Link to the Timeline: https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1E9bX74ZgbqhLW8C8UHLaW9Q5nkmG1BpYbajC53c1oVs&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=700

Introduction

After looking over some past timeline projects, I decided to look at how paleoart has changed over time. Paleoart was not the term that came into my mind when I tried to phrase the question that I wanted to ask, but I found this term after a few clicks. Paleoart refers to artworks that attempts to depict or reproduce any prehistorical life based on scientific evidence. This is a rather big definition, so I decided to just look at dinosaurs. 

For the past few years I realized that many of the more current paintings of dinosaurs give them feathers, and the way that they were being portrayed differs from how I remembered it when I was child. A few articles have made clear that this shift is due to the fact that scientists are finding feathers and color pigments in more and more fossils, and the fact that moderns birds are genetically the closest to dinosaurs. So I decided to take a look at how the depiction/reconstruction of dinosaurs changed throughout history.

Materials and methods

The Wikipedia page provides me with a pretty detailed picture of the important events that occurs during the course of paleoart, from the very beginning to its golden period, and to its modern days. I identified some key events and people, but decided to find some more supporting materials to for this project. This is mainly because I want to know more about the painting style of each periods and artists, why is that, and how the reproductions becomes more and more accurate overtime. The Conversation has a short read on this topic, and an author named Daniel Riesco published a more interesting one on Medium. I also went to National Geography where they have a webpage dedicated to reimagining dinosaurs. I only had 3 free reads without subscription, but they gave some good materials. 

After gathering the content for my timeline, I used Timeline JS to create this project. This open-source tool is very easy to use and I had no problem navigating it. It basically gives you a spreadsheet and you just fill in the respectable blanks according to its columns. I had experience with this tool before, so my main gaol is to really write good contents. For mine project, I want to make sure that my content is interesting enough for people to read, and the images that I choose do show the progress of how the depiction of dinosaurs changed through time. 

I did make some changes to my original ideas. At first I wanted to have more events so that I have less text for each events, but I soon realized that it could look very chaotic on the webpage. I decided to have a longer timeline but highlight a specific year so visually its less crowded. I had issue with displaying the image properly, and it was due to I used the wrong links. After I fixed those, my timeline now has pictures and accompanying text.

Result and reflection

Timeline JS has font style and presentation set up already, so I didn’t make much change to the display of the final timeline, but I am happy with how it turned out. The fonts were clear and the right size, and even though I had a lot of contents, it doesn’t look too much scary and I think my readers would still read them. I tried to use some interesting language to describe these paintings, so hopefully that works too. I like the images that I choose, and I do think that they do show how the style of paleoarts changed over time, as well as their accuracy.

One thing I noticed from the timeline is that the more modern days have a more continuous timeline, but the earlier days are in segments. This is due to the fact that paleoart on dinosaurs were less common in the beginning due to the lack of fossils and lack of access to fossils. Another issue is that once I put it on wordpress, because how much content I have, readers need to scroll to read them, which I don’t really like.

I think Timeline JS is a great tool for creating simple timelines, it is very user friendly and it is free. However, because I imagined having a larger scope for my project and it didn’t work out, I think one of its limitation is its simpleness. Because everything is shown on a horizontal line, it is continuous, yet you can’t put too much content in or it will appear very crowded. Of course, the upside for showing timeline this way is that people have the feeling that time is continuous and linear, but the downside is that it lacks complexity. 

If I had more tool on my hand to recreate this project, I might have to find a better way to visualize it so I can put more information on there. This time I choose to discord many portrayal of dinosaurs in cartoons and movies, and if I had another chance, I will find a way to incorporate those as well.