Five hundred million years of evolutionary innovation is on display in Fernbank Museum’s new exhibition, “Armored Animals.”
The spectacular body defense displays of dinosaurs – spines, plates, horns and helmets – and the unique adaptations of other animals, including fish and insects, are presented alongside human creations they’ve inspired, in an evolutionary expo of defense tech.
Rob Gaston is the paleo artist who created the fossil replications on display at Fernbank. He recently joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes to share more about these incredible creatures and the monumental task of reconstructing them.
“We’ve observed animals from the beginning of, our existence and basically adapted all these same defenses that the animals use,” says Gaston about the inextricable link between human defense strategies and the animal kingdom, “things like chain mail, shields, helmets – all these things were probably warriors and hunters observing animals and copying those modes of defense.”
Gaston is particularly well-suited for his role as a paleo artist, which combines sculpture and paleontology to create scientifically accurate representations of previous lifeforms. His background as an amateur paleontologist during his college years set him up perfectly for the role that he plays now, and even led to a dinosaur clade being named after him!
