Illustration by Mark A. Klingler Mark A. Klingler's reconstruction of a new species of oviraptorosaur, also known as The Chicken from Hell, found in South Dakota, done for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

By Byron Spice,
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Mark A. Klingler was just 8 or 9 years old when he saw a movie about an artist who drew birds that got him thinking about a career as an artist.

He doesn't remember the name, but he vividly recalls the part in the movie when the artist took his work to the Smithsonian Institution for display -- and was offered a job.

"I thought that would be really cool," Mr. Klingler said. He was already an avid artist of wildlife -- almost every member of his large New Jersey family has some artistic inclination -- and one of his hobbies was raising butterflies and moths. The idea that he might make a living with his art, not to mention his love of animals, stuck with him.

In one of those happy instances when a childhood dream becomes reality, Mr. Klingler today is a full-time scientific illustrator at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

	Mark A. Klingler A privately commissioned illustration of chickadees by Mark A. Klingler. Click photo for larger image. About the exhibit "Fur, Feathers & Fossils" will be at the AAAS Gallery, 1200 New York Ave. NW, Washington, D.C., from Nov. 1 through March 31, 2006. It will be displayed at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History from June 10 through Sept. 16, 2006.

And tomorrow, a solo exhibit of his work will go on display at the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world's largest general scientific society.

Called "Fur, Feathers & Fossils," the exhibition in the AAAS gallery will not only include some of his more notable drawings and sculptures of both contemporary wildlife and long-dead, now extinct creatures, but also reveal the processes he uses to reconstruct animals that no longer exist, based on their fossil remains.

One set of panels, for instance, will focus on his reconstruction of an as-yet unnamed species of oviraptorosaur, a 7-foot-tall feathered dinosaur that's been called The Chicken From Hell. Its fossil remains are being studied by Carnegie museum scientists, including dinosaur paleontologist Matthew Lamanna.

One panel will feature a cast of the oviraptorosaur's fossil claw, another a drawing of the fossil. Other panels will show skeleton reconstruction, the addition of muscles to the skeleton and the fleshed out version. The final portion of the display will be a three-dimensional, digitized bronze cast of the reconstruction.

The panels will be accompanied with explanations in Braille and the artwork itself will feature raised line art, so that even visually disabled visitors can appreciate the progressive stages of the reconstruction.

Making the exhibit accessible to the disabled particularly appealed to Virginia Stern, who directs both the AAAS's art program and its Science, Technology and Disability project.

"I'm just so pleased with this collaboration," she said, noting the Carnegie invested in the exhibit to increase its accessibility. "It isn't just showing his work, but showing how he does his work."

Mr. Klingler hoped to forge a career as an artist when he enrolled in Carnegie Mellon University's graphic design program. With the Carnegie museum located just across Panther Hollow from the university, he began to explore volunteer opportunities at the museum, hoping to indulge his boyhood interest in wildlife illustration.

He ultimately landed a job with John Rawlins, a curator of invertebrate zoology, and continued to work for him through his graduation in 1996. He continued his education at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. But in 1997, he returned to Pittsburgh and began working at the museum again, finally landing a full-time position the following year when several departments combined their resources to hire him.

These days, he spends most of his time working for the museum's vertebrate paleontologists, taking fossil remains and using them as a basis to reconstruct animals that no longer exist. It's a process that requires studying and sketching living animals, as well as taking photos of animals and working closely with paleontologists.

It was just such a reconstruction -- a 195-year-old mammal about a tenth the size of a mouse, called Hadrocodium wui -- that brought Mr. Klingler to the attention of the AAAS.

His rendering, which juxtaposed the tiny Hadrocodium with a paper clip, landed on the cover of AAAS's prestigious journal, Science, when Carnegie paleontologist Zhe-Xi Luo's report on the common ancestor to all mammals was published in May 2001.

Two years later, when Mr. Klingler received the Lazendorf prize for scientific illustration from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology at a meeting in Minneapolis, he crossed paths with a writer for Science. The writer, Eric Stokstad, covers paleontology for the journal, and subsequently suggested Mr. Klingler to Ms. Stern as someone whose work the association might consider exhibiting.

Many of the exhibits at AAAS headquarters include art by scientists, or art that is about science, noted Shirley Koller, the exhibit curator. "I think this is going to be more detailed as to what an illustrator does," she said.

In addition to explaining the reconstruction of the animals themselves, the exhibit also discusses how an animal's environment, including plants typical of the animal's time period, is depicted, as well as how the artwork is prepared for publication.

The 38-year-old Mr. Klingler, who also teaches at the Oakbridge Academy of the Arts near his home in Lower Burrell, considers himself lucky, noting that full-time positions for science illustrators are hard to find, even at museums such as the Carnegie.

"These days, it's kind of tough. It's unusual to have a full-time job doing it," though supporting the research under way at the museum could keep five artists busy, he said. "It's a nice quality of life . . . I've been able to practice what I love to do."