Livyatan melvillei skull (Prehistoric Bayside)

One of the two life-size paintings which I created for the Prehistoric Bayside exhibit at Bayside Gallery spearheaded by Ben Francischellli which ended a few weeks back. Very flatteringly, it even ended up being made into the official logo by Zev Landes!

Livyatan, the killer sperm whale, was one of the largest predators of all time and possessed the largest functional teeth in the animal kingdom. Fossils of this animal have been found in Miocene Beaumaris and throughout the world with a particularly spectacular partial skull found in Peru. It was one of the authors who described this skull: Olivier Lambert, who was instrumental in making this artwork what it is today and I appreciate their generosity with their time and expertise immensely. I tried to make this skull look like it had come from the Beaumaris fossil site by using teeth and bones as from the area as references to get the right textures and colours. Boy howdy, what an endeavour to paint these teeth were. Photos by Astrid O’Connor and Nina Belle.