This is a piece of dinosaur bone I purchased a while ago when I was going a bit crazy with seeking out interesting patterns for my Stonescapes series of images. I was attracted to the unique pattern and colors, something I was completely unaware could happen with dinosaur bones.

As it turns out, as I understand it in a no-way-close-to-a-paleontologist-paleobiologist kind of way, the fossilization process with dinosaur bones is very much like the fossilization process with petrified wood (which I am also a big fan of.) The softer parts decay and the harder structural elements (I am guessing calcium?) remain to maintain the patterns. If exposed to the right minerals dissolved in water, the soft cavities get replaced with these minerals as water fills the spaces and ultimately evaporates. The colors come from the trace minerals that were present – and given the red, perhaps more than a bit of iron/hematite, the same source of the red color in the Marra Mamba stone I posted about earlier.

Prehistoric Planet

Coincidentally, I just started watching the new series Prehistoric Planet on Apple TV+ which is nothing short of AMAZING. It is narrated, appropriately, by David Attenborough. Already in the first episode, it has shown itself to be a brilliant piece of natural history filmmaking and digital technology. I will be quite disappointed if it doesn’t win quite a few awards for the realism it brings to exploring this fascinating period of our planet.

Science and Learning Influenced Art

I first approached this piece of dinosaur bone from a visual aesthetic perspective. It was the color and pattern that first caught my eye when I first came across it as I was largely unaware of the details of its formation. The labeling as dinosaur bone certainly added to the intrigue. But that initial attraction and curiosity prompted me to want to learn more in detail about the natural history involved in the creation of such fascinating things.

This approach fuels a lot of the photographs I’ve made. Quite often when out in the woods, even during my time underwater, I’ll have no clue as to what something is, but it is interesting to me visually. So I’ll make an image of it and later spend time learning more about it. It is widely recognized that you can become better at photography by being a better naturalist. Sometimes the opposite can be true also. You can learn more about nature, even dinosaurs, by simply following your eye. And already I am learning much more about dinosaurs simply because of the visual attraction to a natural history program made possible through technology.