This is Bird Note.

Julia D'allivera is a paleo artist.

That means she brings extinct species to life in her artwork.

For each project, she learns everything she can about the species

to come up with a realistic portrait.

Color is not usually preserved, so we do have to gather information about its environment

of its biological niche.

Like, was it a predator? Did it live in open areas or in woodlands?

Because it all influences color.

And she includes the landscape, the plants, and other animals in her final illustration of the species.

When Julia recreates pterosaurs, an extinct group of flying reptiles,

modern birds help her imagine how they might have looked.

Like birds, pterosaurs may have had brightly colored bodies to help attract mates.

A lot of my reference material for reconstructing the tissues, the face tissues, are from birds, from living birds.

If we look closely, we see a lot of things we see in the fossil record in living animals.

So they were probably a lot like our living animals. So they were probably a lot like our living animals.

Julia hopes her paleo art offers something different from the grotesque versions of dinosaurs

and movies she remembers from growing up.

We had a lot of paleo art that portrayed extinct animals as monsters, and the Earth was just a monster show.

It was not. It was our planet, but with different creatures, and these creatures were regular creatures.

See some of Julia's amazing paleo art on our website, birdnote.org.

I'm Connor Gehran.

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