This is a transcript of Episode 45
Alyssa Fjeld (00:24)
Hello and welcome to yet another episode of Fossils and Fiction. Today we’re going to be discussing two awesome new papers that have come out about early amniote tracks, as well as the Gondwanan origins and evolutions of megaratoran dinosaurs.
We’re also going to be interviewing a really special member of our paleontological community, James Pascoe, who you may know from his fantastic dioramas and incorrigibly positive attitude. All right.
Travis Holland (00:48)
incorrigibly
positive. love that. I love that introduction to James, which we’ll, which we’ll get to, but we have to acknowledge we’ve had a little bit of a, an episode gap, Alyssa, because I think both of us had a little bit of sickness, a little bit of travel. Things are just getting in the way, but it’s also allowing us to line up some really cool things coming down the pipeline for the next half of the year. So I’m looking forward to that. I hope you are too.
Alyssa Fjeld (01:11)
That’s exactly right. Stay tuned for some really cool developments coming soon.
Travis Holland (01:16)
Let’s dive into Paleo Pulse then.
Alyssa Fjeld (01:18)
I’m really excited about the first paper we’re talking about today. It’s a John Long paper, John Long being one of the curators of the GoGo formation and expert in all things fishy and Gondwanan. This new paper discusses one of the earliest trackways that we’ve ever discovered for an early tetrapod. This analysis of the new trackway from Victoria, which is just up the field or just up the road in Mansfield, demonstrates that amniotes
which are a group of animals that today include modern birds, mammals, and reptiles, originated much earlier than we may have thought, based on the way that these trackways appear in this deposit up in Mansfield.
Travis Holland (01:57)
my understanding is that the previous oldest fossil record of reptiles is based on footprints and bones from North America and Europe. And I think the European ones go to about 318 million years old, but this new…
Australian discovery puts reptiles or reptile-like creatures at least in Australia in Gondwana at that point at around 359 to 350 million years ago. So substantially older than the previous record.
Alyssa Fjeld (02:29)
That’s right. it’s, I mean, it’s fascinating just how much we’re learning about the Gondwanan deposits. Gondwana being the landmass other than Laresia that eventually made it Pangea, but was much closer to our neck of the woods down here in the Southern Hemisphere, but included continents like Africa, Antarctica, and Australia. Areas that historically haven’t seen as much paleontological attention.
but are now showing us all sorts of things that are challenging assumptions we had previously made about the early arising and divergence of these groups. This trackway is especially interesting because it’s showing differences in gait that we wouldn’t expect to see if this wasn’t a more basal ancestor. And when we’re looking at this time frame, I mean, the Devonian is, we’re talking 300 million years ago. This is while we still had radiodonts living in the world, it’s
an incredibly interesting early divergence that I wouldn’t have expected to see. Certainly not in our backyard in Victoria. I guess when I think about the fishy deposits we have here, I’m thinking about Canowindra or the Go Go formation up in WA. So it was surprising to learn that we had something this rare, just hiding up in East Melbourne.
Travis Holland (03:36)
the Devonian period, as you mentioned, is known as the age of fishes. that kind of is because what was, that was the dominant life form. But suddenly we have tetrapods emerging potentially toward the end of that period, which is really exciting. These are our ancestors, right?
Alyssa Fjeld (03:51)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, know, fish is diversified rapidly and extensively during the Devonian period, taking on all sorts of new shapes, forming organ arrangements that would be more familiar to us today. And I guess it’s not as surprising as we learn more about this time period that we would see something that’s more closely related to our ancestors showing up at the same time. But it does blow my mind a little bit to think about
something in our lineage getting to meet like the giant Eurypterid friends and aww I don’t know dunkleosteus snacking on our great great granddad. She’s pushing my stuffed animal out of her basket.
Travis Holland (04:24)
Wait. ⁓
I can see that, yeah. So
if you’re listening to the audio version as Alyssa’s been talking, her cat is evicting an emanite.
Alyssa Fjeld (04:36)
Yes, just for James.
James, I’m sorry, my cat did not approve of your stuffed toy representation. She’s asserting the tetrapod dominance is what it is.
Travis Holland (04:44)
⁓ out of her cat’s hill.
Yeah. It’s pretty, yeah, the cat is playing into the discussion here. Tetrapod dominance over the invertebrates.
Alyssa Fjeld (04:52)
.
When I say she can’t understand my English, she chooses not to.
Travis Holland (05:00)
The second paper
is also really exciting. This is by a group of researchers led by Morrison but it includes Colin Boisvert who we have interviewed previously on the podcast. And it’s called Rise of the King: Gondwanan Origins and Evolution of the Megaraptoran Dinosaurs. It’s like got two separate thrusts
one is that mega raptor and dinosaurs were spread across both the Northern and Southern super continents, Laurasia and Gondwana, that they spread from Laurasia Southwood. So they probably did not arise in Australia, which kind of relates back to Jake Kotevski’s paper that we previously talked about. That notes some similarities between the Asian and Australian taxa of those mega raptor and dinosaurs.
But then the paper goes to a different direction and says that the direct ancestors of Tyrannosaurus migrated from Asia to North America. so it’s been it’s been kind of talked about as if Tyrannosaurus came from Asia. But what they’re saying is Tyrannosaurus itself arose in North America. But this kind of confirms or adds to the weight of evidence suggesting that its ancestors came from Asia. So it’s essentially about the spread of these large theropod dinosaurs, Megaraptorans and Tyrannosaurs throughout the world.
in that Cretaceous period.
Alyssa Fjeld (06:12)
It’s fascinating to see, and shout out to Colin for getting that published. That’s so lovely. And it’s always good to see a guest of the podcast doing well. And speaking of, Jake Kotevski I know is working on quite a complex phylogenetic analysis of megaraptorans for a paper that he’s putting out hopefully soon. Good luck to Jake with that work. But my take away from having chats with him has been that…
It is very difficult to do these kinds of phylogenetic comparisons with mega raptors because a lot of the time you don’t have particularly complete material from our neck of the woods. And the pieces that we do have here are different from the bits that tend to get preserved in other parts of the world. you know, Jake would have to clarify here, but I’m pretty sure what he was saying was that in South America we tend to find vertebral material as opposed to like digital material. So like the digits and that’s…
not necessarily what we find here in Australia, so it is a little bit difficult to kind of untangle these origins. I mean, that would seem to be where the research is headed with mega raptors, from my understanding is that we’re trying to figure out where they’ve diverged it. I think it would make sense because it seems to me like mega raptors do have this extensive history, not just in Australia, but…
It’s really exciting to learn about and I am afraid of putting my foot in a little here but you know I think that broadly would agree with what Jake is saying and what Jake is seeing and just kind of what the megaraptor community is up to these days.
