Mark Witton
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markwitton.bsky.social
Mark Witton
@markwitton.bsky.social
12K followers 380 following 730 posts
Palaeoartist, palaeontologist, author, documentary consultant and creature designer. Affiliated with the University of Portsmouth, UK; views and opinions are my own.

More about me at markwitton.co.uk.
Support my work at www.patreon.com/markwitton
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markwitton.bsky.social
Brain work bad thanks to some sort of flu, so you'll have to write your own amusing #FossilFriday post about this giant #azhdarchid #pterosaur #paleoart.
November 21, 2025 at 3:58 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
Starting the journey home from #2025SVP. I didn't leave the conference empty handed...
A plinth panel from SVP2025 atop a suitcase filled with animal skulls from my palaeoart workshop. The panel was gifted from the organisers because I designed this year's logo.
November 16, 2025 at 11:20 AM
markwitton.bsky.social
I'll be signing and sketching in copies of my (unintentionally orange) @princetonupress.bsky.social books this Friday, 11:00-12:00 at #2025SVP #SVP2025. #Pterosaurs and T. rex: what more could anyone want?

#paleontology #fossil #dinosaur
November 12, 2025 at 6:28 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
Scenes from the #SVP2025 #2025SVP #paleoart workshop. We had terrific talks from @cpdinosaurs.bsky.social, @tetzoo.bsky.social, @palaeojules.bsky.social and @bobnichollsart.bsky.social, as well as fantastic discussion from attendees. Thanks to everyone who contributed, I hope you all enjoyed it!
November 12, 2025 at 7:37 AM
markwitton.bsky.social
Sneaking glimpses at the set up of #SVP2025 #2025SVP, spotted some familiar logo artwork in the ICC.
November 10, 2025 at 9:30 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
I'm late to my own party (again, sigh) but my new book on #spinosaurid #dinosaurs (written with @davehone.bsky.social) was officially released yesterday! Tons of info on and #paleoart of spinosaurs therein: research history, evolution, ecology, life appearance etc. Available wherever books are sold.
November 7, 2025 at 5:28 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
The reality of being a freelancer is that you end up working a lot of evenings and nights, something #mammals have been doing since the Mesozoic. Here's new #paleoart of two #Jurassic gliding Mammaliaformes, Arboroharamiya, starting their day as the sun sets 160 million years ago. #sciart #fossil
An evening chase erupts above the forests of Late Jurassic China between two gliding mammal-like animals. The sun sets between them, highlighting the leaves of the ginkgo tree they have leapt from. The mammals are darkly coloured, reflecting data from palaeocolour studies suggesting dark brown hues across most or all of their bodies.
November 4, 2025 at 9:20 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
It's #Halloween, so here's some scary #paleoart of the dreaded MAMMALIAN NOCTURNAL BOTTLENECK HYPOTHESIS. Which of these Megaconus will survive - AND WHAT WILL BE LEFT OF THEM?

