Today, I learned some very heart-breaking news. Stephen Czerkas, one of the true greats of paleo-art, recently died. He was 63 years old. The cause of death was liver cancer.

Czerkas was famous for his life-sized dinosaur sculptures, and he developed a very distinctive style – you could immediately recognize a Czerkas sculpture. His horned Allosaurus graced many children’s dinosaur books and TV shows, and his life-sized Carnotaurus was truly epic. However, his most famous work was his pack of Deinonychus raptors. Czerkas was one of the first paleo-artists to have his theropods adorned with feathers, and he also discovered that at least some species of sauropods had spines on their backs, which was incorporated into the BBC series Walking with Dinosaurs.

To all of those dino-lovers of my generation – those who came of age during the 1990s – Stephen Czerkas’ work would have been an integral part of your life. Czerkas was one of THE paleo-artists of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the time when I was becoming exposed to dinosaurs and other prehistoric life. The sheer awesomeness of his work influenced me profoundly both as an artist and as a person who dedicated his life to studying the past.

The paleontological and artistic spheres have lost one of the true greats of their domain, but his work will last and I dare say will continue to influence artists, scientists, and children generations from now.

RIP Stephen Andrew Czerkas (1951-2015) 😦

Categories: Paleontology, Uncategorized

Tags: allosaurid, Allosaurus, art, book, Carnotaurus, Deinonychus, dinosaur, dromaeosaurid, Mesozoic, paleo-art, paleontology, raptor, sauropod, theropod