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Laura Cunningham

@paleolaura.bsky.social
739 followers 419 following 129 posts

Paleoart, biology, conservation, desert. 🇺🇦

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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
This is the blocking in stage of the Miocene Clarendonian California Coast Range oil painting. Get the main colors in then go back and put in more detail. I like to do the animals last. The sky is finished and so is the distant mountain vista—this helps set the light and shadow. #paleoart
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
The barren western Nevada desert in the rain shadow of the Sierra Nevada will burst into amazing blooms after plentiful rains. Beavertail cactus (Opuntia basilaris) yesterday near Silver Peak. Unreal blossom color
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Engelmann hedgehog cactus, also known as calico cactus. In full bloom now, Mojave Desert, California
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Western whiptail (Aspidoscelis tigris) under an arrow-weed shrub. An active search predator, mostly insectivorous. They often rake leaf litter with their broad hands looking for small insects like termites. Death Valley National Park. #herps #Squamates
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Pacific bluefin tuna leaping out of unusually warm Pacific waters with flying fish and gulls. Southern California Channel Islands in the 1890s, based on old sport fishermen descriptions. Oil on cotton rag paper 2006 #HistoricalEcology #oilpainting
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Finished the sky on my Miocene Clarendonian-age Coast Range painting. Oil on canvas. Next: the background trees in full color layers. More photos ⬇️ #paleoart
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Interesting!
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
I agree. Visiting Yellowstone put a whole new perspective on hiking and camping.
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Good notes on the image, thank you! I was imagining a wild and free grizzly moving out fast on grassy hills
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
Interesting high level clouds ripping off the southern Sierra Nevada crest from the approaching front and moving out eastward over the Death Valley region this afternoon. #weather
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
I wish. I can’t see grizzlies doing well in CA. Too many livestock, not enough giant unpopulated landscapes.
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
“Land of No Fences,” my reconstruction of late Holocene California grizzly in the South Coast Range 300 years ago. Blue oak savanna and nodding needlegrass (Nassella cernua). Oil on cotton rag paper primed with shellac, 1997.
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Showy Gilia in the northern Mojave Desert. The bloom is moving upslope now, a fantastic wildflower year. Take care of yourselves during these troubled times
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
The only Hyaenid to access North America: Chasmaporthetes, the “running hyena.” I chose to reconstruct it like an aardwolf (Proteles) which might be related—long legs sure look similar. Chasma was more carnivorous but not bone-crushing. Dorsal mane raised to appear bigger. Pliocene #paleoart
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Morning with desert gold, also known as desert sunflower, below sea level in Death Valley south of Badwater. Amazing how they grow out of rock-studded barren alluvial fans given a couple of good rainstorms. The Mojave Desert is thriving this year
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Crepuscular rays after sunset appear to be shadows of tall Sierra Nevada peaks cast far out across the Nevada Desert. Upper Amargosa River
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
👍
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
In almost 30 years of living in and around Death Valley I have never seen the calthaleaf phacelia this dense and abundant, coating the barren rock hills with purple. They are having a banner year in this hyperarid part of the Mojave Desert
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
open.substack.com/pub/lauracun...
open.substack.com
Note-Taking in the Information Age
The Value of Paper over Data Centers
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
New blog on books, information, observing nature, conservation. Link below
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
I have not figured out how to curate my feed either
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
Still going strong today!
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
Study of Bone-crushing dog Borophagus from the Pliocene of North America. Hat tip to paleoartist Jay Matternes whose Cenozoic mammal reconstructions are amazing. I saw his murals in the Smithsonian when I was a kid, influenced me forever. Pencil on paper 📝 🧪 #paleontology
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Pelagornis, a giant Tertiary seabird possibly related to ducks. Member of extinct pseudotooth birds, it had bony teeth-projections on jaws. Speculative feeding behavior: dipping for squid as soaring across oceans, or nest predator? This is going into my Pliocene coast painting for a museum #paleoart
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
This is good. The last time a lake formed in Badwater basin too many people dragged all types of kayaks, canoes, and inner tubes out that they left lasting marks in the delicate salt flat and gouged ruts in the mud. Too munch disturbance.
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
Death Valley desert gold now!
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
The diversity of North American Blancan-age Camelids is off the charts: llamas, goat-camels, giraffe-llamas, giant camels. They must have been filling Pliocene niches before the Bovids arrived during the glacials. Pencil size chart; not all may have been contemporaneous #paleoart
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
A couple of January lesser mohavea wildflowers sneaking in a bloom, Death Valley
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Field sketch with ballpoint pen of Deinonychus life restoration model in 2004 at a San Diego Natural History Museum dino exhibit. #paleoart
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Ice crystal ring around the waxing crescent Moon over the Mojave (iPhone can’t pick up the crescent)
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Not yet, a few beginning below sea level
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
No, it’s pretty shallow
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
It will probably still be there!
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
Temporary lake at Badwater this week, from flash flooding. Death Valley National Park
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
Lightning flash makes cloud tops glow for an instant. Night photo with iPhone of Arizona monsoon storm as seen on horizon from southern Nevada 150 miles away
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
Touch of rainbow between thunderstorms in the northern Mojave
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 29/06/2025
A mural segment I painted on a wall in 2006 showing Dimetrodon and a Permian scene. Geology 2 building, Fresno State University CA. I wish I had better photos. Alkyd paint, about 4 feet high. #paleoart
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 21/06/2025
Volcanic dome of silica-rich lava rock, Panum Crater in the Eastern Sierra region by Mono Lake, California. The last eruption was 650 years ago. The pumice crater surrounds the plug.
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 19/06/2025
Alkali wetland with Saltgrass in Sarcobatus Flat, Nevada, on east side of Death Valley National Park. Don’t sell off these #publiclands
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 06/06/2025
This is what I seek: bitterroot blooms (Lewisia rediviva) and native bluebunch wheatgrass, in the sagebrush steppe of NE Nevada, protected from cattle grazing. We found elk scat here
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 05/06/2025
Many millions of acres of Western US public lands are seeded with crested wheatgrass, a Eurasian cool-season bunchgrass that is often genetically engineered as cattle forage. Native sagebrush steppe is so much more biodiverse
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 29/05/2025
I wish! I’m in Salt Lake City but it’s completely overcast tonight 😭
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
Cassin’s vireo migrating through cottonwood groves in upper Amargosa River desert riparian area, southern Nevada. This one was singing a slow conversational series of phrases 🪶
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
Yellow warbler in willows. This male was singing “Sweet, sweet , sweet I’m so sweet.” They breed in spring-fed desert riparian areas in the Death Valley National Park area 🪶
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 21/05/2025
Just when you think the desert is dry to a crisp and dead and nothing is blooming, a spinystar cactus (Escobaria vivipara) erupts in color. Never underestimate the Mojave Desert
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
A swarm of Swainson’s thrushes is moving through riparian groves in the upper Amargosa River wetlands in the northern Mojave Desert, Nevada. They are hunting insects in mud patches and leaf litter. One sang a soft complex ascending spiraling song. #birds
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
That would be awesome, thank you!
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Laura Cunningham @paleolaura.bsky.social · 18/05/2025
They seemed late this year here
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