Palaeoartistry: Sculpting at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History

I recently participated in an event called iPLAY at the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History. This event was created to celebrate the combination of science and technology with art. As a demonstrator I showed my techniques for sculpting prehistoric animals using animal anatomy and science as tools to recreate an extinct animal.

For this demonstration I sculpted Megaloceros, also known as the Irish Elk. This prehistoric elk had an antler span of about 12 feet, and was over 6 feet tall. Here is an illustration by another palaeoartist, Charles R. Knight.

This painted image of Megaloceros is from the Lascaux cave in France. These cave paintings are some of the earliest palaeoart, describing the animals in detail.

Here is Megaloceros as I first saw him at the Paris Natural History Museum. In the glass case you can see another palaoartist’s bronze reconstruction. Museums often use palaeoart to show people what extinct species might have looked like. I use skeletons like this one along with modern day descendants of the animal I am sculpting to get a realistic reconstruction. For this piece I used the elk as my main modern day anatomical reference.

My sculpture started with a pipe armature screwed to a board and some wires inside the neck, head, and antlers. I used oil clay for this demonstration. Once finished the oil clay will be molded in rubber to make a wax version for a bronze sculpture.

Here is the finished piece. The demonstration lasted two full days, which is about how long a piece this size takes. I had such a great time volunteering for this event at the museum. It was really fun to tell the kids that attended all about prehistoric animals like this one. Nothing comes as close to how I feel about prehistoric animals as the reactions I got from telling people that this giant deer was not made up.