My buddies at Virtual Fossil Friday have been giving me so many fun paleoart ideas lately! We'll get going on a subject and then MaggieJo Widdicombe will say "somebody draw that", and honestly I don't have much else going on, so I've been keeping a list and working through them as fast as I can.

The other week, she and Ashley Hall were super excited because a freshwater mosasaur has recently been found in Cretaceous fossil deposits in Montana. This is really interesting because mosasaurs have traditionally been thought of as marine animals, but apparently some made the move to fresh water. MaggieJo said it would be terrifying to be boating down a river and see a mosasaur lurking right beside you, and then wanted someone to depict that. Your friendly neighborhood paleoartist is on the case!

I had a lot of fun with this painting. Looked up lots of references of Amazon River dolphins, which are adorable. Also I fully support mosasaurs with forked tongues. Partly this is because they were closely related to snakes, which have forked tongues, so it makes sense. And is cute.

 I'm always amused by references to the real world in early Pokémon media. As the franchise progressed, Game Freak began to emphasize that the Pokémon universe is a completely different place than Earth (although geographically and culturally very similar), even to the point of gradually phasing out real-world animals and strongly implying that Pokémon are the only non-human creatures on the planet. But in the early days, before the lore was really solidified, it seemed more like the Pokémon universe was this alternate reality "Earth, but with Pokémon". It kind of makes me wonder what would have happened if Game Freak had continued in that creative direction.

But clearly Lt. Surge is from Unova

 I came up with this one at 3 am when I couldn't sleep. I'm glad something good came out of that night.

I'm also glad it was still funny the next day.

Also, I know the Easter egg on the side panel is nigh-illegible, but I just couldn't bring myself to omit it once I'd thought of it. Consider it an extra for those who bother to zoom in.

 What, you think Pokémon work for free?

 

At the last Fossil Friday of 2025 a few weeks ago, we had a great presentation on dinosaurs of Canada, and Ashley and MaggieJo were talking about Albertavenator, a troodontid from the Horseshoe Canyon Formation that's only known from fragmentary fossils. They showed a very nice piece of paleoart that reconstructed it colored like a blue jay, which made me picture Albertavenator perching on a head like grey jays (sometimes called Canada jays here in the US) are notorious for doing. When I told them that, they said they wanted to see it. I wanted to see it too, so here we are.

This Albertavenator is perching on Edmontosaurus regalis, one of the largest animals at Horseshoe Canyon. Hadrosaurs probably made good perches, in all honesty.

 That's kind of weird if you think about it. Except that this is the Pokémon universe and aquatic Pokémon float in the air with no in-universe explanation, just so it's more convenient for battles and general storytelling. Oh, suspension of disbelief.

I'm really proud of that porthole, though.

 The chef NPC's dialogue here is supposed to tip you off to check the trash bins because there are some items hidden there.

But in the Pokémon universe, you have to exercise caution when dealing with Poké Ball-shaped things. They're not always Poké Balls. As the Power Plant makes abundantly clear later in the game. (Which makes me wonder if Voltorb and Electrode were created specifically so they could be used as traps in the Power Plant.)

On an almost completely unrelated note, I'm still playing through Legends: Z-A and still have mixed feelings about it. Unless the climax pulls off something completely amazing in terms of story, expect an unnecessarily long writeup featuring my thoughts on the game's story presentation and character development. I know, I know. Some game reviews put a lot of emphasis on stuff like technical specs or the multiplayer experience. When a writer plays an RPG, this is what happens. The gameplay is still great though. Also I caught a shiny Magikarp yesterday, so that was pretty amazing.