Paleo art’s master practitioners are in high demand. They make museum murals. They illustrate scientific papers and children’s books. And they do more than paint dinosaurs. John Gurche, America’s most famous paleo artist, specializes in hominins, like the recently discovered Homo Naledi.

Simon Stålenhag is not a famous paleo artist. He is a Swedish digital illustrator, and he tends to work in science fiction. He will soon release a book of illustrations in the U.S., a collection of moody glimpses into Swedish suburbia, circa 1985, overlaid with retrofuturistic technologies:

Simon Stålenhag

A few years ago, as Stålenhag was putting the final touches on the book, he “rediscovered dinosaurs,” he told me. Stålenhag loved paleontology as a kid, but like many of us, he forgot about dinosaurs during adolescence and early adulthood. At the age of 25, he came back to them, after developing an intense interest in natural history.

“I read about these new fossils from China, the feathered dinosaurs,” Stålenhag told me. “I had always loved birds, and wildlife illustrations of birds, in particular.” He decided to make a few sketches.

Simon Stålenhag

In early 2013, Stålenhag reached out to Sweden’s Natural History Museum. “I asked if there was anything I could help with,” he says. “I told them I didn’t care what it was for. I just wanted to paint dinosaurs.” As it happened, the museum was overhauling its dinosaur exhibit. Stålenhag sent over his sketches. Shortly thereafter, they commissioned him to do each of the exhibit’s digital paintings. There were 28 in all.

Scroll back up to the image at the top of this page. Look at the way Stålenhag frames the T-Rex. He sets you back at a distance. He reminds you that you’re eavesdropping, that this world isn’t yours. You feel an instant affinity with the nervous herd of herbivores in the foreground. Past the T-Rex and the carnage of its kill, birds are scattering. Dinosaurs themselves scattered into birds, to survive the asteroid and the volcanoes that followed. In the background, the stratified cliffs evoke geologic time.

I asked Stålenhag if his paleo art was influenced by other artists. He named two: Lars Jonsson and John Conway. Jonsson is an ornithologist, who mainly illustrates birds. “For him, every bird is an individual,” Stålenhag told me. “He observes them in their natural environments.” Jonsson’s influence can be seen in Stålenhag’s close-ups, like this image of three archeopteryx:

Simon Stålenhag

I asked Stålenhag if he worked closely with paleontologists, expecting him to say yes. He said their input was limited. “I did a lot of research on the dinosaurs,” he told me. “The information is easy to come by. You don’t have to ask a professor. You can find it online. But it’s hard to get everything right. I had to redo some of them.”