanzendorf PaleoArt Prize in 2017.
David Krentz is an American paleoartist, character designer, animator, storyboard artist, writer and director specializing in dinosaurs. As an animator for Walt Disney Pictures, Krentz has worked on Disney animated feature titles such as Fantasia 2000, Disney's Dinosaur, Treasure Planet, and John Carter, as well as productions for other studios such as Escape from Planet Earth. He has also contributed character designs and computer-generated models for films such as the 2013 BBC reboot of Walking with Dinosaurs, including close to 20 ZBrush models.