By CRAIG OFFMAN

sing fragments of fossilized bone, paleontologists can reconstruct a dinosaur in their mind. But artists such as Calgary native Brian Cooley, 42, have an even harder task. They have to take fossils and turn them into a physical reality that both the professionals and the public will approve.

"It's fun to just puzzle it out," says Cooley, one of the world's top dinosaur sculptors, who has plied his trade for 17 years. The cover of July's National Geographic features Cooley's most recent life-size model: a 60-cm-tall version of Phil Currie's find, Caudipteryx zoui, with its putative plumage supplied by partridges, pheasants and roosters. Cooley has worked on projects with Currie throughout his career. "If you want a dinosaur to look as if it would walk right off the pedestal and bite you, you would hire Brian Cooley," explains Chris Sloan, National Geographic's art director. Agrees famed paleontologist Jack Horner: "Brian is an artist we can trust."

In all, Cooley has made more than 30 models, most of which have either toured the U.S. and Canada or have found homes in such institutions as the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia and the Royal Tyrrell Museum. One of Cooley's 272-kg, $45,000 albertosaurus models greets passengers in the Calgary airport.

Cooley starts off his construction with a small-scale version as a guide, then moves on to life size, beginning with a steel skeleton, or armature. Mesh and 19-mm wire are placed on top, and then comes a layer of burlap and plaster. Using plasticine and rubber, Cooley gives the beast musculature and skin texture. The final stage involves liquid fiber glass, which Cooley sets onto the mold. He removes the frame from beneath and then paints the fiber glass. In many cases, he and Currie will consult on anatomical issues. Though variables remain, such as the color and thickness of skin and the sex of the dinosaur, the two will make educated guesses.

Like Currie, Cooley learned to love dinosaurs as a kid. Growing up in the town of Pincher Creek, Alta., he made a papier-mache brontosaur. As he got older, he created oil paintings of the lizards. Cooley attended the Alberta College of Art in Calgary, where he learned about sculpture. After graduation he worked at the Calgary Zoo. It was there he got his first opportunity to build a dinosaur statue, and also met the provincial paleontologist of the day, Phil Currie. "Phil showed me a far more exciting world of dinosaurs than the one I knew," Cooley recalls. Now Cooley shows that world to everyone else.