On July 23, the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science hosted a Science Spotlight, highlighting Alaina Wiwi — a paleoartist for the “Hall of Ancient Life.” The exhibit opened in February 2025 and highlights fossils found in New Mexico.
Wiwi is an artist who creates visual depictions of extinct creatures using fossil evidence and modern-day relatives to construct a picture of what the species may have looked like. As a paleoartist, Wiwi was responsible for many of the 113 illustrations, models, dioramas and murals that can be found in the “Hall of Ancient Life.”
Wiwi explained the various forms that paleoart can take: spot illustrations — which feature a single organism as it would have looked in life and no background, full illustrations — which showcase more than one organism in a full scene and bone maps — which help viewers visualize where in the body of an animal a given fossil may have come from. Paleo-artists also make maps of prehistoric landscapes…