Students, faculty and other community members turned out Feb. 12 for “Bringing Sabertooths to life: A Case Study in Paleontological Reconstruction” with paleoartist Mauricio Antón.
The lecture significantly coincided with Charles Darwin’s birthday.
One of the most sought after paleoartists by researchers, museums and publishers, Antón will give three more public presentations and teach two classes during his time at ETSU, as well as serving as an artist in residence at the ETSU Museum of Natural History at the Gray Fossil Site.
Cohosted by the Center of Excellence and Paleontology, Geosciences and Art and Design, he described his work in recreating lifelike, accurate images depicting what sabertooth cats looked like. He said the sabertooth is his favorite animal from the past, which is reflected by his extensive work surrounding them.
Antón instantly engaged the audience in Ball Hall’s auditorium, opening with a joke about his craft.
“I’m going to tell you about what it is to be a paleoartist,” he said. “A paleoartist is like a composite of paleo meaning old and artist [meaning] artist, and so that means I’m a very old artist!”
Following a collective rumble of laughter, he explained that paleoartists attempt to create accurate images of animals from the past that nobody has ever seen alive.
For Antón, the sabertooth has been a fascination since childhood, and it was his curiosity that got him into paleoart.
“I was instantly sucked in,” he said. “Even at that young an age I had a fascination but also questions.”
He wondered if he could travel back in time, would the images of the sabertooth he saw as a child be what he would see?
Ever since then his work has been centered around what these creatures looked like, how they moved and hunted and why they became extinct.
The reconstruction process involves several stages. First, using fossils, paleoartists assemble skeletons on paper or using computer software, using the shape of the joints as a guide. Then they add muscles. Finally, reconstructing the external appearance.
In Antón’s case, he uses Adobe Photoshop to create his digital reconstructions, some of which he shared with the audience during his lecture. He observes living relatives of the the sabertooth and uses his anatomical knowledge to estimate how they would have moved.
Antón is working on a book “Big Cats of Africa,” that he hopes to release in the coming years as his work brings about more answers to his questions surrounding the sabertooth. He has also released a documentary with “The Fly Factory” called “Bringing the Sabertooths Back to Life.”
Antón’s upcoming talks are “Reconstructing Neanderthals: Scientific and Social Aspects of Paleoanthropological Art” March 10 and “First-hand Study of Extant Animals as a Reference for Natural History Reconstructions” April 9. The lectures are free and open to the public.
