Tyler Keillor

34 | Has his feet firmly planted in prehistoric times.

I don't dream specifically about dinosaurs jumping over fences. But I have had dreams about dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures. Especially, as a child, I dreamed about finding lost pools of aquatic prehistoric reptiles, and finding baby mammoths wandering in fields.

Are you more of a scientist or an artist?

Really more of an artist. I went to Columbia College to study filmmaking to pursue special effects when my childhood fantasy with prehistoric things started to be replaced by an adolescent fascination with movie special effects and monsters.

It's 2007. What era do you spend most of your time in?

Primarily in the cretaceous era.

What's life like in the cretaceous era?

Well, there are lots of really, big, scaly, amazing animals to be careful not be stepped on by or eaten by.

What are you working on now?

I am working on a variety of prehistoric creatures, from a new species of dinosaur-era crocodiles to other newly discovered species of dinosaurs.

How big is the croc?

It's about as big as the biggest living crocodile, but it has almost cartoonishly exaggerated teeth and skull features. It looks like the kind of crocodile that Fred Flintstone would have seen.

How do you know what an extinct animal looks like?

It requires some speculation. It is a combination of art and science. I push myself to recreate the most feasible and realistic model that is possible by comparing what I am doing on a given specimen to as many living animals as I can.

Would a time machine come in handy?

It would be ideal to be able to actually go back and see and study one of these things alive in its own time.

Every Wednesday, the Sun-Times Business Section features a mystery occupation. See if you can guess the job before the end of the interview.

ANSWER | Tyler Keillor is a paleontological reconstruction specialist at the fossil laboratory at the University of Chicago, making life-sized reconstructions of ancient beasts based on fossils discovered by famed dinosaur hunter Paul Soreno.