Mick Ellison, Illustrator and Photographer

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Senior Principal Artist

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Mick Ellison is a Senior Principal Artist in the Division of Paleontology.

Examples of Mick's Work

Illustrations

Illustration of a mei long, a small, bird-like dinosaur, curled up and sleeping.

Mei long
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Painting of two flickers, large brown woodpeckers, perched in leafless branches.

Northern Flickers
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Illustration of an embolotherium, an extinct mammal distantly related to horses and rhinos, with a skull protuberance resembling a battering ram.

Embolotherium andrewsi
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Illustration of a fossil skull of an extinct animal under an outline of how the animal's face would have looked like over the skull.

Embolotherium andrewsi skull
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Illustration of a sinornithosaurus dinosaur which is small with feathered arms.

Sinornithosaurus
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Sketchbook
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Illustration of a microraptor, a small birdlike dinosaur, with a long thin tail and its wings outstretched.

Microraptor
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Illustration of an andrewsarchuus, an extinct mammal with a long snout beside a person wearing a wide brimmed hat and holding a rock hammer.

Andrewsarchus
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Illustrations of two different birds with their mouths open and notes on a scale drawn beside them to indicate singing.

Darwin’s finches
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Illustration of the fossil skull of a Gansuyaena, an extinct genus of small hyena.

Gansuyaena skull
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Illustration of a Gansuyaena, an extinct genus of small hyena.

Gansuyaena
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

A color illustration of a Titanosaur's face bending toward its nest where three infant Titanosaurs have hatched.

Titanosaurs
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Illustration of four hens with negative space below them.

Hens
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Fossil Photographs

Close-up on a fossil of a well preserved feathered dinosaur, a Sinornithosaurus.

Sinornithosaurus
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Well preserved fossil of an infant Protoceratops on a round piece of rock.

Protoceratops juvenile
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Cast of a fossil of a Citipati dinosaur positioned over the center of its nest, its forearms spread to protect its eggs.

Citipatii nest with eggs
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

The fossil head of a velociraptor against a dark background.

Velociraptor
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Fossil of a Sinosauropteryx, a small dinosaur with a long tail, in rock.

Sinosauropteryx, the first feathered dinosaur
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Fossilized dinosaur nest with fifteen eggs.

Troodontid egg clutch
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Fossil of a segmented insect with many legs and antennae on a flat, hard surface.

Fossil invertebrate
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Protoceratops
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Two slabs of rock with a single crustacean fossil embedded in each one.

Fossil crustacean
Mick Ellison/© AMNH

Partially excavated fossil of a saichangurvel, an extinct iguanian lizard.

Field Photographs

A mass of dust floats in the air above six paleontologists digging in Ukhaa Tolgod, Gobi Desert, Mongolia.

Six tents spaced apart in the flat, desert landscape of Ukhaa Tolgod in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia.

Two people on a boat on the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar, with trees and mountains covered in greenery on the banks.

A person in the distance stands at the top of a hill in a sandy, desert landscape.

A young person wearing a collared dress holds out six small pieces of rocks with fossils embedded in them.

Over ten people, widely spaced out, sit or crouch in a desert landscape, each working on the ground with tools.

A person walks in a flat field with patches of grass beneath a wide, colorful sky at sunset.

Ellison studied art at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland and received his BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He joined the staff of the American Museum of Natural History in 1990, where he is a scientific illustrator and photographer in the Division of Paleontology.

His work has appeared on the covers of The New York Times, Nature, Science, and Natural History Magazine. Other clients include National Geographic, Nautilus, Time, Newsweek, Discover, IMAX, Nova, BBC and CNN. Mick has also provided illustrations and photographs for a number of books, including Discovering Dinosaurs (Knopf), The Science Times Book of Fossils and Evolution (Lyons), and Unearthing the Dragon (Pi), a book he produced with Dr. Mark Norell about their experiences working together in China.