Travis Holland (07:35)
mega raptor community. think that sounds like like a boy band to be honest.
Alyssa Fjeld (07:39)
I think it sounds
like, you know, like Tobias Funke getting up and saying, there’s dozens of us, dozens!
Travis Holland (07:45)
Let’s not follow the Tobias Funke path too much. He’s a bit of a weird dude.
Alyssa Fjeld (07:49)
No, true. I think
they’re much more socially adept than that.
No, it’s really interesting. And it would be interesting to get a bit more paleontological climate data, seeing whether that would also back up some of these assertions as well. So I think there’s a lot of really exciting research to be continued on from here. And hopefully the discoveries of new material and the work that Jake has in the pipeline will also give us a little bit more insight into these things. if suppose Jake or Colin would like to talk more about mega raptors, we are more than happy to listen and
I am personally more than happy to kowtow to whatever I’ve gotten wrong in this.
Travis Holland (08:22)
It’s interesting you mentioned climate though, because in that paper, they originally set out to test whether climate influenced gigantism in those two clades. And they found that that wasn’t supported, but they figured that some changes in the late Cretaceous may have had an influence on the way they evolved and I guess became dominant, the dominant predators. Right? So what we’re really talking about is the dominant in the late Cretaceous, the dominant theropod predators in both Laurasia and Gondwana or both.
Alyssa Fjeld (08:30)
Right.
Travis Holland (08:52)
the Southern continents and the Northern continents, cause they had split a bit more by that point, but yeah, they, certainly climate played a part, not necessarily an influencing gigantism, maybe more in clearing the way, you know, maybe I think some of those climate shifts had a, had an effect of getting rid of some competitors, perhaps, you know, that’s certainly how I read that paper. So it’s also quite good at, it’s a good kind of on a meta level. It’s a good commentary on.
how to do science that even if you don’t come up with the findings you want, you can still produce a brilliant paper that shows some really cool stuff.
Alyssa Fjeld (09:23)
I mean, it’s hard in paleo to go in without some level of assumption being made about what you’re looking at or what you’re hoping to find because paleontology is a discipline that assumes a lot just by virtue of the way that we have to do the research we’re doing. And they’re not uneducated guesses. They’re guesses based in chemistry and geology and what we know about modern animals. But I think that there isn’t enough discussion in our spaces about what happens when you do run into a situation like that where
you’ve encountered something that is not even a negative finding, but inconclusive. That’s what we all really live in fear of is that there’s some indeterminacy in what we’ve looked at. But yeah, absolutely. There’s always something to be learned from the results and the data that you have. And while I do wish that we were able to publish more findings saying, we looked at this and it didn’t really seem like it was anything without having to add on
something more positive to that argument. I do think it’s incredible that Colin was able to, and the rest of the research team were able to power through that and look at the data in a different way and find something really cool to share with us. Props to them.
Travis Holland (10:27)
I certainly learned a lot from both papers. Both, and the reason we kind of wanted to pair them together, I guess, is because both show the divergence and spread of particular species at particular times. And both of those have obviously influenced substantially the way that our planet looks now. So, you know, I think they, really complimentary papers will have links to both of them in the show notes if you want to look them up, but a really interesting research happening in paleo at the moment.
Alyssa Fjeld (10:51)
Yeah, and especially Gondwanan and paleo like I do, you know, I think it’s also important to highlight just how much is getting done in regards to groups that we have here in Australia. It’s a really bright and up and coming field. It makes me feel very optimistic.
Travis Holland (11:06)
On now to our feature interview with James Pascoe, a wonderful, very supportive guy from Wales who is also quite the paleo artist, even though I think it’s not a title that he’s quite willing to embrace. We had a really good time chatting with James and I hope you enjoy the interview.
Travis (11:27)
We’re sitting down with James Pascoe today. James tells me he’s not in the field, he’s not an artist, and yet he’s quite a good paleo artist. So James, tell me how dinosaurs have shaped your life.
James Pascoe (11:37)
you
Thank you. Yeah, they’re pretty much some of my oldest memories are dinosaurs. I can remember seeing the dinosaurs of China exhibition in the National Museum Wales and I must have been three or four. So that is 40 years ago, four decades and I can remember seeing them. I can remember the newspaper coverage of Baryonyx being found and the paper with the picture of the big claw. They’re like my
Travis (11:45)
Mm-hmm.
James Pascoe (12:07)
earliest childhood memories if it’s not transformers it’s going to be dinosaurs so they’ve always been with me and I always wanted to be a paleontologist they’ve always fascinated me I couldn’t be one because it turns out I’m not very academic so university did not work out in terms of becoming an academic scientist there in any way but they’ve always caught my interest and it’s it’s never gone it’s a 40 year now
sort of love affair with the past and prehistory. And they’re amazing. They always excite me. I’m never not excited to see them. So.
Travis (12:45)
Look, being an academic is overrated anyway. And I found I’m similar, right? I wanted to be a paleontologist. And then I found the math was no good. I was, was never going to get there because of the math. So I ended up just sticking with the English stuff and here I am. So it works out. Whatever path people take is okay. But you’re involved in the Lymery just fossil festival as well. So these are some of the ways that you’ve started to.
James Pascoe (12:48)
You
You
Travis (13:12)
know, maybe crowbar open that door a little bit.
James Pascoe (13:14)
Yeah, I joke that they leave the door open a little bit and I sneak through or they leave a window open and I’ll just make my way through it. so Lyme Regis is amazing. It is the biggest paleontological event in the UK. So we had like over 20,000 people last year. And this time I’m basically helping to run the Paleo Art Workshop. So we’ve got a load of artists doing events and teaching people to paint, to draw, to sculpt, clap.
Travis (13:34)
Awesome.
