How a fine arts alum helped solve an old mystery in paleontology.
Paleo-artist and WSU fine arts alumnus Ray Troll’s obsession began way back in 1993, when he spotted what he calls a “strange doorstop” in the basement of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. “It was a beautiful whorl… I thought it was a big snail,” he says now, recollecting the moment when he visited the museum for a book he was working on.
In reality, his guide explained, the fossilized spiral was the jaw of an ancient shark.
Little did Troll know, this rocky jaw would consume his mind over the next 20 years, just as it had done with scientists before him. The strange tooth “whorl” belonged to the Helicoprion genus, the “buzz sharks” (a moniker Troll introduced in 2012). The bizarre beasts swam Earth’s waters some 270 million years ago, persisting for about 10 million years.
Though he’s played a true role in science, Troll remains unabashedly an artist. Scientists work within strict confines, he says. “They have to be cautious.” They know where Helicoprion fits in the family tree now, but they still need to learn what this ratfish looked like. “No one’s ever seen the body—all we have are the whorls,” Troll says, “and that’s where I come in.”