(Image just uploaded to #Patreon, along with a detailed discussion of this idea: www.patreon.com/posts/142523...)
Three grey squirrel-sized Megacous mammals are caught in the open on Halloween night in Jurassic China. Shedding ginkgo trees arc overhead and the full moon has risen high above. But eclipsing all this is a looming crested tyrannosauroid. The theropod doesn't seem to have noticed them yet, but there's a murderous glint in his eye and a Krugerian quality to his hands. The lead Megaconus turns around to his companions. "Hey, is this a vaguely sinister but actually safe Disney forest, or a genuinely sinister '80s slasher movie one? Because if it's the first one, we're cute enough to make it through this. But if it's the second one, we're a group of disposable mammaliaforms in a story where everyone is rooting for the killer. And let's face it: we breed like tiny mammaliaforms are meant to, and we all know what that means in slasher lore." He looks out of the picture at the pile of DVDs his artist will be watching tonight. "I think we might be boned, gentlemen."
October 31, 2025 at 7:16 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
October 30, 2025 at 9:21 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
Over the next few hours/days I'll be uploading lots of new #paleoart to Patreon. First up is this #Neanderthal fellow looking whimsically over his shoulder, wondering if he locked the door to his cave. Lots of discussion about his appearance and clothes at
www.patreon.com/posts/142405... #sciart
As the snow falls in front of the setting sun, Thag the Neanderguy pauses mid-step and looks behind him. He's thinking about the third series of Twin Peaks again. "Maybe it _was_ about the bunny", he ponders. But while Thag misses some of the nuances of event TV, he understands fashion very well. He's wearing all this season's newest Neanderthal gear, carrying his two dead rabbits in a looped strap alongside his thick, fur-lined boots. A pouch is slung over his left shoulder, containing various flints and bone tools. He's warm and stylish in his gloves, trousers, coat and shawl, and he's accented the whole ensemble with a cumberbund-type affair that he doesn't know what to call, but _who cares_: it looks cool. He realises that his body type has no significant waist, but this gives his body an important upper-lower divide. Even way back then, in the Pleistocene, you had to dress the body you had, not the body you wanted.
October 30, 2025 at 3:18 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
It's based on this, from Guthrie (2005).
October 21, 2025 at 7:09 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
I had a go at drawing steppe #lions chasing a European bison recently, based on Palaeolithic artworks. I'm unsure about the markings around the lions' eyes but my main reference, which seems to otherwise give good data about colour distribution, suggests _something_ was there. #paleoart
Female (left) and male (middle) steppe lions pursue a bison calf over a grassy plain. The lions are tawny coloured above, with lighter undersides, and the male has a mane. The bison is, as in modern bison calves, pale over most of its body.
October 21, 2025 at 10:05 AM
markwitton.bsky.social
Why look: a box of some sort of newish, bookish things arrived this morning. Seems to be about spinosaurid #dinosaurs... coauthored with @davehone.bsky.social... and published by Bloomsbury. Available 6th of November In the UK; then worldwide in early 2026.
October 15, 2025 at 8:44 AM
markwitton.bsky.social
A heads up that I'm talking at @NewScientist Live this weekend (Sunday 19th October) about my book, King Tyrant: A Natural History of Tyrannosaurus rex. Details, tickets etc. can be found here: live.newscientist.com/nsl-london-2... #dinosaur #fossils #scicomm #paleontology #books
October 13, 2025 at 4:18 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
Quick #FossilFriday #paleoart post: a 2025 redo of my 2019 take on the giant #deer Megaloceros. Palaeolithic art captures some aspects of Megaloceros appearance but the details are not unambiguous: when is a line across a body a stripe, when is it a boundary between colour regions?
Three Megaloceros, a stag, doe and fawn, in front of an ice age landscape, painted in 2025. The bodies of the adults have large blocks of colour, without prominent stripes. Three Megaloceros, a stag, doe and fawn, in front of an ice age landscape, painted in 2019. The body of the stag has a dark stripe extending from the shoulder to the thigh.
October 10, 2025 at 12:05 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
Preview of my latest #paleoart piece: a baby bison flees the deadliest predator of Ice Age Europe. Harrowing, harrowing stuff.
October 6, 2025 at 8:23 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
#Tyrannosaurus rex was named 120 years ago today (Oct 4, 1905). If you want to know all there is to know about the world's most iconic #dinosaur, the word is that my book "King Tyrant", published a few months back, is a good start. #fossils #paleontology #paleoart press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
The cover of the book "King Tyrant: a natural history of Tyrannosaurus rex" covered with gleaming review comments and a load of 5 star (or nearly so) ratings. Do you not have a copy yet? You can get them wherever books are sold. I mean, I'm just an alt text caption so my judgment on this anything beyond image description is limited, but I hear Mark worked incredibly hard on this project and thinks it's the best thing he's ever published. He'd be really happy if you bought a copy, and perhaps additional ones for friends and family so you could have very informed conversations about T. rex and all the dinosaur biology it's revealed to us.
October 4, 2025 at 4:04 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
...as there was evidently much variation in appendage size and length in these animals. The form used in most reconstructions is that of the smaller holotype specimen (left), but much larger, sickle-shaped examples are also known (right). Photos to scale, from Spiekman et al. 2025.
October 3, 2025 at 12:25 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
To brighten up a wet and rainy #FossilFriday, here's my take on the recently described drepanosaur Mirasaura grauvogeli. It's shown among the conifer Voltzia, a plant found in abundance in the same beds as Mirasaura. The pointed sail shape is based on fossil data...

#sciart #fossils #paleontology
October 3, 2025 at 12:25 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
This wallowing Tyrannosaurus certainly agrees.
October 1, 2025 at 12:17 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
New #paleoart posted to #Patreon: woolly mammoths around a duck-filled lake. Accompanying the hi-res and WIPs of this image is a discussion about mammoth colour: the uniform red-brown mammoths of classic palaeoart seem unlikely now. Check it out at www.patreon.com/posts/night-...
#fossil #sciart
A herd of mammoths, with three large individuals up front, and lots of smaller, more distant individuals in the background, surrounding a shallow Pleistocene lake. They stand on browning, yellowing grass in front of a blue, partly cloudy sky. The mammoths are variable in colour, some being dark, some pale. A juvenile mammoth, blonde all over, has broken ranks and started chasing mallards around a pond. He has made a little grebe nervous. Why has this baby mammoth started attacking other species? Well, animals are a lot like people, Mrs. Simpson. Some of them act badly because they’ve had a hard life or have been mistreated. But, like people, some of them are just jerks.
October 1, 2025 at 10:58 AM
markwitton.bsky.social
I forgot about this #paleoart of Deinocheirus I produced back in 2019 until this morning. Having not looked at it for years, I think it holds up pretty well. And no, it's not got the "feather mountain" look because D. was a big animal in a temperate climate.
#dinosaurs #fossil #paleontology #sciart
October 1, 2025 at 9:41 AM
markwitton.bsky.social
Just posted some new #paleoart to #Patreon (www.patreon.com/c/markwitton), full images coming soon. For now, here's a nigh-on-midnight special preview of one new piece, just for other folks who really should be off their screens already: a baby mammoth chasing ducks. Some mammoths are just jerks.
September 30, 2025 at 10:43 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
A reminder about the #SVP2025 workshop "Palaeoart Past and Present: the view from the UK" for those last-minute early-bird [=cheap] conference registrants! It's shaping up to be a great one-day pre-conference event: please come along if you're a #paleoart fan attending SVP!
September 17, 2025 at 3:13 PM
markwitton.bsky.social
Look fellows, you can skive the rest of #FossilFriday by reading this interview with me at Science Photo Library. Don't worry, it's more #paleoart than words, and I won't tell your boss what you're up to.

#sciart #fossils #paleontology #dinosaurs

stories.sciencephoto.com/portfolio/ma...
September 12, 2025 at 3:55 PM