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The artist who painted the five dinosaurs on Canada Post stamps released this week likes to imagine them alive, and with personality.
“You can think of some of these predators as maybe even playful in some cases,” Julius Csotonyi says.
Like modern predators, did they play-fight when they were young? Did they have periods of docile behaviour when they weren’t hunting?
Csotonyi thinks there’s a good chance they did.
“I love to imagine what it would be like to stand there and see all of this happening, … to be out in a forest and see these things living just like today’s animals,” he said.
Csotonyi, a British Columbia artist who specializes in Earth’s distant past, and dinosaur scientist Jordan Mallon will give a public presentation about their roles in creating the group of dino-stamps Thursday at 6:30 p.m. It’s at the Canadian Museum of Nature, where Mallon is on staff. Admission is free and the event is geared to children.
This won’t be a formal, sit-down lecture, but rather an unveiling of the art in the stamps (big pictures, not stamp sized), with explanations from the experts. They will have some fossils on hand at well.
Csotonyi’s favourites from the stamp group are Tyrannosaurus rex and Tylosaurus pembinensis, a big marine reptile that once swam in the shallow sea that once filled central North America.
The overall shape of all these ancient animals is well known, he said, but the colour involves some guesswork. For instance, he has spots like giant eyes on the “frill” over the head of a chasmosaur.
On small animals like butterflies, these spots look like big eyes to scare off predators, he notes.
But on a big animal, it could be a message to “others of their own species, such as in courtship or challenging each other during sparring matches — things like that. We see modern animals using colour very strongly for communication in such ways today.”
Canada Post approached Csotonyi and Mallon a year ago. It wanted dinosaurs with Canadian connections.
Mallon says his work as the supervisor of scientific details was “a cinch” because Csotonyi is a world-renowned dinosaur expert already.
And the artist got some leeway, especially in colours.
“We don’t really know what colour they were,” Mallon said, “and that’s where the artist’s imagination can take over. ”
The group also includes Ornithomimus edmontonicus, known to have long arm feathers, and plant-eating Euoplocephalus tutus, with its club-shaped tail.
The Ornithomimus edmontonicus stamp.
The Tylosaurus pembinensis stamp
The Tyrannosaur rex stamp
The Chasmosaurus belli stamp
tspears@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
“You can think of some of these predators as maybe even playful in some cases,” Julius Csotonyi says.
Like modern predators, did they play-fight when they were young? Did they have periods of docile behaviour when they weren’t hunting?
Csotonyi thinks there’s a good chance they did.
“I love to imagine what it would be like to stand there and see all of this happening, … to be out in a forest and see these things living just like today’s animals,” he said.
Csotonyi, a British Columbia artist who specializes in Earth’s distant past, and dinosaur scientist Jordan Mallon will give a public presentation about their roles in creating the group of dino-stamps Thursday at 6:30 p.m. It’s at the Canadian Museum of Nature, where Mallon is on staff. Admission is free and the event is geared to children.
This won’t be a formal, sit-down lecture, but rather an unveiling of the art in the stamps (big pictures, not stamp sized), with explanations from the experts. They will have some fossils on hand at well.
Csotonyi’s favourites from the stamp group are Tyrannosaurus rex and Tylosaurus pembinensis, a big marine reptile that once swam in the shallow sea that once filled central North America.
The overall shape of all these ancient animals is well known, he said, but the colour involves some guesswork. For instance, he has spots like giant eyes on the “frill” over the head of a chasmosaur.
On small animals like butterflies, these spots look like big eyes to scare off predators, he notes.
But on a big animal, it could be a message to “others of their own species, such as in courtship or challenging each other during sparring matches — things like that. We see modern animals using colour very strongly for communication in such ways today.”
Canada Post approached Csotonyi and Mallon a year ago. It wanted dinosaurs with Canadian connections.
Mallon says his work as the supervisor of scientific details was “a cinch” because Csotonyi is a world-renowned dinosaur expert already.
And the artist got some leeway, especially in colours.
“We don’t really know what colour they were,” Mallon said, “and that’s where the artist’s imagination can take over. ”
The group also includes Ornithomimus edmontonicus, known to have long arm feathers, and plant-eating Euoplocephalus tutus, with its club-shaped tail.
The Ornithomimus edmontonicus stamp.
The Tylosaurus pembinensis stamp
The Tyrannosaur rex stamp
The Chasmosaurus belli stamp
tspears@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/TomSpears1
查看原文...
