Breakfast of champions! A female horn shark (Heterodontus francisci) eating its own egg case. There are no males in the habitat so the egg wasn’t fertilized

Studies of the incredible and specialized eyes of elasmobranchs (sharks and rays). Shark vision is an ongoing research topic but the general consensus is, overall, sharks are more sensitive to movement and contrast than they are to colors.

The sharks you don't hear about: Deepsea catsharks (Pentanchidae) are the largest family of sharks, containing 11 genera & at least (!!!) 110 species.

This incredible graphic is by @maijakarala.bsky.social and is an excellent crash-course in bird (and honestly animal) color/pigmentation. Check it out! I’ve continually come back to this for reference and always love sharing it with others 🐧🐦🐤🏳️‍🌈

Anybody recognize this trilobite? Even family level or time period would be cool to know. Was a gift

Feast your eyes on DOMINO! Potentially the world's first warty frogfish (Antennarius maculatus) successfully reared in human care 📍Shedd Aquarium

To anybody that knows fossils- do these look like brachiopods? From the limestone tiles of Shedd Aquarium. I believe quarried in Illinois

One of the most bizarre animals I've ever seen in person - the bowmouth guitarfish (Rhina ancylostoma). Front of body, while ray-like, is fairly deep with several isolated rows of spikes. Back of body has taller fins and a weirdly "dipped" caudal peduncle. ~8-9ft long

Another Megalodon reconstruction by Charles R. Knight from the book "Great White Shark" (Ellis & McCosker, 1991). I've never seen this before, very cool to feature specific taxa like spotted eagle rays (right) & tiger sharks (left). #sciart #paleoart

An interesting camera effect I noticed when taking a pic of a bigtooth river stingray at Shedd Aquarium: from a distance their creamy-white spots look normal, but when you zoom in there's this crazy blue and orange halo. Is this a camera effect to make the spots pop? Or something else?

I recently searched "goblin shark" on Instagram and was disgusted by the ubiquity of generative AI slop masquerading as actual footage of living goblin sharks. So here's a thread on how to spot the bullshit (examples below) #scicomm #sharks

Photo of a captive sandbar shark at Shedd Aquarium - those parallel diagonal lines running along the tail are the shark's muscles!!! Even animals we think of as "simple" or "smooth" can reveal a lot if you know what to look for

For #EndangeredSpeciesDay, a type of shark I had no idea existed until very recently: the daggernose shark (Carcharhinus oxyrhynchus). This is a super weird, poorly known requiem shark that is Critically Endangered. I'm not sure if it's ever been photographed alive/underwater

Another great white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) portrait study in pencil. The individual I referenced had some interesting damage/scarring to the lower jaw

January vs April- portrait studies of great white sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) in pencil. Starting to get a feel for sharks and how to accurately depict all that character they have in their faces! 🦈 #sciart

If you ever feel like humans have a solid grasp on animals, do some research on sharks & whales. You'd be amazed how little documentation there is. Some species have never even been photographed, or even seen, alive! pics of some rarely-seen weirdos

Looking at photos from the NOAA Voyage to the Ridge 2022 Expedition and this is crazy - is it just me or does this sea star look like it was knit by hand?!

The undisputed #1 greatest photo of a person with a fossil: Paleontologist Altangerel Perle, with the Museum of Natural History in Ulan Bataar, Mongolia, stands between the forearms of Deinocheirus

Watching a video from the Smithsonian on the making of Gary Staab's 50ft-long Megalodon sculpture. Something about seeing artists/workers climbing on and around it like insects really leaves you with a sense of how big this thing would've been

This might be a first in the world of #paleoart

Regarding potential virtual paleontology meetings. (I built and ran the 2023 SVP virtual meeting.)

Question for fellow paleoartists: When creating #paleoart to be featured on the cover of an academic journal, how do you decide the dimensions of the piece? Do you reach out to the folks at the journal and ask them? Design a vertical composition and let them crop? Or something else? #sciart

Not my sweaty ass being part of an exhibit panel at The Museum of the Rockies!!! I volunteered last summer to help dig up a new chasmosaurine ceratopsid (horned dinosaur somewhat related to Triceratops).

Detail of the Triceratops reconstruction I made for the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences' award-winning research project, Cretaceous Creatures Coloration is meant to match a mural/reconstruction by Julius Csotonyi #paleoart #sciart

A paleoart meme/trope that kind of bugs me is giving Sinosauropteryx a bushy, fluffy, squirrel-like tail. I am not saying this is implausible, and I appreciate speculation, but it's not what the fossil evidence seems to reflect.

Okay in hindsight not the best angle but for reference I am 6ft6in (2m) tall and the horns extend past where I was standing

Liam Elward Paleoart 🇵🇸@paleobyliam.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Biggest surprise of #DinosaursAndMOR so far: Yoshi’s Trike (long-horned Triceratops specimen) is WAAAY bigger than I thought! I’ll try to get a pic with me for scale before the conference ends 📍Museum of the Rockies

Timeline cleanse: The gorgeous, masterful fossil photography of Andre Gogol (in collaboration with the Royal Tyrrell Museum collections) #paleontology #photography #paleoart

Biggest surprise of #DinosaursAndMOR so far: Yoshi’s Trike (long-horned Triceratops specimen) is WAAAY bigger than I thought! I’ll try to get a pic with me for scale before the conference ends 📍Museum of the Rockies

Brodavis, the freshwater hesperornithiform bird from the Hell Creek Formation of Late Cretaceous North America. Composition loosely inspired by The Birds of North America by John James Audubon. Done for the Cretaceous Creatures Project at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences #paleoart

That fish in the background of every single shark photo you've seen: the pilot fish, Naucrates ductor. It's almost hard to find pics of oceanic whitetip sharks *without* pilotfish in them