In the last few years scientists have described scores of dinosaur fossils covered in feathers. Some are tiny animals, and their skeletons are mixtures of bird and non - bird features.

My career is an effort to reconstruct these animals. I look for insights that can make them naturalistic and believable, through comparison with and observation of their closest living relatives and analogs.

I have studied Microraptor, the four-winged dinosaur, more than any other taxon. It is a perfect example of an animal that can be imagined as a  bizarre and stiff creature, like something out of mythology. Instead I strive to depict it as an animal with anatomy, motions, postures, and behaviors that are consistent with those we see all around us today.

I have been an exhibit artist with the American Museum of Natural History since 1998. I have been honored to collaborate with brilliant scientists and artists from around the world. We all have had the uncanny luck to have been here when the fossils were found.