James Pascoe (13:40)
There’s loads of different things going on and there’s also a load of artists and creatives who are selling and demonstrating their materials and their work as well and it’s absolutely amazing. had incredibly fun time doing it last year where I got to teach people to paint pliosaurs and this year I’m basically going to be running around helping people, keeping that going, just basically supervising that entire wonderful event of paleontological
creativity for two days and it’s absolutely amazing.
Alyssa Fjeld (14:08)
I’m really interested in asking James a little bit more about the art that he does in terms of these dioramas. I think that was one of the first things that I really noticed about James’s art and his presence online are these fabulous dioramas that James makes using 3D models of dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. And I’m just really curious how you got started with that sort of thing.
how you find it in terms of paleo art as I’m sure it comes with its own unique challenges in terms of representing the scenes, creating holistic environments, and making your own trade-offs between creative interpretation and accuracy to the regions that you depict.
James Pascoe (14:42)
Yeah, so many years ago I saw an artist called Paul Glynn who was a wonderful Irish polymath creative powerhouse. He’s a sculptor, he’s a painter, he’s just a wonderful man and he had some displays at Darren Naish’s TetZooCon and they weren’t the usual yellow scrub, broken tree, dusty, tripodal dinosaur. They were just absolutely rich with life and you had
everything that you see in a real forest. looked alive. An animal could conceivably live there and that stayed in my head for years. And then a few years later on I was like I like I like making models. I can paint. I can sculpt. Why not have a go at this because I dabbled in making some little fridge magnets for my friends and things like that so I just thought I’ll have a go at that.
So I did and the first couple of times I’d repaint some toys and you know, there’s some very good toys on the market and they were pretty good. And then I kind of thought, well, I should probably do this, you know, seriously. So then I started looking into things like 3D printing, looking at sculptors that I knew. I started talking to some of the scientists that I’m friends with and lucky enough to know a load of artists and say, is this an accurate representation of the animal? And it…
Didn’t so much get worse, it got better and better because suddenly I was like, okay, so I need an iguanodon. I had to wait three years to get a good iguanodon because every time I find one, like somebody I know who works on it would be like, no, that’s not quite right. And I’d be like, okay. So I had to wait and wait and wait. So the process just kind of became this start with a toy and repaint it, find a couple of models and repaint that. And then suddenly it got to the point where I was like,
Well, I need to look at the geology. I need to look at the paleobotany. I need to look at everything to make it plausible, but also accessible because I don’t want it to be a sterile environment. So there’s always water in my displays. There’s always the elements of life because I want to bring the past to life. And I never wanted to have that kind of barren scrubland where you wouldn’t have anything living. So I always put lots of plants and lots of life into it.
It’s been really fantastic because I’ve got to know loads of different sculptors and painters. I get to talk to various people I know who are artists and creatives and kind of go, what do you think? And it just blends it all together. I don’t really sort of copy any particular artist. I’ve got some inspirations, but a lot of it just kind of takes bits and pieces from everyone I know, smash it all together and then kind of go, how am I going to do it? Because I’m not a…
If I close my eyes, I don’t have an internal monologue. can’t visualize things. So for the exhibition I was at a couple of weeks ago, I was literally sat on the floor with all the dinosaurs and the displays, picking them up and putting them on the thin like a child, trying to work out how to tell the best story because I hadn’t actually worked out where they were going to go until the day of the exhibition. Because in my head, I hadn’t had the chance to put everything together and go, see, put the little one here. That tells a better story because they’re doing this. And I these ones here. So.
It’s very loose. The science and the research is quite disciplined, but the actual storytelling and the narrative, that is pure Welsh creativity. And I pretty much make it up as I go along. So I will be there going, I’ll put this here, that tells the story of this. And if I do this, well, that would make sense to me. And then I’ll bounce that off somebody who knows better. So I’ve been doing a lot of sauropods recently and I was painting lots of scars on their heads.
because in my head I was like, they’re ramming their heads into these trees which are really sharp and full of branches and then ripping them out. they’re gonna get little nicks and they’re gonna get little cuts. So it’s like little things like that where I don’t know if that’s plausible, but it made sense to me to help tell the story. And that’s been two or three years of doing this now. And I’ve got more to do, but I just finished like the largest set of displays I…
I suspect I’ll probably ever do for the sake of my kitchen. But yeah, they were very, very large. So it’s nice to have some flat surfaces back.
Travis (18:41)
So what do you do with some of these dioramas? You take them to shows and put them on exhibit places. Where do you kind of bring them out to the public?
James Pascoe (18:50)
So the the current ones I have I’ve got four of them in Southampton as part of an exhibition done by Professor Neil Gostling so they are basically there to bring the prehistoric past of England to life so they’re on display in this wonderful building. I’ve got a couple of them in the Lyme Regis Museum which I did for the event last year and I’ll probably bring those back up this year because they were basically done to honor sort of Mary Anning.
I’ve done a couple for some scientists that I know. Some of them I just end up donating. So if I finish a project and I don’t have the space to store them, so I usually be like, well, does anybody want this? So ideally my goal is just to get as many of these as I can in museums so people can look at them, people can interact with them. I want to ideally just kind of help bring the past to life and just update some of the visions of what they look like as well. Because some of the models in museums are
hundreds of years old, they’re absolutely beautiful. But if you can have that model next to like the cutting edge modern model, you can tell that story. And that’s one of the things I really love to do with them is just have them sort of juxtaposed with kind of classic depictions. And ideally, like, I would love to just have as much outreach in anywhere I can, schools, museums, anywhere people can learn and get excited about them. I’d love to have them there. That’s kind of my…
dream would be just to have as many of these and as many places as can just to kind of bring the past to life.
Travis (20:12)
Are these your main form of paleo art? So again, you said to me, prior to recording, I don’t feel like I’m an artist. I think this is a clearly a form of art for you. Is this your kind of main creativity, your main way of engaging with dinosaurs?
James Pascoe (20:27)
Yeah, I tried to draw but I’m not very good at it and it doesn’t help when a lot of your friends are like, you know, if your friends are like Luis Rey and you try and draw and you go, they’re setting a pretty high bar here. So a lot of my friends who are paleo artists, we all kind of look at ourselves and go, are we really artists or are we just drawing dinosaurs and having a lot of fun? So this is my main creative thing. I like to talk about them.
