The Great 2017 Palaeoart Survey: some thoughts

What can we learn from the results of David's palaeoart survey? Well, from an admittedly quite small sample size of only 350 people, palaeoartists appear to mostly be young, male and not in it for the money. Over half of those surveyed were aged between 18 and 35, 71% identified as male, and only 144 of them identified themselves as professionals, working for clients. Cynics might note few surprises, other than John Conway and Mark Witton being crowned the Kings of Palaeoart (seriously guys, how many people have you been bribing?). All the same, an intriguing picture emerges of the field, and some of the comments provided by the pros really are rather concerning.

This is your god now. From John Conway's Twitter.

TetZooCon 2017

On Saturday October 21, Natee and I once again attended TetZooCon, the convention spun off (lest we forget) from Darren Naish's long-running blog, Tetrapod Zoology (currentlyhostedatScientificAmerican), and the incredibly tightly focused and well-edited TetZoo Podcast. It's becoming the very best kind of annual tradition. Better even than Christmas; all the boozing is there*, but you get to hear awesome zoology-themed talks and schmooze it up with renowned scientists and artists, rather than having to pretend to like your extended family. For its fourth iteration, the show moved venues and was even bigger and grander than ever; a bit like Jurassic World with more convincing dinosaurs and female characters. Here's how it all went down.