Here we see a render of the virtual 3d skeleton of Magericyon, which served as a basis for the flesh reconstruction above For example, she determined that the hind feet of this animal would have been essentially plantigrade, an important bit of information when we deal with a diverse family of extinct carnivores that included both plantigrade and digitigrade species. Most importantly, the bones had to be articulated to each other in the correct angles, and for this task Gema’s painstaking study of the functional anatomy of Magericyon was vital. This implied to create mirror copies of limb bones that were represented on one side only, and in a few cases to model missing bones by hand. First, each bone had to be scanned and the scans turned into virtual 3D objects, which then needed to be assembled in an anatomically correct virtual skeletal mount. In the previous months I had been collaborating with paleontologist Gema Siliceo in the creation of a virtual skeleton of Magericyon to be used in her Phd thesis dissertation about this carnivore, a task that involved many hours of work. Virtual 3D technology can prove enormously helpful in all the stpes of this process. This reconstruction of Magericyon is an example of such “canonic” ilustrationsīut when it comes to depict action, we need to see the animal as a 3-dimensional dynamic structure of bone, muscle and fur with the infinite possible combinations of posture, light and point of view. Much of my “paleoartistic” work implies to establish the appearance of extinct animals that have never been depicted before, and the end result of such reconstructions is usually a picture of the animal in broadside view, standing or walking leisurely, so that the body proportions are seen most clearly. Such behaviour scenes, which imply portraying the animals in action, are quite complex to produce. One of the illustrations I did for the exhibition about Batallones fossil sites represents an adult female of the amphicyonid Magericyon agressively protecting its cubs.
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