site.btaDinosaur Reality vs Hollywood Myths in New Sofia Exhibition

Twelve original artworks by paleoartist and paleontologist Vladimir Nikolov, a PhD student at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) in Sofia, will be on display in an exhibition titled Jurassic World: Dinosaurs Beyond the Movies. The exhibit opens on August 12 at NMNH, the museum said on Tuesday.

The organizers explain that public perceptions of what dinosaurs and other Mesozoic creatures looked like, how they behaved, and the environments they inhabited are largely shaped by films like Jurassic Park and its many sequels.

But how accurately do these Hollywood monsters reflect current scientific understanding? The exhibition offers a science-based answer to that question by showcasing the lost world of the Mesozoic Era through the lens of 21st-century paleontology, NMNH said.

Vladimir Nikolov is both a paleontologist and a paleo-illustrator, currently working as an assistant and PhD student at NMNH. He was born in 1988 in Plovdiv, received his bachelor's degree in geology from Sofia University in 2012, and earned a master’s degree in geology and paleontology in 2015 from the same institution.

His research focuses on the bone tissues of fossil vertebrates found in Bulgaria, and he is actively involved in the study of a dinosaur site near the southwestern town of Tran. Nikolov illustrated the children’s book, Excavate! Dinosaurs: Paper Toy Palaeontology, and designed the cover of the Bulgarian edition of the bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatte.

He participated in the international paleoart exhibition, Picturing the Past, held in Albuquerque, New Mexico, US, in 2018, and his works have appeared in textbooks, science books, encyclopaedias, and magazines.