How it started...

Did a little artwork on a rainy Saturday afternoon! This is a WIP head reconstruction of a #Jaguar. The same process I use when restoring extinct animals works just as well for modern ones. Texture and other detail work coming soon

A row of associated (and rather large) #viper vertebrae from the late #Pleistocene of Florida. These are most likely from the genus Agkistrodon, which includes the modern copperheads and cottonmouths

#FossilFriday #snake #fossil @FloridaMuseum

The jaw of a #brontothere is slowly but surely coming out of its jacket thanks to one of our esteemed volunteers! This specimen comes to us all the way from Nebraska. #FossilFriday @BlochLab @FloridaMuseum

Had a little fun with some figurines I bought to decorate my desk. A #Smilodon defends his kill, a #Macrauchenia, from a time-traveling #Hyaenodon while a #Jaguar watches off to the side

#RollCall It's #BlackinNHMs week! I'm a vertebrate paleontologist and collections manager for @FloridaMuseum. The best aspect of my job is getting to handle fossils of and learn more about extinct animals. My research interests are paleoecology and ecomorphology

A complete radius of the small saber-toothed cat Rhizosmilodon fiteae, collected earlier this year from the #Montbrook site. We now have most the bones of the left forelimb of this rare taxon. Photo by Ken Marks #FossilFriday #Miocene @BlochLab @FloridaMuseum

Claw cores of the late #Miocene megalonychid #sloth Pliometanastes from the Moss Acres Racetrack Site. This species was one of the first sloths to appear in North America, arriving probably via island-hopping across the Caribbean #FossilFriday #GABI @BlochLab @FloridaMuseum

#FossilFriday associated skull and jaws of a baby #mastodon from the #Montbrook site, found in 2017 and now fully prepped. We thought it was a gomphothere at first until we uncovered its teeth back at lab #Miocene @FloridaMuseum @BlochLab 🐘

#fossilfriday a few nice donations came in this week from the Netherlands: partial #skulls and jaws from the giant #Pleistocene #deer #Megaloceros giganteus. The skull of a modern White-tailed Deer sits between two of its distant relatives for scale @BlochLab @FloridaMuseum 🦌

#FossilFriday a complete #rhino humerus found by @jibloch last Saturday at #Montbrook. Now sitting in the lab waiting to be prepped. #Miocene @FloridaMuseum @BlochLab 🦏

For #NationalBirdDay I have a #WIP reconstruction of Merriam's #Teratorn from the La Brea Tar Pits. Although distantly related to New World vultures, teratorns were active predators that hunted on the ground #paleoart #labreatarpits

Updating my Dire Wolf (Canis dirus) #reconstruction. Painted the skull last night, pretty happy with how it turned out. Think I'll work on the rest of the skeleton later today #paleoart #sciart

Started a #reconstruction of the late #Oligocene #doggo Sunkahetanka (formerly Mesocyon) geringensis, a small #hypercarnivore from #Nebraska. @MorrillHallUNL has a really nice skeleton of this animal🐺

#paleoart #canidae #fossilfriday