Jack Horner With Dino Chicken

A close-up of Dino-Chicken can be seen in my DA "Sculpture Gallery":

lexlothor.deviantart.com/art/D…

More examples of my mad modeling machinations can be seen in my DA sculpture gallery:

lexlothor.deviantart.com/galle…

I created this sculpture as a gift for paleontologist Jack Horner.

This is a major production that I had been planning to execute for two years. I was inspired by a recent theoretical proposal to construct my "dino-chicken". Paleontologist Jack Horner of the Museum of the Rockies has expounded upon a novel idea to demonstrate the dinosaurian origins of living birds. It may be possible to manipulate an animal's genome to "switch on" genes that code for long suppressed physical structures. It is conceivable that a modern bird such as a chicken could be phenotypically "regressed" to a condition comparable to its ancient ancestors. This would be accomplished by chemically suppressing accumulated genes that act as off switches at different embryological phases of development. The result of such manipulation within the egg might be a bird that has grown perfectly functional fingers and a tail.

I created this model by taking a life-sized resin statue of a rooster and grafting on the tail and feet of a styrene dinosaur toy. I removed the mouth from an articulated mechanical dinosaur head and replaced the beak bird's beak with it. I hand sculpted the skin of the rostrum with epoxy putty. The feathers on the tail and other details were hand sculpted with air-dry clay. The hands were created from the feet of a vinyl dinosaur toy. The claws and additional knuckles were pinned a extensions onto these. The eyes came from a sacrificial Beanie Baby

The faux bronze patina was achieved with textured dimensional paint and "hammered" bronze and copper aerosol enamels. I applied a wash of green acrylic paint with ground pumice in suspension to create the verdigris.

art, text & photo (c) John P. Alexander