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I am unusual in being a regular peer reviewed publishing scientist who also does high level art.  By being at the beginning of the revolution in dinosaur science, I was able to set the modern standard for dinosaur art. The more accurate a dinosaur restoration is, the more realistic it is.  The more realistic and life-like it is, the more convincing and appealing it is to the viewer.  When you see Jurassic Park, you are seeing dinosaurs either directly designed, or strongly influenced by myself.

This “New Look” in dinosaur art replaced the traditional art of Charles Knight, Rudolph Zallinger and Zdenek Burian.  I wrote and illustrated the popular Predatory Dinosaurs of the World (Simon & Schuster, editor Alice Mayhew, who handled the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate books, carried by a number of book clubs, still in demand although out of print), The Complete Illustrated Guide to Dinosaur Skeletons (Gakken, Japan), Dinosaurs of the Air (Johns Hopkins University Press, reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement), The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs, The Princeton Field Guide to Pterosaurs, and The Princeton Field Guide to Mesozoic Sea Reptiles (Princeton University Press), my own self-published dinosaur coffee table book and coloring book and edited The Scientific American Book of Dinosaurs (St. Martin’s Press).

My articles have appeared in Scientific American, The New York Times, Nature, Omni and numerous specialist journals and volumes. I have renamed a number of famous dinosaurs, including Giraffatitan (the African version of Brachiosaurus), Dollodon, Mantellisaurus and Dakotadon (last three were placed in Iguanodon). Two dinosaurs were named after me: Sellacoxa pauli and Cryptovolans pauli.

My art has appeared in Time, National Geographic, Discover, Natural History, Smithsonian, Omni, Science Digest, Earthwatch, Science, and a large body of books. I senior-authored the chapter on restoring prehistoric animals in the Guild Handbook of Scientific Illustration. The Smithsonian dinosaur calendars exclusively featured my images 2008-2010, plus 2018, part of an entire series of licensed merchandise. My art has appeared in more television and video documentaries than any other paleoartist of the last 40 years*, and I was dinosaur designer and scientific consultant for the Emmy-winning Discovery Channel hits When Dinosaurs Roamed America and Dinosaur Planet, as well as the network’s Dinosapien, a children’s drama.


Numerous exhibits utilize my art, including the American Museum and Smithsonian. My skeletal reconstructions remain instrumental to independent resin scale model dinosaur sculptors over the last 20 years.** Exhibits design and set up work includes a conference on fossil dinosaurs and birds held in Ft. Lauderdale, the Chicago DinoFest 2000, and I was science advisor and artist for the new dinosaur hall at the Maryland Science Center featuring a full size sculpture of the giant dinosaur Astrodon being attacked by Acrocanthosaurus produced by Hall Train following my design. Other full scale prehistoric model designs include the semi-robotic flying Quetzalcoatlus model for Paul MacCready, and currently I am cooperating with Peter Dilworth at MIT on developing small, mobile dinobots. Field experience includes finding and excavating dinosaurs.

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*Documented in a future book on paleodocumentaries.

**Documented in The Visual Guide to Scale Model Dinosaurs (2012)