“I’ve been a paleo nerd for my entire life,” Troll said in an interview with the Capital City Weekly. “I never gave up loving dinosaurs. Everything prehistoric. For me it’s kind of a mission to get people turned on to a prehistoric past. I think it’s really important for people to know the history of the Earth.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t
Troll is willing to go to the mats for lesser-known prehistoric creatures, such as the Tully monster <\/a>— a confusing ancient aquatic animal that defies easy classification — and desmostylians<\/a> — a line of marine mammals that went extinct. Desmostylians’ range included Alaska, and the animals are thought to have resembled a hippo-walrus hybrid.<\/p>\n Ketchikan artist Ray Troll said desmostylians were a totemic animal for him during the trips that led to “Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline,” a new traveling exhibition that is at the Alaska State Museum. (Courtesy Photo | Ray Troll)<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t “We call them desmos for short,” Troll said.“Only the connoisseurs of paleo nerdom know about them. Some of them were the size of elephants.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Troll’s interest in paleontology goes as far back as he can remember.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t He said his earliest artistic memory is drawing a dinosaur with a crayon at age 4.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “I’m 65 years old, and I’m still drawing dinosaurs,” Troll said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t [New event aims to turn the tide on ocean health]<\/a><\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t That lifelong fascination helped lead to a 26-year-and-counting friendship with paleontologist Kirk Johnson, now director of the Smithsonian National Museum of National History<\/a>, and an expansive fossil-hunting road trips along North America’s coast.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t That 10,000-mile, 250-day trip led to “Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline,” a travelling exhibition organized by the Anchorage Museum that will be in Juneau at the Alaska State Museum through Oct. 19, and a book of the same title<\/a>.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “This is the second book with Kirk,” Troll said. “We’ve probably driven around the Earth together. We’ve done trips to the Amazon and all over the west. He shared a lot of his knowledge with me and vice versa.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Troll is an artist with evident exuberance for ancient plants and animals, and Johnson is a scientist who was once an art major.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “He’s the scientist I always wanted to be, and I’m the artist he wanted to be,” Troll said. “It’s a melding of two disciplines.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t The cross-pollination of science and art is evident in the pieces in the “Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline.” During a docent tour previewing the exhibition, Troll was able to point out era-appropriate plants in his work and explain the anatomy of the long-dead creatures the pieces depict.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Troll said the exhibition has been tailored for its Juneau audience and most of the pieces on display are related to animals that millions of years ago thrived in Alaska.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “This represents about 10 years worth of work, and there are about 60 pieces of art in the exhibit,” Troll said. ” Thirty of them being original framed pieces and the other 30 being digital outputs.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t [Culture camp propels young Petersburg woman to top scouting achievement<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline” also features some works not made by Troll, including a pachyrhinosaurus<\/a> statue made by Gary Staab that depicts the triceratops-like dinosaur bursting through the museum wall that seems destined to be a selfie backdrop.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t The exhibition also included a handful of fossils, including bones from ichthyosaurs<\/a> — an enormous marine reptile that swam the waters of Southeast Alaska.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “They were the size of dinosaurs, but they were in the water,” Troll said. “We’ll show some massive ribs and some vertebrae from those. I think it will blow some minds that we had these right in Southeast Alaska.”<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t The collection also includes what Troll considers the pinnacle of his fossil-hunting exploits: the tooth of a nanuqsaurus<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"Ketchikan](\"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/16679037_web1_Unalaska-Desmo-Family--7-.jpg\")
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