So for me, the storytelling in my displays lets me talk to people about what I’ve done. So if I’m at an event, I’m not going to ever be behind a table. I’m always moving, I’m always engaging with people. I will walk around carrying them if I have to. But as a visual medium, this is probably the best thing I do for paleo. And then you need to talk about them and just basically break down those barriers and get kids involved, let people know that you can do this.
Travis (21:16)
Mm-hmm.
James Pascoe (21:17)
If you’ve got a 3D printer, can print off a super accurate skull. That is, you you’re not going to be to get the chance to go to that museum and see it, but you can print that off and have it yourself. Things like that are absolutely wonderful. And that’s probably the element that I’m most involved with. And again, I happen to know a lot of people in that industry. I’m, there’s a lot of sculptors and designers I talk to pretty much every day in terms of like, I’ve seen this file and this is fantastic. So.
that it’s a very supportive network. So we might not think of ourselves as artists. Maker is probably the term I use the most, just because I think it covers all the different elements to it. But yeah, it’s also kind of a healthy appreciation of I’m not a professional artist. This is my midlife crisis and I’m very much enjoying it at the moment.
Alyssa Fjeld (22:02)
It strikes me as being very similar almost to mini painting in the D&D and Warhammer community, but also, I mean, I speak selfishly as somebody who does Gundam building. You know, it’s that same impulse of play, I think that’s really important. I think it’s really cool. And I think there’s definitely a lot of people in paleo who enjoy that kind of hands-on participation in the field. ⁓
James Pascoe (22:24)
Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Fjeld (22:27)
Yeah, so are there any particular time periods or you said you involve a lot of water in your displays, but are there any other common elements that you find yourself drawn to time and time again when you’re making the dioramas?
James Pascoe (22:40)
So for my sins, although I wasn’t a very good geology student, really was not very good. I like to get the geology of the area right. So I try to look at it and go, what was the conditions like? I’ll talk to friends who are paleobotanists. I’ll do a lot of research. So I like the environments to be plausible. I keep going back to the Wielden, because my favorite dinosaur is Baryonix. So for some reason,
A lot of people want me to do stuff luckily in the element where I find most of my favourite dinosaurs happen to be. I actually haven’t done any Welsh dinosaurs yet, which people keep telling me, you should go and do some ones for like Wales. And I’m like, I will. It’s just no one’s asked me to do it yet. So it’s working all the way through the schedule. So I tend to go for a lot of periods. A lot is Cretaceous. I’d love to do some stuff for like, I’d like to do more Jurassic stuff. It’s the cliche, most of the…
Alyssa Fjeld (23:19)
.
James Pascoe (23:30)
big popular animals are Cretaceous. So I’ve done a lot of stuff there. I’d love to do more stuff with sauropods. So this year I got to finally paint some sauropods and they’re even a small 1.35 scale sauropod is like a foot and a half long. So that’s really tempting although storing them is a pain because they’re like this big. And in the water stuff.
I love modeling with resin and things like waves and effects that you can do. I’m definitely going to be doing some more stuff with that. Marine Reptiles kind of is where I started the whole paint a plier sort of thing that led to me on this crazy path making fridge magnets for my friends. So I’ll definitely be back in the Marine realm. I am working on a couple of secret things for that. They’ll be revealed at Lyme Regis. So there’s some fun stuff going on there as well.
Alyssa Fjeld (24:25)
That’s so cool to hear. I personally feel that Wales should consider changing its dragon to one of the lovely dinosaurs that you find there. I think that would be pretty spectacular.
James Pascoe (24:35)
You
Travis (24:35)
You could be, you could be mugged if you say that Cardiff.
Alyssa Fjeld (24:39)
They’ll say it in a language I don’t understand and I’ll get away very quickly.
Travis (24:43)
There’s something about paleontology is it’s a science where art has gone hand in hand with the science for, well, since the founding of it really, since dinosaurs and since other aspects of paleontology sort of became a thing, became a public knowledge. What other paleo artists out there inspire you?
James Pascoe (25:03)
Straight off the bat, Luis Rey The fact that I wake up every day and Luis Rey knows who I am and is a friend. There is a 10 year old version of me that just goes, what is my life? I remember taking his art books out of like libraries, looking at them and just marveling at the color and the passion in his art. now, like sometimes I’ll say, don’t meet your heroes.
I have had the joy of meeting Luis on several occasions and he is an absolutely incredible man. He inspires me every day. I might not paint quite as colourfully as he does, because nobody can, but he is an inspiration and a hero. Bob Nichols is a Bristol based paleo artist. He’s been super kind to me. He does incredible sculpting. He does life-sized replicas.
Alyssa Fjeld (25:36)
you
James Pascoe (25:49)
Just a wonderful talent and just a lovely kind person to talk to when I get to see them at events. They’re very big inspirations just because of the nature of what they’ve done. They’re also sculptors and painters. They work in three dimensions as well. There’s almost too many to list but if I’m sort of looking at various things for like what I’ve been doing at the moment.
even things like just the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, like I got to see those for the first time. I was blown away. For 40 years, I’d never seen them. I’d always seen them in books, but just going to see those life-sized and going, these are amazing. I had to take my friends there. As soon as I saw them, was like, we’re all going to go see these right now. When can we all go to London and go see them? And we’re gonna go back there. even sort of seeing like…
dinosaur parks and things like that. I love seeing things life-size. I like to work in small scale because painting large dinosaurs would take a very long time and there’s airbrushes and stuff. But like for me, I’ll draw inspiration from as many different things as I can. And there’s so many young, like up and coming paleo artists that I’ll just, I’ll see their work and the community of model makers is so open that there’s like a, I’ll see like a picture and go.
really cool so I’m gonna go and do that so there’s everybody helps everybody else like almost every post would be like that’s really fantastic how would you do that so I’d be here for hours just listening to all the people who helped me but Luis Rey, Bob Nichols, Paul Glynn is where it all started just seeing his things there and at the moment I’ve got a lot of my friends I’ll bounce ideas off so some of them aren’t necessarily artists
but it’s just having those people you can go, would this be plausible? Or what do think this would look like? then feeding that back into the process. I usually joke, if I do something and nobody tells me it’s wrong, I just look at the people liking the post and I go, well, if it was wrong, he’d tell me. So it’s probably okay.
Travis (27:42)
Yeah.
