A rat with at least four testicles, one larger than its head, earlier this year. A sprouting from its wing. A museum posting a psychedelic Godzilla-meets-gecko , while a more life-like illustration of the ancient reptile appears .
Imagery produced by artificial intelligence has caused its fair share of . The handful of leading image generators are not perfect and yield results that are sometimes divergent from the user’s needs or expectations. But in the sciences, AI models are more than tools for making media or springboards for creativity.
They are contributors to the scientific record, inasmuch as the figures in scientific research are part-and-parcel to the team’s written findings. In paleontology, the science-informed depictions of ancient creatures—also known as “paleoart”—help other scientists and the public make meaning from new findings. They are grounded in science and are a unique portal into worlds tens, and sometimes hundreds, of millions of years removed from us.
In that way, there’s much more at risk than . Paleoart occupies a unique space in the science communication ecosystem by virtue of its subjects. Illustrators are tasked with depicting long-extinct animals in accordance with modern scientific understandings of that animal: what it looked like, of course, but also the environment in which it lived, and how it made use of that environment.
“I consider palaeoart to be artistic reconstructions of prehistoric creatures using an informed approa.