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Drawing
dinosaurs is something of a passion for him.
"I
was always interested in art and did A levels, then I took
the science route with a degree in biology and geology here
at the University of Bristol," David told BBC Bristol.
Currently
doing his masters in palaeontology, at the University of Bristol,
he was asked to illustrate a colleague's papers with his skeletal
drawings which swiftly led to him putting flesh on the bones.
Having
a background in anatomy is helpful when it comes to accuracy
in the reconstructions.
"I understand how the muscles work and the way the creature
would have moved about, so I can make the drawing more realistic,
rather than just putting thin skin over the bones," he
said.
"I
also find myself sifting through the remains of a chicken
dinner at home and identifying which is the scapula and so
on."
Waking
the Sea Dragon
But
it is the very real excitement of working on dinosaurs that
brings the subject to life for David.
A
recent BBC Choice programme featured the team David Waterhouse
was with, in "Waking the Sea Dragon" filmed off
the North Yorkshire coast.
"People
think of palaeontologists working with paint brushes painstakingly
moving minute amounts of soil, but we had pneumatic drills
to remove a metre of rock from around the Ichthyosaur.
"It's incredible being on a dig and being one of the
people to pull something out of the rock and then be able
to piece it back together."
David
also worked on the project to reconstruct Bristol's own dinosaur,
Thecodontosaurus.
Decisions
about the colour and texture of the dinosaur skin are acknowledged
to be educated guesswork.
"It
was the size of an Alsatian and was an omnivore so it would
have needed camouflage.
"I modelled the colouring on the tail on a large iguana,
then gave it a sandy-coloured back as Bristol would have been
a semi-tropical environment.
"The red chest is taken from a male lizard and was a
total guess."
(You
can see Thecodontosaurus and others in our pop-up gallery)
The process of drawing a dinosaur from bone fragments takes
time.
"I
examine the actual bones and make detailed anatomical drawings
of them," David explained.
Next,
comparative anatomy comes into play, deciding what the dinosaur
looked like and how the bones fit into the skeleton.
"Sometimes
when I'm making a skeletal reconstruction, there are very
few bones available, so it becomes a jigsaw," David said.
"Perhaps
just one bone is very diagnostic of the creature and suddenly
you realise what you have."
Lastly,
phylogenetics determines how it evolved and where it fitted
into the timescale of dinosaurs.
'I
named a dinosaur'
But
it is the Mousebird group of birds which has truly stolen
David Waterhouse's heart.
The
group got the name from the long tail and strange ability
to run horizontally along the ground like a mouse.
"It's
55 million-years-old and extinct in Britain but what's so
exciting is it's alive in South Africa today, so we know what
it looked like and how it flew," he enthused.
"Birds
are closely related to dinosaurs. Both birds and reptiles
have colour vision so as birds came from dinosaurs they must
have had colour vision too," David said.
This
is reflected in the Mousebird's plumage which is brightly
coloured, with a crest on its head.
Some
fossils have been found clearly showing the crest on top of
the head and the identifiable grasping feet, similar to a
parrot.
David
Waterhouse is one of a select few who have had the privilege
of naming a species.
"There
are lots of fossils in museums waiting for people to come
and look at them," he said.
"I
was working on one in the British Museum of Natural History
under Dr Gareth Dyke who I will be working with again in Dublin."
"I
had a suspicion it was a new species as there was nothing
like it in Britain.
I
had to give it a Latin or Greek name and chose Eocolius
Walkeri, which translates as dawn mouse bird. It was a
rare privilege."
David
is leaving Bristol in October to continue his study of dinosaurs
with a PHd in Dublin but as the city is, in his words, "one
of the best, if not the best, places to study dinosaurs in
Europe", he will probably be back in the future.
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