That’s a perfect segue into the next thing I’m interested in, which is what’s been the reception with some of the kind of actual paleontologists, the academic paleontologists or the researchers that you’ve come into contact with through this work.
James Pascoe (27:54)
It’s been really positive. recently, the doing dinosaurs for an exhibit where the authors who worked on the paper of that dinosaur, that was a little bit of pressure. So Riparovenator and those dinosaurs were literally found a couple of years ago. So I had to paint some of those up and I got to sort of go up to Neil and Chris Barker and Darren Naish
this is the dinosaur that I’ve done based on your paper and they’ve always been incredibly supportive. So that’s been quite nice. And for some people who kind of don’t do three dimensional art, like I did a display based on Gabriel Ugueto’s art a couple of years ago and putting that into three dimensions and he was super supportive about it. So it’s been incredibly positive.
I’ve got a couple of pictures of various leading paleontologists holding up models like this and pointing at them smiling. So I think it’s quite nice because again, it’s a slightly different take on maybe what they would have done. And with the advent of 3D printing, there is a lot of people I know who are scientists who are printing off their own models. They’re getting involved with that as well, which is quite lovely because you can physically, tactically engage with that sort of stuff as well.
And I’d like to do more. Like my dream would be when you do a paper with a press release, I’d love a 3D model because the artwork is lovely, but I would really love it if we could have like, here’s the press release and here is a 3D display of the publication featured animals. That’s the pipe dream, but that would be like absolutely wonderful. no, it’s been pretty nicely received. I Lyme Regis last year, painting a pterosaur,
Travis (29:23)
Yeah.
James Pascoe (29:31)
where Mary Anning lived and painting ichthyosaurs for the museum where Mary Anning lived, that felt a little bit of pressure as well, just for kind of like, I’ve got to get this right. And it was incredibly well received. it’s, everyone’s just been super kind and really supportive, which as somebody who really prides himself and being open and engaging and, you know, genuinely, I want to bring people in, having that kind of response has been wonderful just because.
kind of makes me feel I’m doing the right things with this.
Travis (29:58)
I love the idea of you have a press release announcing the publication of a new species and in addition to fantastic commissioned artwork of it, you have a download the OPL file to print it as well. That’d be great.
Alyssa Fjeld (30:17)
Astrid
James Pascoe (30:17)
Just put. Yeah.
Alyssa Fjeld (30:17)
would be over the moon.
Travis (30:20)
I was
thinking there’s a few people we know who would like that.
James Pascoe (30:23)
You
Alyssa Fjeld (30:23)
Yeah.
It just takes that whole step of contacting the researcher and asking for the scan out of the equation, which is a little bit sad because I do like sending that question. But no, I think it’s really interesting. What is your advice for somebody who might be interested in doing what you do? Like there are a lot of young people starting out in paleo in this kind of space.
where they’re interested in the models, they’re buying the PNSO stuff. Do you have any advice for them getting started, how to work with these 3D printers, what paints work best, anything like that?
James Pascoe (30:56)
So for me, I’ve scaled this advice over the last couple of years. like you could be a small child and go buy a toy dinosaur and repaint it. You are now a paleo artist. Yes. So you can start painting dinosaur toys. There’s really good, really affordable, know, very, very plausibly sculpted dinosaur toys that you can go and paint. And you can use, you know, arguably.
how much you’re to handle them you can use almost any paint I know people who work with oil paints, acrylic paints, I don’t have an airbrush I am strictly a I have a stick with hair on the end of it I have sponges but there’s people who do fantastic stuff with airbrushes but to me that’s that’s a barrier to entry so I am a much bigger proponent of you can go and get a toy dinosaur and some paints and you can paint it however you want to do it you can make it you know you can refine the existing pattern you can add your own colors to it
3D printing is fantastic because it just opens up a world of possibilities. So suddenly, like even really obscure species will often have somebody go in, that’s my favorite animal, I’m gonna make it. And then I’m gonna make the file available so everybody else can share my joy. And some of them are absolutely brilliant. So I would say if you want to do things like this, there are loads of different sources where you can get very solid, very realistic 3D prints.
There’s loads of manufacturers making great toys that you can repaint. You can even repaint action figures. know, if you get a Jurassic Park toy and you want to repaint that, if you’re a little kid, brilliant, because you can make it your own. You can make your own color scheme. can then start telling that story of why they are that color. Model railway shops, incredible source of inspiration, but they’ve got foliage. They’ve got basic materials. They’ve got all the stuff you need to make your own things.
I love going to art shops. If I’m in any city, I will find the art shops and the model railway shops and usually sneak some things in my bag that I wasn’t meant to buy and then add them to my displays as I go along. So anywhere that is sort of creativity, anywhere where you’re kind of creating your own things, I really like doing that. You don’t need to be like a high-end modeling professional with decades of experience to paint a toy dinosaur. You can just get a paintbrush and some paint. It is that simple.
And then if you want to push it a little bit further, there’s some really supportive communities out there. Like, as you’re probably seeing on my Instagram, there are so many artists making these incredible displays and they’re like, where’d you get those trees? Oh, I got them from here. How’d you do that? I got them from here. Everyone’s really open in terms of what they are using and how they can get hold of it. And that sort of inclusivity about it all is really, really fun. So have fun with it.
whatever place you can get your paints, whatever place you can get your models on. Does it have to be cutting edge 3D prints, literally scanned from the very specimen? Or can it be like a really rubbish slurper saw toy that you get in the bargain bin? Both those things are wonderful because you’re going to learn from both of them differently. I just want to encourage people to paint and to have fun with it. there’s obviously there’s some people I’ve been helped by in terms of their sculpting. So
A lot of the stuff I work with is by a company called Dino and Dog and they do really fantastic sculpts. These are beautiful. So almost all the stuff I do that you’ll see on my displays is from them and you can get them in a couple of different ways. They’ve got a tribe on my mini factory, things like that. So there’s lots of people out there you can get these things from. And what I like about them is that I will then send those pictures to paleontologists and they’ll go, yep, that’s spot on. And I’m like, wicked. That’s what I’m going to use them.
So they were super happy to have pictures of their models with various people they’ve looked up to as well. So yeah, just go and do it is usually my advice. Just don’t overthink it. If you want to get a toy, get a toy. you’ve got a 3D printer, print them off. Maybe not life size, work your way up. And then just enjoy it basically. There is no, it’s all informed speculation. So if you think your dinosaur is going to be pink with blue spots, great.
