The new Chicago Archaeopteryx exhibit is now open in the Field Museum's Hall of Dinosaurs. (Nicole Cardos / WTTW News)

The Chicago Archaeopteryx, unveiled this past May, is one of the most important fossils in the Field Museum’s vast collection.

There’s no questioning the specimen’s enormous significance — Archaeopteryx, often dubbed the “first bird,” has long been held up as proof of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, providing a key link between prehistoric dinosaurs and modern-day birds.

But there’s also no getting around the fact the fossil itself is kind of small. 

This presented the Field’s exhibits team with a bit of a conundrum as they designed a permanent home for the Chicago Archaeopteryx.

To put it plainly: How do you give a creature the size of a chicken the same treatment as a towering T. rex?

“The Archaeopteryx fossil is this big,” said Ben Miller, exhibition developer, holding his hands roughly a foot apart, “and we want it to have at least the same presence as the other dinosaurs. So we were like, ‘How can we fill a triceratops floor space with archaeopteryx content and make sure it generates the same level of enthusiasm as a much bigger dinosaur?’ Because it’s just as big a deal.”

Their solution, which was months in the making, debuted Friday, as the Chicago Archaeopteryx permanent exhibit opened to the public in the Hall of Dinosaurs. 

(Nicole Cardos / WTTW News)

What designers created is essentially a micro-gallery full of elements that put flesh on the 150 million-year-old archaeopteryx bones, from a digital mural depicting a day in the creature’s Jurassic life to hand-painted models of the first bird perched atop a 15-foot tree. And of course there’s the actual fossil, what Miller called the “glowing jewel in the center.”

“We’re throwing everything we can at the archaeopteryx display to get as many people as possible to remember seeing the first bird and being excited that it’s here in Chicago,” he said.

Here’s how some of the more eye-catching components came together.

Everything Old Is New Again

In adding Archaeopteryx to the Hall of Dinosaurs, the biggest question was how to manage the trick of attracting attention to the newcomer, surrounded as it would be by popular giants like Apatosaurus, mounted in 1907 — ”He’s been a thing to see in Chicago for longer than Wrigley Field has existed,” Miller said — without having the Archaeopteryx exhibit stick out like a neon arrow pointing “Here.” 

The answer was right in front of designers’ eyes in the form of the hall’s series of nearly two dozen prized murals by Charles Knight, artwork that dates back to the 1920s and set the standard for renderings of prehistoric life.

“We have this wonderful legacy of these paintings that are beloved the world over. For decades these were the only images of dinosaurs that were ever published in books or magazines, they’re really impressive works,” Miller said.

Rather than compete with this aesthetic, the Archaeopteryx team opted to complement it — with a twist.

A Triceratops in the Field Museum's Hall of Dinosaurs, with a Charles Knight mural on the wall. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

The exhibit’s striking visual anchor is a “moving mural,” 300 inches wide and beamed from two ceiling projectors. It’s a looping two-minute animation — see Archaeopteryx in its island habitat, climbing up trees, chasing bugs, flying, mingling with pterosaurs and predators — that has the feel of a Charles Knight painting in motion.

“It’s making this immersive experience of what the world of Archaeopteryx was like,” Miller said. “When we talk to visitors about our dinosaur exhibits the number one thing they ask for is the context: Where did this animal live? What did it eat? What other animals did it live with? So we want to make sure that’s there front and center up above our exhibit, drawing people to the space.”

The biggest issue for the Field’s multimedia design team, which collaborated with a production house in China, was how to best take advantage of technological advancements while maintaining a timeless feel. Perhaps not as timeless as the Knight murals have proven, but Field exhibits have long shelf lives.

“CGI (computer-generated imagery) is constantly evolving every year,” said Latoya Flowers, senior multimedia creative. “So we have to be careful when using that technique, especially for stuff like this, if you don’t want it to look dated in five years. We were intentional to not have it so realistic.”

A freeze-frame of the Archaeopteryx digital mural. (Kate Golembiewski / Field Museum)

Ultimately the team settled on a look that splits the difference between cartoon-y and realistic, a decision welcomed by Jingmai O’Connor, the Field Museum’s associate curator of fossil reptiles and lead paleontologist studying the Chicago Archaeopteryx.

O’Connor’s love of comic book art influenced the digital mural’s slightly more vibrant color palette and she very much approved of the tilt toward animation, with one major caveat.

“It’s scientifically accurate, it’s just not trying to look like it’s a real thing. It’s a scientifically accurate animation,” she said. “That’s the best way to go. It’s clearly animated.”

