Ana Lopes

Paleoart | Creatures Ana Lopes's Portfolio 📧[email protected]

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Thylacinus

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Spinosaurus mirabilis

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Pikaia gracilens

A strange art for a strange creature. Reconstruction of Pikaia gracilens based on Mussini et al 2024. In the Cambrian seas, about 513–505 million years ago, lived a creature proposed as a possible common ancestor of all chordates (organisms with a notochord, aka spinal column), possibly being a cephalochordate (an animal that has a head and a nerve "cord" along its body, without a defined skull). I was particularly inspired by modern amphioxus, in terms of texture and colors. It is quite complicated to reconstruct such an organism, but I see that there is still interest in learning more about them, and this study has brought some interesting proposals, including the assertion that, until now, Pikaia was being reconstructed upside down! Perhaps it is reminiscent of the case of hallucigenia, also from the Cambrian, which had its "body-plan" reinterpreted a few years ago.

MUSSINI, Giovanni. A new interpretation of Pikaia reveals the origins of the chordate bodyplan, Current Biology (2024).

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Bahariya Formation - Sea

I wanted to paint something underwater, so while looking for inspiration, I came across a paper describing a possible species of Leptocleidus in the Bahariya Formation, Egypt. This creature would have lived —and swum—with the Spinosaurus, which is quite neat to imagine.

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Light illuminates the bottom of an ocean we've never known. The Arctic sea, 67 million years ago. Marine snow floats slowly everywhere; the ocean floor is a long blanket of organic matter, harboring a diverse range of microorganisms. Cephalopods similar to deep-sea squid (Bathyteuthis) swim there. From the surrounding darkness, enormous shadows emerge, more than six meters long: large plesiosaurs of the genus Abyssosaurus, from the family Cryptoclididae. These lizards found their way to the deep sea and are our first concrete example of plesiosaurs with clearly bathyplagic adaptations. This painting takes place at a depth of more than 2,000 meters, where light doesn't reach.

Video process. Reconstruction of the skull used as a base: Berezin (2019). doi: 10.1134/S0031030118030036

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Crocuta crocuta spelea & cub

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Two male Stegosaurus stenops in a stand-off.

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Cratoavis cearensis

A small Enantiornithe from the lower Cretaceous of Brasil.

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Portrait of a melanistic Smilodon populator. The famous saber-toothed tiger was first described here in Brazil.

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A typical scene from Northeast Brazil during the Late Cretaceous (100-66 m). The spinosaurid Oxalaia quilombensis attempts to catch a Brasileodactylus ceariensis while the sclerorhynchoid Onxopristis numidus swims safely away. Some of the local flora can also be seen: cycads and pteridophytes.

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Old Oceans #2: Otodus megalodon being attacked by a pair of Livyathan melvillei (yes, a reference to Melville, author of Moby Dick), at the end of the Miocene, about 7 million years ago. The megalodon was a lamniform shark (an order that currently includes great white sharks), with an estimated size between 10 and 24 meters. It would then have been the largest predatory fish that ever existed. Also large were the leviathans, a type of toothed whale, related to modern sperm whales, with an estimated size of 18 meters. Despite being related, they present an interesting distinction: leviathans had robust teeth in both their upper and lower jaws, reflecting a different diet from their current relatives. Sperm whales are invertebrate hunters, like giant squid, while leviathans hunted large vertebrate prey, such as some cetacean species of the time. The megalodon would also have fed on these same prey, being a competitor of the leviathans. And this is the context of the painting, which depicts an interspecific dispute between these two giants of the past.

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A matter of perspective. Alphadon sp., a small metatherian from the cretaceous, observes a big Tyrannosaurus rex pass by, while on a Ginkgo adiantoides branch.

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Carcharodontosaurus saharicus ("shark-toothed lizard"), one of the large theropod dinosaurs of the Cretaceous period, estimated to be 12 meters long. It inhabited North/Northeast Africa and possibly Northeast Brazil.

This painting was a study between larger works; I wanted to practice scale composition, something I still find difficult to do. The colors are inspired by the rugose hornbill (Aceros cassidix).

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A pair of Tyrannosaurs, the great predators of the Cretaceous period (73–66 million years ago) of North America. This is a very different approach, tenderness in such a fearsome predator. Note that the male's mouth is blue, which means he is ready to mate. I was inspired by modern theropods, such as cormorants (seabirds), using muted colors for better camouflage in dense forests, but with blue details for sexual display.

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Old Oceans #1: "A hunter's peril", painting representing four extant species from the Antarctic continent. This painting is the first in a series that will address the ecological relationships and biodiversity of our oceans throughout Earth's geological history.

Species represented (common names): leopard seal, gentoo penguin, orca, and snow petrel. Naturally, beginning with our current Cenozoic era, in the Quaternary period, within the Holocene.

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Thylacinus cynocephalus, final art plus video process.

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Paraphysornis brasiliensis (Alvarenga, 1982), a species of "terror bird" from the Upper Oligocene-Lower Miocene (Cenozoic) that inhabited South America between 23-5 million years ago. The holotype was described based on a nearly complete fossil found in Tremembé - SP. Currently, the closest relatives of this family are the seriemas (Cariamidae). . Alvarenga, H.M.F. 1982. Uma gigantesca ave fóssil do cenozoico brasileiro: Physornis brasiliensis sp. n. Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências 54(4):697-712.