ITHACA (AP) Cornell University is celebrating the centennial of its Lab of Ornithology with a giant mural featuring 270 species from the 243 modern bird families.
The 70-foot by 40-foot mural was done by scientific illustrator Jane Kim. She devoted more than two years to create "From So Simple a Beginning: Celebrating the Evolution and Diversity of Birds.''
The mural, which took 16 months to paint, is at the lab's visitor center in Ithaca. It also includes 27 dinosaurs and pre-historic beasts because birds are descendants of those animals.
Kim, who had to use a cherry picker boom to work on the birds of Africa, spent a year doing prep work. That included visits to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in South Dakota.
