the Portico
“Our mission is to enhance the relationship between the University and its alumni and friends and promoted pride and commitment within the University Community.”Art and science lead to dinosaur bones
When Ian Morrison, BA ’86, made his first sculpture in Grade 2, a papier mache tyrannosaurus rex, he didn’t realize that his future career would combine art and paleontology. As a technician in the vertebrate paleontology lab at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto, he now makes casts of real dinosaurs.
“It has sort of come full circle,” he says. “Here I am dealing with the real thing.”
Morrison travels the world, digging up dinosaur remains and transporting them back to the museum. He recently travelled to South Africa, where he excavated the nests of some of the oldest known dinosaurs and found eggs containing embryonic bones.
Removing the rock surrounding a prehistoric specimen is a painstaking, time-consuming process that can take several years. Bones embedded in tons of rock must be airlifted by a helicopter, while more delicate operations require tiny jack-hammers the size of pens.
After completing his fine art degree at Guelph, he went on to do a BFA at the University of Windsor, where he did welding and bronze casting. His skill with hand tools was a perfect fit for the ROM, which was looking for someone with hands-on experience to excavate specimens in the field. What started out as a nine-month contract turned into a career that has spanned more than two decades at the ROM.
Morrison’s experience as a sculptor, both in Grade 2 and in university, has also proven useful. “With sculpting, you’re carving images or figures out of stone,” he says. “Here, the bone is in there, so it’s just a matter of taking all the matrix away from the surface of the bone.”
The figurative work he did at Guelph provided him with an understanding of human anatomy and how it can be applied to animals. Humans have the same types of bones as animals, but they differ in shape and size.