Alyssa Fjeld (34:41)
you
James Pascoe (34:51)
Enjoy it. It’s speculation. Enjoy the process, learn from it and then keep doing it and just keep smiling and keep having fun with it.
Travis (34:58)
That’s, I think that’s such great advice. And I get from you that you have a real sense of satisfaction from producing the pieces, but also from showing them off. And I think in particular from engaging with maybe with kids, but with any audience members, you know, I’ve done Lego displays and I love hiding little details in there for kids to come and really get into and spend 20 minutes trying to find everything. Is that…
Is that aspect of that engagement something that you’re really enjoying?
James Pascoe (35:30)
Yeah, I very much like to hide Easter eggs into the displays that I make. Not literally because of the timeframe, but yeah, so putting those things in where if you look closely, you’ll see things. So a couple of years ago for TetZooCon I did a display that had a baryonyx and a polycanthus squaring off. And if you look at it from one angle, it was the classic big scary predator roaring at the angry herbivore, stomping its way in. But if you walk around the other side,
Alyssa Fjeld (35:37)
you
James Pascoe (35:58)
the baryonyx is standing over its nest. It’s defending its soon to be born children from the big, heavy, clumsy polycanthus that’s just gonna walk straight over all of it because it doesn’t care. So depending how you looked at that particular display, you’d either see a caring parent or you’d see like an angry roaring predator. I like to do little things like that. So I did some turtles on the display for Southampton and
You can probably guess where this is going. Some of them were red, some of them were purple, some of them had little hints of orange. I like to put little nods to things so that if you pay attention, you go, yeah, I did do that. There’s little hearts on some of the sauropods that I painted because you put a lot of love into these projects. So if you look super closely and go, is that a heart? That’s a heart because you put yourself into these projects. So little things like that where, know, people goes, did you do it because of this? Yeah, yeah, I did.
And that is amazing because usually it’s the little kids who spot these things and then go, you did that? like, I did. You worked it out. And then they feel this incredible sense of joy because those little details really matter. And they just help tell a story. So I love doing that. I’m really glad to hear that you do that too, because it is absolutely one of my favorite things is to sneak those little bits and pieces in there for the stuff I did for Neil.
Travis (36:56)
Yeah.
James Pascoe (37:13)
people realized about a month into the project that I based one entire scene on the display from Walking with Dinosaurs. Because they’re like, that looks exactly like Walking with Dinosaurs. I’m like, that was the goal. That’s why it was a really yellow board of all this foliage because I was like, it’s the Wealden What’s the most classic depiction of the Wealden in pop culture? Walking with Dinosaurs and I didn’t have teleporting utahraptors, so I did have to draw the line somewhere. I do live with Doctor Who is, but I didn’t have any time travel.
But I very much wanted the homage of that, so when it was all together, people were going, that looks exactly like that. And I’m like, yes. And then that kind of kicks off more styles with people of my age. Whereas if you’re a little bit younger, there’s little references in there. So I love doing that because it also keeps the project exciting because if you go in and doing 50 dinosaurs, there’s a little nod or a little, just a little trick to kind of keep your enthusiasm and passion going, whether it’s painting hearts or.
even just kind of hiding a little turtle away or sculpting some little rodents and putting them in a little burrow. It all just helps tell the story and if you get time to look at it you go, I saw that, didn’t see that, have to go back and look again.
Alyssa Fjeld (38:20)
Okay.
Travis (38:21)
one thing you can really play with is levels, right, for kids because obviously adults come along and look at something top down or quite often if it’s on a waist height table. But kids are seeing it at a whole different angle and you can really play with some fun stuff for kids.
James Pascoe (38:35)
Yeah. At the launch event in Southampton, a little kid saw the fish in the water because they were tall enough to be able to see the fins just poking out. And they’re like, that a fish? And I was like, it was a fish. It was like, no one else has seen them. like, no, you’re the first person to notice them. And that pride that they have, they’re like, oh, I’ve spotted it. And we had a wonderful chat about baryonyx and fishing and things like that. I love doing those little things. Like you said, you’ve got to scale it for different heights.
Travis (38:45)
Mm-hmm.
Alyssa Fjeld (38:48)
Thank
James Pascoe (39:03)
because your audience can be very tall. I’m not a particularly tall individual, so I can usually get the child eye quite nicely just by crouching a little bit. But you want to make sure there’s a visual read from above, even underneath. If you’re looking up at something, even on a small scale, you want to make sure that there’s interesting patterns on the belly. You can’t let it glide to paint it because someone’s going to notice it.
Alyssa Fjeld (39:24)
I think some of the best children’s museums I’ve been to have definitely had this level of dynamic interaction where the kids can kind of, even unguided, get this story out of it and then turn to their classmates and have a discussion about it where the two of them observe different things within the same display. I think that’s really good for kids too.
Travis (39:24)
to you tonight.
Do you want to give us the details of the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival and your workshop again, James?
James Pascoe (39:47)
Yep, so it’s going to be the 14th and the 15th of June. We are going to be in the hub, so basically all of the artists who are doing painting workshops, sculpting workshops, colouring workshops, we’re going to be there on the Saturday and the Sunday. In addition to that, there’s also load of museums with displays and exhibitions there. We’re also going to have artists who are going to be sculpting and painting all throughout that weekend.
There’s activities you can take part in and they’re all scheduled on the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival website. There is a program which also has the breakdown of the older times. So you’ve got people who worked on Walking with Dinosaurs. You’ve got people who have basically worked on various different museum exhibitions. An incredible array of talents and we’ve got things that cover all different sort of ages. Absolutely amazing. And that’s gonna be that entire weekend. So basically 10 till about 4.30 each day, you’re have
constant paleo art, constant outreach, and it’s all very tactile, it’s all very hands-on. None of it’s gonna be hidden beyond barriers. You can come see us, talk to us, and I’m gonna be there with some very good friends of mine basically supervising, that, fielding questions. If I don’t know the answer, I will go find the person who does. I will hunt them down. I know where they are.
