‘Cruisin’ the Fossil Coastline’ mixes art, history and natural science at the Oakland museum

So, an artist and a paleontologist walk into a museum …

While that sounds like the setup for an erudite punchline, it’s something that really happened in a Seattle museum several years ago when Alaskan artist Ray Troll – famous for his fun-filled renditions of fish and marine mammals – and paleontologist Kirk Johnson, now the director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, met at one of Troll’s exhibitions.