Tyler Keillor

Prepping out a super-hard concretion from between the jugal, quadrate & pterygoid of a huge fossil croc (this is 1 hour sped up), slowly making a dent… speaking of time, later this afternoon on a campus zoom ceremony for staff, I’ll be recognized for my 25 years working @ UChicago 🐊😁

Trust: these bad days will be in the past of a better future!

You’re OK! Hugs!

😆amazing! That’s it exactly!

Any paleo folks in the Chicagoland area- this afternoon is our final Open House of 2025 - come see what we’ve been working on at the Fossil Lab, 5437 S. Wabash (just West of UChicago main campus). We’ll continue hosting our monthly Open Houses in the spring of 2026! 🦕🦖

Last night we saw some of the northern lights despite light pollution over Chicagoland!

Outstanding rediscovery!
Until I enlarged the image, all I could see was a happy little skull!

Looking forward to reading this new pterosaur study, and fitting that while driving home this afternoon I caught this pterosaur-shaped cloud over Chicago!😎

my Birthday plans for this evening include getting sushi with my wife and son & watching Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster because it’s #GodzillaDay !

A lovely day @ Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art, in solidarity w/ our fellow human beings’ beautiful & diverse cultural traditions for Dia de los Muertos…and saw some great graffiti in the neighborhood too!

Happy Halloween!

No, you’ll find the paper remarks that the artwork is tentatively depicting the head display but the new mummies don’t have that part preserved… Here’s to finding more mummies now that this type of preservation is better understood as possible!

I can just see from that smile what’s in home iguana’s imagination right now!:

Check out this timelapse I made while giving an Edmontosaurus a pedicure!
One small part of the story out today in Science
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Something we’ve been very carefully “chipping away at” for a while in the Fossil Lab #UChicago will hit the news tomorrow! A very interesting collaborative effort, watch for it afternoon on Oct 23! @paulserenoofficial.bsky.social

Fantastic support shell! Not easy- well done!!

I’m using a “Chicago pneumatic”, a workhorse engraving pen, not built for fossil prep technically, but widely adopted in the past- though now more options exist from a few companies that are more $$ but built for the purpose. We use a range for different tasks! 🦴

On #fossilfriday cleaning very hard matrix off a tiny portion of a five-foot-long skull of Sarcosuchus…patience, this takes a while! 🐊💀

Any Chicago area paleo folks out there- please feel welcome to come to the University of Chicago Fossil Lab monthly Open House this afternoon from 3:30-5:00 pm and see what we’re working on!
5437 S. Wabash Ave., just West of main campus 🦕🦖

Met this little guy casting a big Mothra shadow on our dog walk after work! #kaiju

Driving home in Chicago today, a group of black SUVs w/ tinted windows swerved to block traffic & U-turn near a bus stop at an intersection (55th & Kildare), masked tactical wearing terrorists jumped out and ran down a residential street. I called: www.icirr.org/fsn
www.chicago.gov/city/en/site...

Another repair I made at that same time (’99-‘00) to the ribs of the defeated Lambeosaurus…after a visitor apparently climbed over the railing & onto the mount to pose for a photo! Mainly cracked plaster filler on bent armatures, which I filled & painted to match with Bill Simpson‘s guidance

The ramp was so close to the Apatosaurus that visitors could reach over the wall and grab the tail: here I am in ‘99 or ‘00 repairing a caudal that was snapped by a visitor (after receiving how-to instructions from Bill Simpson in Geology) back when I was on Exhibits Maintenance staff

#SciArtSeptember -prompt today is Fellowship- I’m so grateful to the researchers out there who value the power of art to communicate to the public & collaborate with artists like me to realize these projects! My #paleoart Cyonosaurus yawned all the way to the Field Museum to join Arjan Mann’s team!

Natural bristles from a brush glued onto snout, trimmed and painted for a subtle fuzzy display…I think it’s done! I‘ll add some final thoughts on my new Cyonosaurus sculpture in a follow up thread next-

It’s debatable wether these guys had whiskers or fuzz of any kind, but Arjan was open to the idea, and the skulls do have interesting pattern of foramina which I could see supporting some kind of sensory features. Short lengths of nylon monofilament are used to suggest simple vibrissae

Research team Naiomi & Arjan approved coloration direction & gave some suggestions as I refined the paint job. Last steps after this: to add protowhiskers and some fuzz, next!

The acrylic teeth aren’t painted, but for the skin I use acrylic paint applied by hand with brushes in many layers; here’s the base coat, blocking out areas on the Cyonosaurus cast

I used dental acrylic cast into the teeth, & tinted polyurethane resin slushed in layers for the skin, then filled w/ foam to backfill solid but lightweight. I don’t usually cast w/ the glass eyes in-place, but did this time & used darker resin there because that would work w/ color scheme planned