Embedded Files
Dire wolf (Canis dirus) illustration based on skeletal mounts at Rancho La Brea, and colors of various living Canids. Digital.
Pleistocene Book Project
Pleistocene Book Project
A book project I am researching, writing, and illustrating, is a deep guide to the of the Ice Age of Western North America. This is a project long in the making, and I have been illustrating the various megafauna and Pleistocene scenes for decades. The book will focus on the Rancholabrean Land Mammal Age, and will be my paleoart view of traveling back in time to this lost world
Size chart of Rancholabrean megafauna. Pen and ink on paper.
Detail of painting showing Homotherium serum pack attaching a baby Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi). The mother mammoth comes charging over. South Coast Range, California. Oil on panel.
Detail of draft pencil illustration.
Arctodus scaring a pack of saber-toothed cats (Homotherium serum) off a baby Columbian mammoth, as the mother mammoth charges. Southern California arid grasslands in the South Coast Range with playa and junipers in the Pleistocene. Oil on panel, 2007.
Homotherium serum skeleton and in life. Pencil.
Pencil sketches and notes on the new paleontological discovery rocked the world: a frozen mummy of a Homotherium latidens cub with fur and other soft tissues was found in Pleistocene permafrost Yakutia (northeastern Siberia) was described in a scientific paper published in the journal Nature. This was a monumental find: the first Machairodont sabertooth cat frozen carcass described, revealing significant new information about the fur, coloration, paw structure, and other soft tissues that have only been the subject of speculation before this. Lopatin et al. (2024) reported that in 2020 a frozen mummy of a large carnivore cub was found in in Siberia, Russian Federation, along the Badyarikha River in a deposit with mammoth bones in a loess-loam horizon (perhaps a Mammoth Steppe habitat.) The radiocarbon date based on wooly fur is about 31,000 years before present, calibrated to about 35,000 to 37,000 years before present. The frozen mummy of the felid cub includes the head and anterior part of the body, and a few other pelvic bones.
Lopatin, A.V., M. V. Sotnikova, A. I. Klimovsky, et al. 2024. Mummy of a juvenile sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens from the Upper Pleistocene of Siberia. Sci Rep 14, 28016 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-79546-1
In this sketch I added color with colored pencils. The cub has an overall dark brown hue, but with tones of burnt umber and red ochre. Light cream-colored highlights exist on the eyelids, the tip of the nose, chin, and underside of the jaw including the long hair tufts, as well as extending in a small area down the neck. A few lighter-colored hairs can be seen on the cheek scruff and in the ear. After the photo in Lopatin et al. (2024).
Potential life restoration of the cub. Pencil pn paper.
Draft sketch of Columbian mammoth for painting.
Columbian mammoth herd in central California with a river and coast redwoods. Oil on panel.
Columbian mammoth, detail.
Owens Lake Plesitocene rough sketch.
Owens Lake Pleistocene detailed draft illustration.
Owens Lake Pleistocene final color painting, for interpretive sign by Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.
Drawing of potential horse species in the Rancholebrean of western North America. Pencil.
Notes on cheek teeth dental terms of Equus.
Color study of Western horse (Equus occidentalis), colored pencil.
Pencil drawing of South American late Pleistocene Hippidion horses in the Andes. These horses may have had elongated and prehensole upper lips and muzzles for specialized foraging.
Drawing of giant ground sloth (Glossotherium harlani), colored pencil.
Running llama (Hemiauchenia). Pencil.
Western camel (Camelops hesternus) based on skeletal mounts, pencil, 2025.
San Francisco Bay 40,000 years ago showing to dry valley looking westwards through the Golden Gate past the hill Alcatraz. Ancient bison (Bison antiquus) and Western horse (Equus occidentalis) graze in grasslands of purple needlegrass (Nassella pulchra) and California oatgrass (Danthonia californica) grow with parklands and forests of coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia) and Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii). Late spring white tarweeds (Madia) dot the ground. A segde (Carex tumulicola) swale is on the lower right. Calidoenia ground squirrels (Otospermophilus beecheyi) also graze. Acrylic on paper.
Pencil drawing on tined paper of Bison alaskensis and B. priscus.
Teratorns of Rancho La Brea. Colored pencil.
Teratorn and vulture skulls of Rancho La Brea. Pencil.
Merriam's teratorn (Teratornis merriami), colored pencil.
Giant extinct tortoise Hesperotestudo (formerly Geochelone) in a late Pleistocene fossil bed along the Colorado River in Riverside County, California. Pencil on paper with digital enhancement. A smaller desert tortoise (Gopherus) is to the right.
Pencil studies of Hesperotestudo (formerly Geochelone) after Auffenberg.
Late Pleistiocene scene at the Golden Gate, central California, when the San Fiancsco Bay was dryland and a great river flowed out to the Pacific coast miles to the west over a waterfall. Multimedia illustration for children's book The Bay Area Through Time (2013).
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