PHILADELPHIA -- Four years after it was taken apart and consigned to storage,
the full-size skeleton of Camden County's famous dinosaur is back on display in
a new exhibit at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University.
Hadrosaurus foulkii -- excavated from a Haddonfield
marl pit in 1858 and the first dinosaur skeleton ever mounted for public display
anywhere in the world in 1868 -- is now the centerpiece of the new Drawn to Dinosaurs
exhibit
Photo: Hoag Levins
Paleo-artist Jason Poole is also the
manager of both the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University's Dinosaur
Hall and Fossil Prep Lab. Larger
in the Academy's
Art of Science Gallery.
Cast from the fragile real fossil bones that remain locked away for safety,
the skeleton was previously the focal point of the Academy's 2008-09 The Dinosaur That Changed The World
exhibit that marked the 140th anniversary of the first display of the
Haddonfield dinosaur fossil.
This new "Drawn to Dinosaurs" exhibit celebrates paleo artists as well as the
Hadosaurus find that played such a pivotal role in the rise to that specialized
art genre. Giant freehand drawing Combining those two themes in a
unique way on the new exhibit's opening day, paleo artist Jason Poole spent six
hours executing a life-size freehand drawing of Hadrosaurus foulkii on a
towering 28-foot blackboard that is part of the display.
Poole, who manages the Academy's Dinosaur Hall and Fossil Preparation Lab, is
an accomplished dinosaur illustrator whose work has appeared in publications
like National Geographic and Science magazines, institutions like the Carnegie
Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian, and on his own Dino-Scribbles blog.
Faced with creating the largest drawing he had ever done, Poole first planned
to work on construction-worker stilts but abandoned that idea after testing it
out. He ended up running up and down a wheeled warehouse
ladder as crowds of visitors watched him work, peppering him with questions
all the while.
"It was a challenge to be drawing a life-sized, fleshed-out
Hadrosaur right next
to the actual skeleton of the same creature -- so people
Photo: Hoag Levins
The illustrated head of Hadrosaurus
foulkii looks back at its fossil skeleton in the new 'Drawn to Dinosaurs'
exhibit. Larger
would be able to
'check my math' so to speak," said Poole. Throughout the day, he shuttled back
and forth between the two, taking rough measurements of the real bones and then
sketching those dimensions on the blackboard with colored chalk attached to a
long stick. When it was over, he was surprised by the unexpectedly physical
nature of drawing while constantly running up and down stairs for six hours and
simultaneously fielding the crowd's questions.
What was the most unexpected thing he was asked? "One adult asked me what I
imagined this dinosaur would have smelled like," he said. Paleo-artist tools Others asked about the artistic logistics
of creating dinosaur art. Although Poole routinely uses computers for other
tasks, he still executes all of his paleo-art with traditional chalks, pens,
pencils, brushes and oils. He acknowledges that the paleo-art community is quite
bifurcated on this issue.
"There are factions now," he said. "A lot of younger artists who are very
into digital mix computer art
programs and photography to put dinosaur images into doctored-up photo
backgrounds. Others are using digital animation tools, like you see in Jurassic
Park. And then there are the artists who are more classically trained and simply
like the traditional methods. There's where my heart is. I like the way paint
'squishes.' Pen and ink are my favorite medium."
The Hadosaurus exhibit in the Art of Science Gallery celebrates the history
of the dinosaur art
Photo: Hoag Levins
Jason Poole's signature near the feet of
his Hadrosaurus foulkii illustration. Larger
community that
traces its history back to the mid-19th century when artists began drawing
imagined versions of the prehistoric creatures whose existence was suggested by
that period's cryptic fossil finds but whose exact form had not yet been
established by full fossil evidence.
Bone Wars and dinosaur art The 1858 excavation of the
world's first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton -- Hadrosaurus foulkii -- and
the 1868 public unveiling of that then-unique fossil on public display,
triggered both the famed Bone
Wars explosion of paleontological discovery and a similar explosion of
dinosaur art accompanying those discoveries.
Poole pointed out that over the last century and a half, dinosaur art has
played a much more important role than most casual dinosaur hall visitors or
"Jurassic Park" viewers fully appreciate. At the same time it has been great fun
to create and view, paleo-art has effectively synthesized and disseminated vast
amounts of dense scientific data that would not otherwise be easily
understood.
"One point this new exhibit wants to get across is that every image of every
dinosaur you've ever seen in any media has come from the heads and talents of an
artist, and there is a large community of these dinosaur artists all around the
country as well as the world," said Poole. "Our job is to translate the
scientific facts of what these creatures were into visual reality so that people
can put them context." Dinosaur artist quandary: feathers He also discussed the
debate over how paleo-artists should deal with new discoveries that change what
we know about dinosaur physiology and behavior. Over the last 50 years as
artists have been creating dinosaur images based on the latest scientist
knowledge, that knowledge has changed dramatically. Two instances of this have
to do with feathers and the essential birdlike "stance" of many dinosaurs.
"Feathers have affected paleo-artists more than any other recent change in
what we know about dinosaurs," said Poole. "But the art that existed before
these discoveries is part of the historical representation of what humans knew
or what we thought we knew about dinosaurs. Luckily, a lot of artists are
not changing their earlier pieces because they understand that those
images are part of an important historical record."
Prior to feathers, new knowledge about the bird-like posture of many
dinosaurs raised a similar quandary for artists and the museums they serve; the
Academy itself become one of the world's first institutions to display creatures
like T-Rex in the correct bi-pedal
stance that had backbone and tail in a horizontal -- rather than vertical --
alignment as they walked. Egyptian and Patagonian digs Poole, who grew up in
Philadelphia, has been collecting fossils since he was eight years old and first
accompanied his father on amateur fossils digs in upstate Pennsylvania. During
his adult career so far, he has participated in major dinosaur excavations in
Egypt, Patagonia and various U.S. states.
During most normal working days, he can be found in the Academy's Fossil Prep
Lab chipping solid rock from around fossilized bones that haven't seen the light
of day for 70 millions years or so. Currently, he and his team are working on
chucks of rock that contain the remains of a Hadrosaur unearthed in Wyoming in
2011 by a team from the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton.
"I have such an incredible job here at the Academy," said Poole. "Someone
pays me to do work that is so much fun that sometimes, when I'm doing it, I feel
like I'm 'getting away' with something."
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