A scientist can draw the world as it looked when the dinosaurs lived. But it takes an artist to color in the picture. It takes an artist's imagination to add hue to the flowers and flesh to the bones of the creatures.
Happily, Sylvia and Stephen Czerkas are artists as well as scientists.He came to dinosaurs early. He began crafting them from clay when he was 4 years old.
She came to dinosaurs late. She was a sculptor with a fine arts degree who enjoyed creating animals. Then she began to find more joy by sculpting endangered species. Then extinct animals. Then the very large and very extinct.
He was also a paleontologist. She was also a museum curator and researcher. Fourteen years ago they were both living in California. They met at a pot-luck club for dinosaur enthusiasts. She says they fell in love at once.
Now the Czerkases collaborate. Their latest effort is an art exhibit called "Dinosaurs: A Global View," which just left the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., to open at the Utah Museum of Natural History, University of Utah campus, Oct. 2.
The 100-piece collection blends art and science and is, says Stephen Czerkas, both chronological and geographical in scope. In painting, text and sculpture, the exhibit tells the story of dinosaurs from their origin 230 million years ago to their disappearance 65 million years ago.
The paintings depict not only dinosaurs, but the world as it was then. The Czerkases include charts showing the movements of the continents and supercontinents. They explain the way the climate changed.
The scenes of the Earth, in these paintings, are unearthly. Ferns grow as big as trees. A red river washes through what is now Utah's Dinosaur National Monument. A docile-looking pisanosaurus wanders beneath a sky turned yellow by a pollen storm.
Even in paintings where the grass is green and the sky is a rational color of blue, there are huge odd birds flapping through the air - or lumbering duck-faced monsters.
Surrealism reigns. Fantastic creatures run and soar, ravage and lurk throughout the exhibit.
In addition to paintings by Mark Hallett, John Sibbick and Douglas Henderson, the exhibit features four sculptures by the Czerkases: the 20-foot-long styracosaurus, the 10-foot-long deinonychus, a nest of baby titanosauruses, and an albertosaurus skull.
As the title promises, this exhibit delivers a global perspective on dinosaurs. The Czerkases, however, also understand the particulars.
Take dinosaur skin, for example. Her husband is the world authority on dinosaur skin, explains Sylvia Czerkas. "It is fascinating all the things we've learned about dinosaurs, just by focusing on the skin. The significance of it becomes more apparent all the time."
Though the first scraps of fossilized dinosaur skin were discovered in the late 1800s, scientists didn't make much use of them when they were recreating a dinosaur.
Until quite recently, scientists were more apt to focus on skeleton and muscle. They'd cover their models with smooth skin, or maybe throw in a few reptile scales, says Sylvia Czerkas.
In reality dinosaur skin is reptilian. But the skin is so distinctive, so unlike the scales of other reptiles, as to be quite amazing, she explains.
"Dinosaur skin has a rosette pattern. Dinosaurs were so beautifully patterned. So ornamental." And the more pieces of skin that are discovered, the more ornamental the dinosaurs are proving to be, she says.
Although patterns are apparent, nothing of the actual color is preserved in the fossilized skin, she explains. This is where the artist's imagination comes into play. However, the Czerkases are quick to point out that they and the other artists in the exhibit base their assumptions on science. She says they use their imaginations - but they don't fantasize.
If they are sculpting a small meat-eating dinosaur, says Sylvia Czerkas, they take their clues from the color of modern predators, both mammal and reptilian, as well as from their paleontological studies. "Knowing the kind of environment, what the plants were like, what the dinosaur's activity was - all will give you clues as to what a logical color pattern will be." For example, she says, "smaller predators would be more likely to have camouflage, to blend in with their surroundings.
"Our tones are natural, not vibrant."
For their sculpture of the styracosaurus, the Czerkases choose soft savannah tones. Enough pieces of stryacosaurus hide have been found that Stephen Czerkas is quite sure of the way the patterns vary on different parts of the body. On the flank, the rosette pattern is large and bold, yet flecked with a more subtle pebble design as well. The big dark centers of the rosette disappear on the dinosaur's underbelly, and the sub-pattern of white and brown pebbles is all the more noticeable.
That's the aim of the Czerkases' art exhibit - to offer a global view as well as a detailed view.
They want visitors to return with them to a time before man, to a lush and vibrant landscape, to a world where everything from the tiniest scale on an animal's skin to the brilliant hue of sky and water, seems new and mysterious.
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Activities and lectures in conjunction with exhibit
Oct. 2: The exhibit may be seen by the public (through Jan. 9, 1994) at the Utah Museum of Natural History, 200 S. University St., University of Utah campus; 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Special children's activities from 1 to 4 p.m. Admission is $3 for adults, $1.50 for seniors and children ages 3-14.
Oct. 3: Gallery talk on Utah's dinosaurs by Jeff Eaton, museum research associate, at 3 p.m.
Oct. 9, 10: Eaton leads a field trip through "Utah Dinosaur Country." Call 581-4887 for details.
Oct. 4, 11, 18, 25 and Nov. 1: Teachers may take a five-week workshop called "Mesozoic Mayhem: Evolution of the Dinosaurs and Their Kin." Call 581-4887.
Dec. 27-31: "Dinosaur Days" children's activities, daily from 1 to 4 p.m.