What's inside this?? Come find out @ our August 13 Open House (Thursday, 3:30 - 5:00pm) @ the Fossil Lab, 5437 S. Wabash in Chicago, just West of UChicago campus. See the specimens we've been working on, meet staff & students and hear about new research 🦕🦖⚒️ All are welcome, no RSVP, free parking!

I’m excited to be working on a new sculpture of an ancient toothy critter- pose is very relaxed, jaw barely opened. To be able to sculpt inside the mouth and make the mold, I have to make the clay jaw detachable…now it looks like a graboid tentacle from Tremors!😆🐍 #paleoart #SciArt WIP

Any paleoartists out there have experience using UChicago's Glaze or Nightshade to poison AI? I'm fascinated to know, and also wonder if there's pressure to stop the program now that UChicago has gone all-in with Anthropic glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/webglaze.html #paleoart #scicomm #PaleoAgainstAI

#FossilFriday & claws out for the weekend!🦖

Last night @ our monthly Fossil Lab Open House, I had the great pleasure to meet Michelle Minott, sister of the late Garfield Minott. Garfield’s #paleoart created for @paulserenoofficial.bsky.social of Carcharodontosaurus inspired me to enter the field. Here we pose w/ his Afrovenator #fossilfriday

Thanks skunkcabbagebooks.bsky.social for inviting me to speak to your wonderful community about my work in #paleoart #sciconm ! It was a fun evening with lots of great questions and discussion. An awesome selection of curated books too!

My dad (age 78) made this great cut-out construction paper art project this evening: 7-4-250 Lady Liberty”s torch is snuffed- A shadow of woe has fallen upon D.C.

Just switched to DuckDuckGo with AI turned off, cutting Google out if possible

Nerding out on Father’s Day with this fantastic book my wife and son picked out : “Godzilla - The First 70 Years”…I love King Ghidora’s original unused blue-green coloration with rainbow wings! Happy day to all the dads out there🦖

Morla the Swiss chard calzone accepts its fate…

Improving the world in a small way, removed about 100sq/ft of worthless lawn today and installed a native plant garden of 25 perennials (8 species, 4 are keystone) for birds/butterflies/pollinators, from the Ecoplantia roll out garden line. This connects to more native plants in my rain garden 😊

On Earth Day, check out this hellish opening movie sequence: pre-cgi, no miniatures or visual effects used here. Not “Blade Runner”, any guesses? Chicago area, late 1970’s

What a great surprise to receive my copy of @lewislarosa.bsky.social Kickstarter book “Carbon Based” in the mail today! I love it all!! Exhilarating hand-drawn illustrations from cover to cover🤩

Windy City

Also for #PaleoFest2026, look for my wall-hanging mini-bust of a famous Chicago zoo gorilla, now taxidermied @ FMNH www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/bushman... Please bid this up at the weekend auction to benefit the Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois #SciArt 🦍 Painted plaster cast

#FossilFriday make plans if you’re able to attend #PaleoFest2026, @ Burpee Museum in Rockford, Illinois Looks like it’ll be another outstanding event! Please bid up this Alioramus altai mini-bust wall-hanging I made for auction during the weekend to benefit this small but mighty regional museum ❤️🦖

I can’t make it to #PaleoFest2026 this year, but the wonderful @paleobyliam.bsky.social is transporting two small sculptures of mine I’m donating to the Burpee Museum for the auction at this weekends event. Faux metallic painted wall-hanging casts, here‘s a peek #sciart

#FossilFriday & happy to see coworker & coauthor Erin Fitzgerald’s culmination of fierce fieldwork, ace preparation of difficult material & great paint job on the display-skull, out now w/ Spinosaurus mirabilis, debuting @ Chicago Children’s Museum on March 1 #SciArt

#FossilFriday recently finished a special shell to hold a big heavy specimen vertically (yes for reasons),chain hoist doing the work here slowly lifting ~500lbs. I’m hyperfocused on stuff like this much of the time but important to step back, note my privileges & grapple w/ injustices in our field 💔

Immense brontothere skull in Field Museums “After the Age of Dinosaurs” temp show. I applaud that Jay Ryan @thebirdmachine.bsky.social was recognized for art throughout. But why not credit Erwin Christman’s art (instead of “public domain”) on the text panel? Beautiful, influential, worth crediting

“We’re gonna need a bigger gravy-boat!” Turkey skull peeks out from behind a T. rex wishbone on Thanksgiving! 🦃🍗🦖

Great to see a display of @restingdinoface.bsky.social new book in the gift shop at the Field Museum for the new temp exhibit there, After the Age of Dinosaurs!

Prepping out a super-hard concretion from between the jugal, quadrate & pterygoid of a huge fossil croc (this is 1 hour sped up), slowly making a dent… speaking of time, later this afternoon on a campus zoom ceremony for staff, I’ll be recognized for my 25 years working @ UChicago 🐊😁

Any paleo folks in the Chicagoland area- this afternoon is our final Open House of 2025 - come see what we’ve been working on at the Fossil Lab, 5437 S. Wabash (just West of UChicago main campus). We’ll continue hosting our monthly Open Houses in the spring of 2026! 🦕🦖

Last night we saw some of the northern lights despite light pollution over Chicagoland!

my Birthday plans for this evening include getting sushi with my wife and son & watching Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster because it’s #GodzillaDay !

A lovely day @ Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art, in solidarity w/ our fellow human beings’ beautiful & diverse cultural traditions for Dia de los Muertos…and saw some great graffiti in the neighborhood too!

Happy Halloween!

Check out this timelapse I made while giving an Edmontosaurus a pedicure! One small part of the story out today in Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Something we’ve been very carefully “chipping away at” for a while in the Fossil Lab #UChicago will hit the news tomorrow! A very interesting collaborative effort, watch for it afternoon on Oct 23! @paulserenoofficial.bsky.social