In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the scientific world was on fire with new discoveries and interpretations that painted the world of dinosaurs as very different from the old image of slow, stupid, swamp-dwelling creatures. These new dinosaurs were active; some of them were even warm-blooded! Some were smart and social.

National Geographic Magazine decided to do a special story on the new dinosaurs, and commissioned me to create five paintings for the issue. They brought me on board because I had already been heavily involved in creating art related to this new wave of information about dinosaurs, including the cover of the popular book that first brought these ideas to the public (Bob Bakker's The Dinosaur Heresies) and preproduction art for the first movie to do the same (Jurassic Park), as well as covers for Discover Magazine and Natural History Magazine.

Among the new findings was evidence that some dinosaurs were actively involved in parenting. This included the discovery of six-foot hadrosaur nests and even colonial nesting sites. Baby hadrosaurs were found in fossilized nests, and some of them had worn teeth. This meant that either the babies were leaving the nest to forage for food and then finding their way back to the nest or, more likely, that their parents were bringing them food.

One of my paintings was of a group of Saurolophus at a colonial nesting site, including mothers and babies (and possibly fathers!). I painted a scene at dawn, with incendiary warm light illuminating the scene. Later I got the call: the painting had beat out some spectacular photography for the cover of the January 1993 issue.