Agent
Assistant
Biography
Bob Nicholls is a world renowned natural history artist and writer, with a reputation for producing exciting and scientifically accurate paleontological artworks. Bob has been published in more than forty books with global distribution and exhibited in over forty museums, universities and visitor attractions throughout the world. Notable publishing clients include National Geographic, Oxford University Press, Dorling Kindersley, Pearson, Macmillan, Orion Publishing, and Titan Books. Other notable clients include the London Natural History Museum, University of Chicago, Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Centre, , and the Walking with Dinosaurs Exhibition. In addition to these, Bob has appeared on camera many times, including live broadcasts on BBC2 television.
Bob began drawing prehistoric animals from the moment he was old enough to hold a pencil and today he has almost twenty years professional experience; trading under the name Paleocreations (www.paleocreations.com). Bob has mastered a huge variety of mediums, and his portfolio contains traditional paintings, digital paintings, photographic composite illustrations, large-scale mural paintings, themed dioramas, digital sculpture and traditionally built models. At any moment Bob could be producing a small digital painting for a postage stamp or building a life-size dinosaur.
To reconstruct extinct animals, plants and environments, Bob undertakes a painstaking inside-out reconstruction process. First, all the fossil material is studied and measured [either physically, or by examination of scientific papers], then, using comparative anatomy, the skeleton is reconstructed on paper. Second, the soft tissues are added to the drawings before the integument and colours are considered. This process ensures Bob’s artworks are accurate and completely unique. Bob has also become a pioneer in the reconstruction of fossilised colour patterns, and his 2016 model of Psittacosaurus has been widely accepted as the world’s most accurate dinosaur reconstruction.
The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs: Unearthing the Real Behaviors of Prehistoric Animals (Columbia University Press, 2025)
Buried within a lost world, astonishing evidence reveals the behavior of extinct animals, giving us a glimpse at both everyday and epic events. If we look at these discoveries carefully, the untold stories of these magnificent creatures come into view, breathing new life into the prehistoric past.
The Secret Lives of Dinosaurs tells the remarkable tales of ancient animals through some of the most distinctive and unusual fossils ever found, offering an intimate, behind-the-scenes look into the story of life in deep time. Venturing hundreds of millions of years into the past, Dean R. Lomax takes us on a journey through the grand cycle of life, infused with anecdotes from his own adventures and sprinkled with a touch of dinosaur humor.
These fossils tell real-world stories of prehistoric parenting, the quest for survival, and the endless struggle between predator and prey. Unbelievable moments are captured: saber-toothed cats clashing, mega-millipedes mating, dinosaurs swimming. From ammonite eggs to mosasaur mealtimes, and from a pregnant ichthyosaur that chowed down on a bird to the mammal that took down a dinosaur, these behaviors challenge what we thought we knew about the prehistoric world.
This book looks into the private moments of long-extinct creatures as never before, letting us see them not just as fossils in a museum but as living, breathing animals with personalities and emotions. Vivid illustrations by Bob Nicholls bring these incredible stories to life in full color.
Publications
Selected Publications
Fossils allow us to picture the forms of life that inhabited the earth eons ago. But we long to know more: how did these animals actually behave? We are fascinated by the daily lives of our fellow creatures—how they reproduce and raise their young, how they hunt their prey or elude their predators, and more. What would it be like to see prehistoric animals as they lived and breathed?
From dinosaurs fighting to their deaths to elephant-sized burrowing ground sloths, this book takes readers on a global journey deep into the earth’s past. Locked in Time showcases fifty of the most astonishing fossils ever found, brought together in five fascinating chapters that offer an unprecedented glimpse at the real-life behaviors of prehistoric animals. Dean R. Lomax examines the extraordinary direct evidence of fossils captured in the midst of everyday action, such as dinosaurs sitting on their eggs like birds, Jurassic flies preserved while mating, a T. rex infected by parasites. Each fossil, he reveals, tells a unique story about prehistoric life. Many recall behaviors typical of animals familiar to us today, evoking the chain of evolution that links all living things to their distant ancestors. Locked in Time allows us to see that fossils are not just inanimate objects: they can record the life stories of creatures as fully alive as any today. Striking and scientifically rigorous illustrations by renowned paleoartist Bob Nicholls bring these breathtaking moments to life.
