Having a dinosaur share your name is usually an honor reserved for the discoverer of the bones. Not so with Georgia O’Keeffe, who had dino Effigia okeeffeae (O’Keeffe’s Ghost) named after her in 2006. Effigia, as the animal is called for short, is an archosaur from the Late Triassic period (about 230-300 million years ago). A relatively small dinosaur, Effigia stood about 3 feet high, averaged 10 feet long, and weighed 150-200 pounds. A relative of modern day crocodiles, it had a beak like a turtle or bird, making its diet difficult to determine. Like O’Keeffe, Effigia was a creature ahead of its time – it shared characteristics with (unrelated) dinosaurs that roamed over 80million years later, during the Cretaceous Period.

Effigia was originally unearthed by Edwin H. Colbert during O’Keeffe’s lifetime, in 1947-1948. Colbert unknowingly dug up the bones while excavating another dinosaur in the Ghost Ranch quarry. The bones remained hidden in boxes at the American Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. until 2006, when Sterling Nesbitt opened them and discovered a partial skeleton. With the help of curator Mark Norell, he was able to retrieve more of the skeleton. The little dinosaur is featured in the video “Dinosaurs Alive!”, and can be seen running from a group of carnivores at 0:32 in the trailer.

O’Keeffe, who has many paintings set in the Ghost Ranch area, was working in New Mexico during the original excavation (her house in nearby Abiquiu is available for tours). Though there is no way she could have known about the little dinosaur that would be named after her twenty years after her death, it is interesting to muse about what O’Keeffe – noted for her paintings of skulls juxtaposed with the New Mexico landscape – would have done if she had had access to the dino’s skeleton. Would she have incorporated Effigia into paintings of her beloved desert? If so, how? 

By Elisabeth Kane

The tempestuous love story of artists Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz is relatively well known, made famous by books such as “My Faraway One, Selected Letters of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz: Volume I 1915-1933” (edited by Sarah Greenough). The struggles and triumphs of the couple have captivated the attention of audiences from their contemporaries to modern scholars and casual observers alike. However, it could be argued that O’Keeffe’s greatest love was her passion for New Mexico, especially Ghost Ranch, Abiquiu, and the surrounding landscape. 

The passion and precision with which she painted her desert surroundings are matched by her poetic descriptions to Charles Wickham Moore, in letters kept as part of the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum collections. In the letters, appropriately written shortly before Valentine’s Day, she describes her love of life in the Southwest. In 1960, she writes “I am fine and to my eye the world here is wonderful – ”. Ten years later, despite a frustrating week-long stay in the hospital after a trip to Mexico City, she writes “Today looks like one of our perfect winter days – clear warm sun – cold wind.” 

By Elisabeth Kane