About the film
In this Kansas City premier, From Fossils to Flesh follows paleoartist Gary Staab across a five-year journey as he and his team bring more than sixty extinct dinosaurs and creatures back to life as full-scale sculptures for the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum.
As these prehistoric beasts roar into reality, the museum’s founder and world-renowned paleontologist Dr. Kenneth Lacovara uses the deep past as a lens to look forward, exploring extinction, hope, and the urgent realities sculpting our shared future.
Told through the unique perspective of filmmaker Trevor Hawkins, the film feels less like traditional science programming and more like a skateboard video… fast, loose, human, and always fun.
The schedule
10:30am – Film screening
11:30am – Panel discussion
12:00pm – Program concludes
MAMMOTH presents From Fossils to Flesh, a 40-minute film following paleoartist Gary Staab over five years as he and his team bring more than 60 extinct creatures to life as full-scale sculptures for the Edelman Fossil Park & Museum. As these prehistoric giants take shape, paleontologist Dr. Kenneth Lacovara reflects on extinction, hope, and our shared future. Told through filmmaker Trevor Hawkins’ perspective, the film trades traditional science storytelling for an energetic, freewheeling style.
For over 20 years, Emmy-winning filmmaker Trevor Hawkins has been creating films for clients including National Geographic, ESPN, Red Bull, Ford, AMC Theatres, the Smithsonian, Outdoor Channel, the Government of Rwanda, and the City of Barcelona. He wore many hats on his feature film debut Lotawana, including writer, director, producer, cinematographer, and editor. The critically acclaimed film has held a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Hawkins founded his production company MAMMOTH in 2010 and is a lifelong resident of Lake Lotawana, Missouri, where he can be found sailing, skateboarding, wakeboarding, rehabilitating wildlife, working on his cabin, and “gettin’ wet ’n wild with the other lake rats.”
Gary Staab is a world-renowned paleoartist and sculptor whose work has been exhibited in over 50 museums worldwide, from Turkey and South Korea to China, France, and Japan. A former staff sculptor at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, he has worked as a freelance artist since 1996 for clients including the National Geographic Society, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Discover Magazine, the BBC, Eyewitness Books, and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
In 2016, Gary was featured in the PBS NOVA documentary Iceman Reborn for his replica of the 5,300-year-old mummy Ötzi the Iceman. He is a fellow of the National Sculpture Society and The Explorers Club, and a five-time recipient of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Award for Excellence in Paleontological Art.
Dr. Lacovara, a paleontologist and geologist, has unearthed some of the largest dinosaurs ever to walk the earth, including the massive 65-ton Dreadnoughtus, from Patagonia, and the Egyptian super giant, Paralititan. He is a recipient of The Explorers Club Medal, previously awarded to pioneers such as Neil Armstrong, Jane Goodall, and Sir Edmond Hillary. His 2016 TED talk has been viewed by over two million people, and his book, Why Dinosaurs Matter, published by Simon & Schuster, is a winner of the Nautilus Book Prize.
Professor Lacovara’s discoveries have landed him three times in Discover magazine’s 100 Top Science Stories of the Year, and he has appeared in over 13 television documentaries. Currently, he is researching the extinction of the dinosaurs. He is the Founding Dean of the School of Earth & Environment, and is Founding Director of the Edelman Fossil Park, where he and his team are building a unique, state of the art museum designed to connect people to deep time, the contingencies of natural history, and the fragility of our planet.
