Danielle Dufault (born 1988 or 1989) is a Canadian paleoartist and biological illustrator based in Toronto, Ontario. She is the in-house paleontological illustrator with the

Royal Ontario Museum The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year ...

(ROM). She is also the illustrator and main host of the zoological YouTube channel ''Animalogic''.

Career

Paleontological illustration

Dufault's interest in paleoart started when she visited

in Toronto at eight years old and saw the dinosaur skeletons on display. In addition to drawing and sketching, she enjoyed exploring nature as a child, spending hours outdoors, digging up worms and collecting insects. She also read books on paleontology and had an interest in scientific news. Dufault enrolled in the Technical and Scientific Illustration degree program at Sheridan College in the

Greater Toronto Area The Greater Toronto Area, commonly referred to as the GTA, includes the City of Toronto and the regional municipalities of Durham, Halton, Peel, and York. In total, the region contains 25 urban, suburban, and rural municipalities. The Greater T ...

and during her third year she was awarded a co-op placement at the ROM. After graduating with a degree in 2012, she did some contract work for the ROM, eventually finding full time employment. She is now the in-house paleontological illustrator for the ROM and works closely with the researchers in the ROM's Evans lab. Dufault uses both traditional and

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Technology and computing Hardware *Digital electronics, electronic circuits which operate using digital signals **Digital camera, which captures and stores digital i ...

resources to create art and scientific diagrams. Dufault's process involves consulting with paleontologists about the subject to be illustrated. She then gathers information about what is known about the subject's habitat; what other creatures from the same area looked like; and how the subject's role as a predator or prey might have affected the patterns and coloration of their exteriors. She also examines fossils and consults other sketches and technical drawings. Her work has been published in many scientific journals and is used to illustrate newly named dinosaur genera and species. Some of her work includes illustrating the Wendiceratops and the ''

Zaraapelta nomadis ''Zaraapelta'' is an extinct genus of herbivorous ankylosaurid thyreophoran dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. The type species is ''Zaraapelta nomadis'', named and described by Arbour ''et al'' in 2014. ''Zaraapelta'' is known ...

'', two newly-discovered dinosaurs. She illustrated the a 500-million-year-old worm-like creature called the '' Ovatiovermis cribratus'' for Assisting Associate Professor

Jean-Bernard Caron Jean-Bernard Caron is a French and Canadian palaeontologist currently working as a curator of invertebrate palaeontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Caron is also cross-appointed at the University of Toronto as an associate professor ...

of the University of Toronto. She assisted University of Toronto undergrad Joseph Moysiuk in creating an animation of a paleozoic marine creature known as a

hyolith Hyoliths are animals with small conical surface, conical animal shell, shells, known as fossils from the Palaeozoic era. They are at least considered as lophotrochozoan, and possibly being lophophorates, a group which includes the brachiopods, w ...

, which evolved more than 530 million years ago.

Animalogic

Since its inception in 2014, Dufault has served as host of the zoological YouTube series ''Animalogic''.

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Dufault, Danielle Canadian illustrators 21st-century Canadian women artists Living people Sheridan College alumni Artists from Toronto Royal Ontario Museum Paleoartists Scientific illustrators Year of birth missing (living people)