Diego Ortega

A watercolour painting of a lone Dipper, a medium-sized, plump, short-tailed bird with a brown head, body and a white throat/chest. The Dipper is standing on a rock in side profile looking to the right as viewed. The background is in pale blue around the rock to simulate water, with a buff colour above to make the dipper standout.

Here's a Dipper painted in watercolour for today's #ArtAdventCalendar and also #BirdOfTheDay theme #OnTheRocks ! I've only ever seen a Dipper once, they really are wonderful birds 🪶 🤎

Painting inspired by one of the @rspb.bsky.social website dipper images!

#Birds #Art #UKWildlife #EastCoastKin

Palate-cleanser: just one stunningly beautiful AND accurate human-made archaeological image (by the extraordinary @tombjorklundart.bsky.social) 🏺

"Lola", a girl whose DNA was extracted from c. 6000 yr old chewed birch tar
(& she's in #Matriarcha!)

museumlollandfalster.dk/en/stiftsmus...

Artwork of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. The mission consists of a 3-metre-long rover called Perseverance, and a smaller 'rotorcraft' (1.2 metres in diameter, called Ingenuity). The rover is seen against a Martian Sunset. The sunset is blue.

#ArtAdventCalendar #SciArt #blender
Another Martian dawn/dusk scene. Same blue sunset, but with Perseverance taking some of the glory.

Repost if you like this. Thank you.

Illustration of the star Proxima Centauri seen from one of its planets. The landscape is rocky and barren aside from a lake. Proxima is a flare star with a powerful magnetic field, leading to the formation of aurorae in the sky. Artwork created in Blender by Mark A Garlick.

#ArtAdventCalendar #SciArt

Proxima is the nearest star to the Sun. It is a red dwarf, 1/5 the size of our Sun and 20,000 times dimmer. Here we see it seen from the surface of one of its planets. To the left one can also make out Alpha Centauri, which is a binary star with two Sun-like components.

✈️🌏To complete the gallery of the journey, some photos from the flight Shanghai-Amsterdam: Beijing, the Gobi desert, the Tian Shan mountains and sunset near the Caspian Sea
After 13h if flight I arrived at Schiphol
#photography #Asia

The IAC (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias) publishes astonishing photos of the night sky, like this one of the comet Lemmon and mount Teide. Give them a follow!

Shanghai Tower and other skyscrapers at sunset

Pudong skyline at night

Lower part of the Pearl tower, with some boats below

🌃While walking through the Bund one can see the skyline of Pudong, rapidly developed in the last 30 years. At nightfall the buildings display a light show
#China #Shanghai #photography

Street in the former English settlement

Early 20th century building at Shanghai

Buildings of the Bund at night

HSBC building in the Bund

🏦Shanghai's International Settlement and the Bund. This area was managed by European and American powers and it is full of western architecture
#China #Shanghai #photography

Outside view of the temple and a skyscraper

Statue of Guanying in the temple

Main courtyard of the temple

Animal statues and skyscraper

☮️Jing'an temple in Shanghai. This buddhist temple is old, but te current building dates back to the 1980s. Its location is peculiar, as it is surrounded by tall skyscrapers
#China #Shanghai #photography

The Moon. I cranked up the saturation for some of that blue/orange mineral goodness.

A beautiful gibbous Moon tonight ❤️

flic.kr/p/2rJG9Fz

Three Darwinopterus modularis flaplings getting ready for to test their wings

Darwinopterus modularis flaplings getting ready for the big leap 😬🤞

#pterosaur #paleoart #sciart #jurassic

This is the largest known retrogressive thaw slump in the world (Yakutia)! 🧊🔥

It exposes a remarkable sequence of Ice Age permafrost that record interaction of colluvial/eolian/periglacial processes on a hillslope episodically forested during last 650 ka! 😲

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Double-barred Finches are sometimes referred to as Owl Finches, I love the beautiful black & white markings on their wings! rachelhollis.com/product/doub... #drawing #art #birds #birdart #wildlife

it appears plagiorizer William Toosey tries his shit again, that's my Propalorchestes in his "Journey through the Cenozoic".
I suspect this is just the tip of it. Many of these are just other people's work with a new texture slapped on top.
Lots of JRC art here.

YouTube video by PBS Eons How Frozen DNA Revealed a Lost World

Made a couple of Earth shots for the latest PBS eons video, including the still in the thumbnail here.

Represents Greenland 2 million years ago.

There is a bigger Eons project which I was more heavily involved with, set to come out next spring, I believe.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfVP...

Shanghai Tower and other skyscrapers at sunset

Pudong skyline at night

Lower part of the Pearl tower, with some boats below

🌃While walking through the Bund one can see the skyline of Pudong, rapidly developed in the last 30 years. At nightfall the buildings display a light show
#China #Shanghai #photography

Street in the former English settlement

Early 20th century building at Shanghai

Buildings of the Bund at night

HSBC building in the Bund

🏦Shanghai's International Settlement and the Bund. This area was managed by European and American powers and it is full of western architecture
#China #Shanghai #photography

Outside view of the temple and a skyscraper

Statue of Guanying in the temple

Main courtyard of the temple

Animal statues and skyscraper

☮️Jing'an temple in Shanghai. This buddhist temple is old, but te current building dates back to the 1980s. Its location is peculiar, as it is surrounded by tall skyscrapers
#China #Shanghai #photography

The IAC (Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias) publishes astonishing photos of the night sky, like this one of the comet Lemmon and mount Teide. Give them a follow!

Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age ❄️
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I love it when you watch something that sparks your imagination and gets your creative thoughts flowing again. This new Apple TV series has done just that - the CGI and designs of the creatures are STUNNING!
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Do you have a favourite scene/creature from the series?

