In my work, I spend a lot of time thinking about selections. A selection is an event (natural or engineered) where the members of a population goes through a process favoring a trait that only a subset of the the population possess. After the process, we assume that the surviving subpopulation had the winning trait. Many readers will be familiar with the concept of a selection through this famous 'survivorship bias' figure:

This figure symbolizes the parable that in World War II, planes returning to base after dogfights were riddled with holes in the blue areas. Militaries saw this data and reinforced those areas, but the reinforced aircrafts weren't hardier to battle. They realized, counterintuitively, that the blue dots were actually a trait of surviving aircrafts. The parts of the plane without damage were the parts in need of reinforcement because planes with damage there were dropping out of their sample.

Within my corner of synthetic biology, this principle is used to create mechanisms for enriching a bacterial population that carries a desirable trait. For example, when I'm screening enzyme X, if I can link that enzyme's performance to growth of the cell, then I can grow a library that contains millions of different genetic variants of enzyme X under selective conditions, and the mutants with the highest representation in the output population will have an altered genetic composition favoring the best-performing enzyme X.

There are selections all over the place. The YouTuber Kurzegesagt made a video (below) about the selective pressures of fossilization. Over millions of years, some ecosystems fossilize well and others don't, so our entire perception of the fossil record is squeezed through a selective filter that might be omitting huge collections of animals that existed.

High-biodiversity ecosystems such as jungles were unlikely to have as much robust fossilization. Knowing what we know about the oddness of jungle creatures today and the dinosaurs we have evidence existed, it's very possible that the weirdest, wackiest dinosaurs are entirely lost to history. In this spirit, I created a themed event called LOST DINOSAURS. Attendees were encouraged to design dinosaurs from their imagination that they speculated we never had the chance to view in the fossil record. They could bring their creature as any type of visual art, writing, costume, or interpretive dance.

In preparation for this event I painted a painting with several speculative dinosaurs of my own (main article image). I then sculpted the head of the central creature to mount on the wall as a decoration for the event (below). This was the basis for invite materials and decorations. I made a high quality print of this painting and awarded it as the prize to whoever created the best speculative dinosaur.

My friends made a bunch of speculative dinosaurs! The winner was the watercolor illustration of a creature that had traits from several different species of known dinosaurs including Triceratops, Iguanadon, and Pteranodon, while displaying the bright aposematic coloration we expect from jungle inhabitants such as tree frogs.

One of my favorite submissions was a sonnet, submitted by a former co-worker, titled Sonnet #7103:

Through open waters cool and blue and vast
My fins extend. I glide, my tendrils free,
scales shimmer in the golden sunlight cast
Across the surface of my kindom of the sea.

My brethren walking, flying, slithering 'cross land
sport claws and fangs to fight and legs to run.
For me the tides and tempests all demand
more cunning tricks to drive, to drown, to stun.

As currents rock me on to endless sleep
to join my kin in stories left unsaid.
Creatures, peer and prey, restore the deep,
evolving closer to familiar forms ahead.

No memories left to sail the waves of time,
yet here was terror, here was awe, and here was I.

Other honorable mentions went to an acrylic painting of a large sauropod covered in dazzling magenta feathers, and a picture made of several layers of laser-cut paper revealing the relief of a green dinosaur in side-profile. I had a lot of buy-in from guests, and that made the whole thing come alive. There was live music, plaster bricks with fossils inside of them for attendees to excavate, a cake with a volcanic explosion, and even a novel drink called the Chicxulub Impactor with cinnamon, chocolate mole bitters, and smoked citrus in it. I already have a long list of ideas for the next one.