Dunkleosteus, a giant armored fish that dominated the Devonian, exemplified a form that disappeared from the fossil record as quickly as it appeared.

The patterns etched by boring beetles, stone tools, and massive land movers are largely the same, both in form and permanence.

Cowbirds are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other birds. The cowbird chicks hatch faster and grow larger than the host offspring and outcompete those chicks for both food and attention, eventually resulting in their death.

Termite colony mounds feature complex ventilation systems, carefully cultivated fungal gardens, and networks of tunnels that provide access to food storehouses, nurseries, and chambers that acknowledge social hierarchy.

For a period of many thousand years post Permian extinction, the group of mammal-like reptiles called Lystrosaurs were thought to comprise over 90% of animals living on land.

The predatory therapsid family Gorgonopsidae was eradicated along with the vast majority of the life on Terra after severe climate change followed by catastrophic geologic disruption at the end of the Permian.

Thylacine, the last marsupial predator, was systematically annihilated under government order by the sheep farmers who colonized the island of Tasmania.

Entire populations of Tasmanian Devils are nearly genetically identical through inbreeding, leading to the spread of a lethal, non-viral cancer via contact. Around 74,000 years ago, the Toba caldera eruption left less than ten thousand humans alive on the planet, resulting in a significant genetic bottleneck.

The insatiable, scouring power of the locust swarm still has the capacity to devastate regions by exhausting all available natural resources.

Limuli, by some unknown chemical means, understand the complex moon and tide cycles, allowing them to synchronize their beaching during mating season.

There seems to be a perception that food chains are dominated by complex, highly evolved organisms with more primitive creatures making up the lower rungs of the chain. In many cases, food chains flow in the opposite direction.

Caddisfly larvae build ornate shelters by gathering raw materials from their environment and cementing that material with a natural silk binding.

Natural selection encouraged Megaloceros to develop the largest antlers in geologic history (larger antlers earn mating rights). Various factors such as a large nutritional investment eventually made the antlers detrimental to survival. Failure, as a species, was inevitable.

In parts of Indonesia, Sumatran tigers regularly hunt and kill humans. Jungle workers learned to wear masks on the back of their heads to prevent attack, but the tigers discovered the ruse and now pass their discovery on to new generations of tigers through ancestral knowledge.

Coelocanth, a relative of the first fish to move onto land, has pectoral and pelvic fin pairs that move in opposite conjunction, mimicking the locomotion of a quadruped.

Man, as a species, has removed itself from nature and transmuted from it an entirely new environment. When one observes behavior and evolution between these two worlds, across species and epochs, patterns are revealed. Much is the same as it always was - the grand designs of fate, purpose and time remain unchanged; even forms are repeated. Shared behaviors often result in a shared fate (and vise versa).

This series acts within the new epoch of the Anthropocene but acknowledges the traditions of naturalism. My process starts with drawings based on research and observation. Those drawings serve as the entry point to narrative and are paired with a counterpoint of found imagery. Ambiguity allows for viewer interpretation to be influenced by his or her own judgment and knowledge. The result is work that is as much about man as it is about animals, as much about science fiction as it is about science.