Alyssa Fjeld (41:01)
man, I would give anything to be there. It sounds like an amazing time. And I hope that the people who are able to attend come say hi to James and learn as much as possible from the talented artists that you get to meet. And then tell all of it to me. Tell us. Post it in the comments.
Travis (41:15)
Yeah, absolutely.
James, if people want to find your work and find out more about you, what’s the best way to do that?
James Pascoe (41:23)
So I’m on Instagram as the very enigmatic @pascoejj So I’m very elusive there and I’m on blue sky I think is James Pascoe like basically it’s just my name And that’s pretty much the two places. I largely post my work So generally that’s where I’m gonna be Effectively sharing things from lime we just the promotion the things that we’re gonna be working on I’ll be trying to get as many pictures of the event there. So they’ll all be going up on my Instagram
and also on BlueSky as well.
Travis (41:50)
Sounds great. Thank you so much for talking about your work with us today. We’ve really appreciated the chat. Alyssa’s got a little fossil friend.
Alyssa Fjeld (41:57)
Yes, it’s been so good to finally actually chat with you. James has been a tremendously supportive person for my work and just SciComm in general and the community that exists online would not be the same without him. So just want to say a huge thank you to James for coming on and talking with us today.
James Pascoe (42:12)
Thank you. All I want to do is be that, bring people together.
James Pascoe (42:17)
I don’t want anything to be exclusionary. So when people tell me that I’m doing good things, that means the world to me, because that’s all I want to be doing. And this is making people smile, bringing people into communities and supporting people because the world isn’t always kind, but I am determined that I will be. And I will always walk towards kindness. And if I meet people like yourselves on the way, that is absolutely beautiful and makes me very happy.
Travis Holland (42:42)
we hope you enjoyed that interview with James Pasco and good luck to James and everyone who’s attending the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival, which looks like an amazing time and I hope to get up there one day. Now we want to look at some audience feedback, some listener engagement and shout outs. We’ve had some great comments lately. I released a video about Dino-Riders This marinated in my mind after we discussed Dino-Riders in a recent episode.
And so then I put out about a two minute video across the podcast’s social channels and it’s had a pretty good, pretty good feedback. Over on TikTok, we had Stevie G say that he had the T. rex toy of Dino-Riders, but he stripped away all the weapons and just played with the dinosaur. So why not? mean, you know, Dino-Riders don’t need to be equipped with heavy powered rocket launchers and laser, laser blasters, but there we go. Kronosaurus Kev also jumped in.
to that comment section on TikTok and said that he would love to see a reboot of the show. I could imagine a live action Dino-Riders. That would be pretty cool. But in particular, Kronosaurus Kev would love to see a Lego sets featuring brick built sets for them. And then also the dinosaur molds. So Lego of course has some fantastic dinosaur molds, mostly linked to the Jurassic franchise nowadays, but you know, they could easily adjust and adapt those to
to feature some weaponry and some mini-figs riding on the backs and I think that would be a pretty cool new line of Dino-Riders toys coming through LEGO. I would get my hands on those even if they were just repaints of the several T. rex I already have.
So thank you to Kronosaurus Kev and Stevie for commenting there. Over on YouTube, we also got some comments. PirateRider said the toys were epic, but overly complicated and too expensive. They should have been cheaper and more durable with the armor and weapons fully fused to the dinosaurs. Cause I think that’s right. You know, if you have small parts that kids can pull off and swallow and break, it’s very easy to get the whole sets mixed up. But I guess the toy company then wants you to go out and buy more. Fort Castellan.
pointed out that the show was more accurate than another eighties cartoon called Dinosaucers which I, which I then had the pleasure of looking up. Now this one, Alyssa consists of intelligent anthropomorphic dinosaurs on the kind of alternate earth planet called Reptilon. And they have formed into two factions and fight each other.
Alyssa Fjeld (45:07)
Do think that they get upset that it’s called Reptilon instead of like, Dinosauron? Do you think they really bristle against that categorization? Like maybe it should be like, non-avian Dinosauron? I don’t know.
Travis Holland (45:22)
Sauron? hang on, that’s used elsewhere.
Alyssa Fjeld (45:23)
Sauron.
We also have a couple of other comments coming in from a couple of different platforms over on Spotify where I did not know you could leave comments until today. Today I learned. ⁓
Travis Holland (45:34)
You can. So if
you’re watching on a listening or watching the podcast on Spotify, you can leave comments now.
Alyssa Fjeld (45:39)
And I can read them, how joyous. A user by the very cool name of Puppetsquid said on our Dinotopia discussion that they missed the series as a kid, but had a bunch of the Dino Rider toys. And as they typed the comment, we also mentioned Dino Riders. excellent little bit of kismet coincidence there.
Travis Holland (45:41)
You
Alyssa Fjeld (46:00)
Former guest and lovely friend of mine, Amanda Perry, commented on Travis’s pictures from the Australian Museum to marvel at the Megaloceros fossil. Huge shout out to Amanda. I hope you’re feeling better. ⁓
Travis Holland (46:12)
Yeah, that Megaloceros
is awesome, by the way. don’t know, for those who haven’t seen it, the Australian Museum in Sydney has this long gallery with three levels. And so it’s like a mezzanine gallery. And the Megaloceros is sitting in off the middle level, the second level in the void. So it’s kind of lifted up. And as you walk in, you can look up and it’s right there above you.
or you can go up onto that second level and see it basically eye to eye from the end of the gallery. yeah, it sits in the void. It’s a magnificent fossil. And the way it’s displayed is quite something.
Alyssa Fjeld (46:47)
the exhibition team at Australian Museum, I think, do an excellent job. If you’ve never been, the Australian Museum is located in this gorgeous,
sandstone bricks are used in a lot of old really nice buildings across Australia, usually universities, and the interior of the building is just gorgeously renovated. There’s a portion of the basement where you can walk through and see like the very old portion of the building underneath this light glass walkway, and it’s stuffed to the gills with amazing Australian megafauna and other creatures.
including some of the creatures we’ve mentioned on this show before like our good friend the giant I’m pretty sure there’s a genyornis in there isn’t there?