Lesmesodon edingeri, a cat sized Hyaenodont from the #Messel Pit. We only have 4 fossils from this species, all still suckling age. Would be an early horse’s nightmare as an adult though (dissection in thread) #sciart (done in 2021)

Detailed watercolor painting of male and female white-winged crossbills. The red and yellow birds are hanging upside down on tamarack branches with pinecones.

A pair of White-winged Crossbills for #ArtAdventCalendar!

#BirdArt #SciArt #AnimalArt #ArtYear #Watercolor #FineArt

Watercolour illustration of a pair of armadillos in a vertically-oriented composition, with the armadillos towards the top, and the grassy environment leading the eye downward in gestural, impressionistic brushstrokes. The palette is predominantly in warm ochres and oranges.

'Everything has its proper name. I shall call it “Armadillo” till I found out the real one…’

Illustration for The Beginning of the Armadillos, from Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, published by The Folio Society, 2012.

Watercolour on Saunders Waterford hp, 140 x 240mm.

#ArtAdventCalendar

Pico Formation, Peru during the Late Miocene. A female Odobenocetops and her calf feed on Anadara bivalves on the seafloor. This odd cetacean, related to modern belugas and narwhals, had the shortest snout among whales and backward-facing tusks (males bore a single very long one). Though known only from incomplete skeletons, vertebrae suggest a length of about 3 m. The mother shields her calf as if sensing nearby danger. Their presence also startles swimming Chlamys scallops. Sharing the bottom, the semiaquatic ground sloths Thalassocnus graze on Zosteraceae seagrass, showing an unusual niche compared to today’s small arboreal sloths. Nearby, Luidia starfish prey on Loxechinus urchins, Myliobatis rays search for buried bivalves, and Isostichopus sea cucumbers partly bury themselves while others cling to rocks beside a camouflaged Octopus. Farther away grow Lessonia algae, and above them drifts a weakened Architeuthis, speculatively depicted in this Period. Both Odobenocetops and Thalassocnus are in the sight of an Acrophyseter group, ~4.5 m macropredatory sperm whales with powerful teeth adapted to hunt large marine animals. The main action centers on a dense school of Sardinops. These 40 cm fish rely on safety in numbers but face multiple attacks at once. Two penguin species, the smaller Spheniscus humboldti and the larger, long-beaked Spheniscus megarhampus, attack in their groups. Piscobalaena attempt to filter-feed on the school, though at only 4–5 m long they are "small whales". An Isurus mako shark appears but retreats when a massive Piscogavialis crocodilian approaches from below. A swift Acrophoca snatches an isolated Sardinops, while overhead big Pelagornis birds (6 m wingspan) wait to seize any fish that reaches the surface.

Coastal Feast - Pisco Formation

New art for Tales from the Phanerozoic, a project by João Macêdo. Check the Late Miocene chapter here, with detailed information about its backstory, environment and creatures: sites.google.com/view/talesfr...

Quick description in the -big- Alt

#SciArt #Paleoart

A planted scene featuring two black-and-white warbler on a stump. One warbler has a snail in its beak as the other looks at a soon to be eaten parasitized snail. Healthy snails are at the base eating bird poop.

For an assignment to show a “special view” of a natural process and in this case, I wanted to show an implied lifecycle of Leucochloridium variae as it cycles between two hosts: a black-and-white warbler and amber oval snails #gouache #Sciart

🚀Liftoff for Europe's #VegaC rocket, propelling Kompsat-7 Earth-observer to a sun-synchronous orbit, 1 December 14:21 local time at Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana (17:21 GMT, 18:21 CET), flight #VV28.

www.esa.int/Enabling_Sup...

⭑ PALEOFAUNA ⭑ of ⭑ NEW ⭑ CALEDONIA⭑ 🧵

#paleoart

Photo montage of Tinamus resonans sp. nov., a new species of tinamou from the montane forests of the Serra do Divisor, western Amazonia, Brazil. The species is distinguished by a unique combination of plumage pattern, vocal repertoire, and ecological characteristics, including a conspicuous dark slate facial mask, vivid rufous-cinnamon underparts, and a uniform brownish-gray back. Its vocalizations are remarkable, consisting of long and powerful songs that echo strikingly across the steep montane slopes, producing a characteristic resonant effect. The species was documented exclusively at higher elevations within a transitional zone between submontane and stunted forests, where the understory is densely structured by root mats. A preliminary population estimate, based on field detections and spatial extrapolation, suggests approximately 2,106 individuals restricted to the Serra do Divisor massif. Although no immediate anthropogenic pressures were observed within its range, the species may be highly vulnerable to climate change and to proposed infrastructure projects that threaten the integrity of this federally protected region. The discovery of T. resonans highlights the biological uniqueness of the Serra do Divisor, reinforces its status as a center of montane endemism, and underscores the critical importance of maintaining its long-term conservation.

Huge News from the Western Amazon: it's the year 2025 and we are still describing entirely new, strikingly-distinctive large-bodied bird species! Behold Tinamus resonans sp. nov. the Slaty-masked Tinamou mapress.com/zt/article/v... #Ornithology @tetzoo.bsky.social 🪶

A Homotherium stands by the downed body of a Megaloceros, its huge antlers standing out against the drab colored grassland landscape framed by snowy hills in the background.

POV: you're in the museum's Ice Age dioramas hall

#SciArt #artbyjulio

Result from the Irdin Manha Formation #paleostream.
While you might never heard it's name you most likely have heard of some of the fauna from here. First and foremost Andrewsarchus.
The fossils were so far largely excavated by the amnh in northern China (Inner Mongolia) during...