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Júlia d’Oliveira on Recreating Extinct Animals
Using science to illustrate extinct bird-like creatures
© Júlia d'Oliveira
Júlia d’Oliveira is a paleoartist who brings extinct species to life in artwork. For each species she illustrates, she learns everything she can about the species to come up with a realistic portrait. Júlia hopes her paleoart offers something different from the grotesque versions of dinosaurs in movies she remembers from growing up.
BirdNote®
Júlia d’Oliveira on Recreating Extinct Animals
Written by Conor Gearin
This is BirdNote.
[Brazilian rainforest soundscape]
Júlia d’Oliveira is a paleoartist. That means she brings extinct species to life in artwork. For each project, she learns everything she can about the species to come up with a realistic portrait.
Júlia d’Oliveira: Color is not usually preserved, so we do have to gather information about its environment, 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 Júlia 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.
Júlia d’Oliveira: 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.
Júlia hopes her paleoart offers something different from the grotesque versions of dinosaurs in movies she remembers from growing up.
Júlia d’Oliveira: We had a lot of paleoart 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 Júlia’s amazing paleoart on our website, BirdNote dot org. I’m Conor Gearin.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Environmental ML239934 recorded by Tom Schulenberg.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote February 2023
Narrator: Conor Gearin
ID# doliveiraj-01-2023-05-09 doliveiraj-01
