Science and Culture: Artists join paleobotanists to bring ancient plants to life—and pique viewer interest
Carolyn Beans; PNAS February 22, 2022 119 (8) e2201070119
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Figure: Aiming to highlight plants alongside dinosaurs, this painting shows water pooled in a Tyrannosaurus rex footprint with fallen leaves strewn beside a magnolia-like blossom. The puddle reflects leafy trees, as well as a T. rex—a juxtaposition meant to emphasize the importance of flora and not just fauna. Image credit: Julius Csotonyi, © Smithsonian Institution.
No one has ever seen a living Czekanowskia, an extinct gymnosperm that grew in forests across the Northern Hemisphere from around 210 through 100 million years ago. So before attempting to paint a picture of this ancient plant, Marlene Hill Donnelly built her own. Donnelly, a paleoartist at the Field Museum in Chicago, IL, consulted with paleobotanists, examined fossils, and studied work by other paleoartists. She shaped foil and wire into branches and leaves with lobes so narrow that they resembled pine needles, though finer. Donnelly then made a sketch based on her model and thought to herself, “Hmm, maybe not.” To truly capture its form, she needed more information. “I seriously hate making things up,” she says.
Donnelly is one of a number of paleoartists working closely with paleobotanists to paint prehistoric plants with as much accuracy as fossil records—and some clever experimentation—allow. Paleobotanists provide volumes of information to reconstruct a single plant. But before the brush hits the canvas, artists sometimes ask questions that send scientists searching for more data. “Scientists and artists go backwards and forwards constantly, to try and work out what that final image is going to look like,” says paleobotanist Ian Glasspool, a research associate at Colby College in Waterville, ME.
In doing so, these teams resurrect not only individual plants but also the plants’ central roles in past ecosystems. They boost both precision and awareness. Reconstructed, reimagined images of dinosaurs, for example, oftentimes don’t include much in the way of accurately portrayed vegetation—if they include any vegetation at all. These scholars are filling in the greenery to help themselves, and the public, truly see ancient plants.
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