Mauricio Alvarez Abel, our southernmost Chilean GNSI member is the guest blogger today. He is working closely with Chilean scientists to reconstruct recent dinosaur finds in southern Chile. These discoveries shed new light on the recurring connection between South America and the Antarctic. Mauricio also has had one of his images accepted into the "Focus on Nature" and has a strong desire to come to the New York opening, but it is a long way to travel...
"Finding fossil records of the most austral dinosaurs of South America"
This year I finished illustrating a paleoambiental landscape of Cretaceous Antarctica - Chile for the paleobotanist Marcelo Leppe PhD. of the INACH (Institute Antarctic Chilean). This image has been published several times close to the news of the discovery by the press agency EFE (appearing in several parts of the world).
The work of illustration has been very agreeable and demanding. I have had to prepare in several stages (sketch, model, illustration bases, corrections, finished illustration) the drawing, and have had to go out to areas to observe and draw several species of trees in the forests of my island. These species are similar to the species that I have had to illustrate like Podocarpus innopinatus and Nothofagus, and I have had to go to park areas to observing trees similar to Sterculia, Sphenobaiera, or Taeniopteris, etc. The visits to the forest have been very pleasant. Together with my father and daughters, we have crossed unexplored places and observing enormous trees. The process of drawing and incorporating scientific corrections has been very interesting and very demanding.
Below are web links where the discovery news appears in the INACH (in Spanish) and in another website in English.