Travis Holland (47:25)
Yeah, there’s, genyornis there is a Muttaburrasaurus from Queensland. think it’s a, that one’s just a cast, but it’s a cast of the one that’s on display at Queensland Museum. There’s also a T. rex from the T. rex autopsy British TV series. And so it’s like a life size, life like T. rex that is laying on its side as if it’s been sort of.
discovered and I think what they did was they conducted an autopsy, know, a fake autopsy on this T. rex and looked at its internal organs and its eye and so the whole thing’s on display and so obviously while that’s kind of different for a museum it’s really engaging for kids. You know, while I was there there were kids just all over this thing. I put up a photo of its foot on the Instagram and
It really looks like a cassowary foot or something. It’s very similar in design. I’d say they probably took inspiration from a cassowary or another large bird.
Alyssa Fjeld (48:21)
Speaking of large birds and their dinosaur-like qualities, a of the podcast, Sally Hurst, commented on recent video outtake on Instagram where I talked about the time we got chased by an emu. In the video clip I’m saying there were many reactions to the emu. Mine was to freeze. Our supervisor, John Patterson, jousted it a little bit with his walking stick and Sally, ⁓ legend, kind of just was snapping pictures and grinning ear to ear.
Travis Holland (48:42)
you
Alyssa Fjeld (48:47)
which I mentioned in that clip, and she replied in a comment saying, we got attacked by a dinosaur and survived, of course I was thrilled. If you missed her lovely interview panel with Jake and Adele recently, you can watch that up on her channel. Right now, Sally is actually in the UK doing talks and all sorts of amazing things. So if you want to keep up with some really awesome adventures happening, go to the Found a Fossil Instagram to keep up to date.
And if you’re looking to have someone come to your events to speak about dinosaurs, please consider hiring Sally. She does an excellent job. She’ll even joust your dinosaurs for you.
Travis Holland (49:17)
Yeah.
And yeah, Sally’s been popping up all over commercial TV and all sorts of things lately. So she’s doing a lot and yeah, go and check out Found a Fossil. She was on the podcast previously as well. So you can check back and listen to that interview. The last bit of news is I think it’s a really exciting couple of months for Dinosaur fans coming up because we have the premiere.
of Walking with Dinosaurs followed very shortly afterwards by the premiere of Jurassic World Rebirth. Now you may not be so excited about that one, we will discuss it nonetheless. But Walking with Dinosaurs first is May 25th in the UK, I believe. In the US it’s going to premiere on June 16th. And in Australia, we’re sitting right in the middle on June 3rd. So not too far away at all.
Alyssa Fjeld (50:03)
Not at all. I’m extremely excited. I had never seen Walking with Dinosaurs until one of the people in my lab showed it to me. And as a fan of classic horror movies with, you know, like gooey puppets in them, I was such a fan of the live props and all of the different techniques that went into this series. I’m really excited to see where they’re going to take it now that all of these digital technologies have evolved so much and our understanding has evolved so much.
And there are some truly fantastic researchers that have been working on this series. If you haven’t looked at the previous series, now is a fantastic time to have a watch party with your favorite friends or your enemies. I don’t mean to tell you how to live your life, but it’s an absolutely excellent show and I can’t wait for the premiere. I know our lab will be having a watch party with popcorn and lively discussions. And it’s really exciting to think of all about, you know,
I’m not personally a huge fan of what they’re doing with the dinosaurs in the new Jurassic movies, but it is worth talking about because these movies keep getting made for a reason. They make tons of money. People always discuss them. And it’s important to kind of keep in touch with the way that media treats dinosaurs, because it isn’t something that happens in isolation. The way that we perceive dinosaurs through popular media influences how we’re going to interact with them as creatures that lived in our world and whose bones we still find in the dirt.
⁓
Travis Holland (51:22)
Yeah.
And I think you won’t find a paleontologist nowadays who wasn’t influenced by, by Jurassic Park. mean, Jake Kotevski is one of the biggest Jurassic Park fans I know. So, you know, this series as, as you say, it’s like a huge part of how people view.
dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures and also perhaps importantly the science that goes on around them. So yeah, that’s certainly interesting. You know, I made some points similar to this on the ABC podcast, What the Duck? A little while ago when I was interviewed about Jurassic Park and what it got right and wrong, that kind of discussion.
Yeah, it just shapes how people see these things and then gives an opportunity for a broader conversation about what might be accurate, what we know, what we don’t know, because that’s the other thing is we don’t know everything. Paleontologists don’t know everything, unfortunately. So, you know, it’s all about that cultural story of what these creatures were.
Alyssa Fjeld (52:17)
mean that’s the name of our podcast, right? We’re talking about the fossils and the fiction.
Travis Holland (52:22)
Yeah, and that’s why we
wrap up a discussion of a couple of fantastic papers with then followed up by Dino-Riders.
Alyssa Fjeld (52:30)
Absolutely,
and this planet of dinosaurs that are anthropomorphic and intelligent. Actually, I think I have the Pulp Fiction version of that somewhere on my shelves. I’ll see if I can find it later. I did also just want to quickly say that some of you may have already gotten your tickets. I think it’s sold out now, but I will be at Pint of Science on Wednesday the 21st. I don’t know if this will be going out before then.
Travis Holland (52:37)
You
Alyssa Fjeld (52:55)
I’m looking forward to finally, at long last, setting in place the recipes that I continuously threaten to make out of the fossils on this show. It will be an all Cambrian buffet, and if people like it enough, I will try to commission some art of these recipes, because right now they’re very poorly Photoshopped nightmares that I came up with, and probably that’s not appetizing.
Travis Holland (53:17)
I think it sounds pretty exciting and anyone who gets along to Alyssa’s chat at Pint of Science is going to be in for a surprise. There’s one more piece of audience interaction I wanted to note and that was that we have a merch store which we’ve talked about a bit previously. I’m wearing the jumper today.
So we had a great order from Libby Fjeld. I think you might know her.
Alyssa Fjeld (53:39)
That’s my mom. She’s four foot eight and full of fire and gusto and she bought me a skitter’s beanie because I need to let the world know about the good word of trilobites and that is part of my birthday gift this year. Thanks mom. Thanks for supporting the pod mom. I love you.
Travis Holland (53:41)
You
How lovely.
And with that, we will take our leave. Thanks so much, Alyssa. I’m looking forward to next time and what is coming beyond because we definitely have some exciting stuff.
Alyssa Fjeld (54:05)
Yes, thank you so much, Travis.
And thank you as well to James, my favorite Welsh pirate.