But occasionally the animators in China strayed a bit too far into the realm of imagination, O’Connor said, and the Field reined them back in.

She nixed an image they created of an Archaeopteryx nest structure, for example. The bird, O’Connor said, much like modern shorebirds including piping plovers, would have simply laid its eggs in the sand.

One of her favorite moments in the animation is the sort of thing perhaps only her fellow paleontologists will appreciate, but it speaks to the level of scientific detail incorporated into the digital mural.

“There’s one cool action where a fish (the prehistoric Aspidorhynchus) jumps out of the water and catches a pterosaur. There’s actually several specimens from the Solnhofen limestone (the deposit where Archaeopteryx was found) that preserve the pterosaur in the mouth of Aspidorhynchus,” she said.

The average visitor likely won’t catch the reference, but it helps establish the world Archaeopteryx lived in, she said.

“It’s just such a thrilling feeling to see Archaeopteryx come to life,” O’Connor said. “We’ve worked so hard to create a visually appealing exhibit. People are going to learn so many different historical aspects about our understanding of evolution, about our understanding of birds being living dinosaurs — there's just so much we're going to teach people there.”

The Art and Science of Modelmaking

Janice Lim, an exhibitions preparator at the Field Museum, has been the chief model maker for the Archaeopteryx exhibit.

“I didn’t know much about Archaeopteryx. I didn’t even know how to pronounce Archaeopteryx for a good month. But now I dream Archaeopteryx. I know what it looks like with my eyes closed,” Lim said.

In her hands, Lim transformed 3D-printed models of Archaeopteryx into works of art, airbrushing and hand-painting intricate detail and color onto what had been pale white forms. The birds are part of a diorama at the exhibit’s entrance, one more of what Miller calls “entry points” into understanding how Archaeopteryx lived.

Lim also airbrushed a larger-scale 3D-printed replica cast of the fossil — which is a dead ringer for the real thing, except visitors will be encouraged to touch the reproduction (another tactile component, a bronze cast of the bird, will be added to the exhibit at a later date).

“My dad is like, ‘Great, you've got an art degree and you're painting for a living,’” she laughed.

Janice Lim paints an Archaeopteryx model in her workshop at the Field Museum. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

An eight-year veteran at the Field Museum, Lim typically has multiple sources of references when it comes to modelmaking. She’ll study specimens in the Field’s collection, call up images online or comb through books in the museum’s library.

For the Archaeopteryx model, she relied heavily on consultations with O’Connor, whose study of the fossil has already altered long-held assumptions about the bird’s physical appearance.

The Chicago Archaeopteryx has a well preserved skull and vertebrae that were crushed or nonexistent in other specimens. The Field Museum also conducted scans of the fossil slab that illuminated additional aspects in 3D.

“We have such a beautiful Archaeopteryx, that’s really changing the game with how we understand this really cool animal,” O’Connor said. “We’ve really transformed how people know what Archaeopteryx would have looked like.”

Her discoveries led to models being printed with more elongated skulls, as well as with a tract of previously hypothesized secondary feathers that O’Connor was able to document.

There’s one liberty O’Connor has taken, and that’s with the pattern Lim painted on the models’ feathers.

The first specimen of Archaeopteryx ever found was a single feather, and it was black and white, “so we’ve extrapolated the coloring off that,” O’Connor said, but as far as the pattern goes, she made an educated guess grounded in science.

“We know if it was black and white that it probably had what we call a ‘disruptive’ color pattern — think of a zebra — it’s basically just a black and white pattern that makes it hard for predators to get an eye on you,” O’Connor said.

From there, she looked at living birds and decided on plumage similar to the hairy woodpecker, “which I kind of chose just because it’s such a funny name,” O’Connor admitted.

An completed Archaeopteryx model placed in the new exhibit at the Field Museum. (Kate Golembiewski / Field Museum)

The Archaeopteryx is O’Connor’s first major exhibit and the process of working with Lim has given her an even greater appreciation for the relationship between art and science.

“I’m the bird nerd and she’s this incredible artist and we work together to make these animals come to life so people can get a better understanding of Archaeopteryx,” O’Connor said.

“Not everyone can look at a skeleton and immediately tell what they’re looking at. We (paleontologists) rely on artists to help us transform this squished skeleton,” she said. “And then to picture it living 150 millions years ago ... it’s so cool. If these things (models) weren’t so expensive to print out, I would cover my office in them.”

Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 |  [email protected]