David Peters

David Peters (born 1954) is an American author, artist, and paleoartist notable for his fringe views regarding prehistoric animals, particularly pterosaurs, and phylogeny which he promotes via his blog The Pterosaur Heresies and website ReptileEvolution.com.

Activities David Peters' restoration of Longisquama (as of 2006) and other reptiles which he claims to be closely related.

From the mid-1980s to the late-1990s, Peters authored and illustrated several books on dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals for general audiences. Peters became a regular figure at paleontological conferences during this time and was both well-known and well-regarded in the field for his artwork. In 2003, Peters presented an abstract at the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting, during which he proposed that the pterosaur Jeholopterus was hematophagic. Due to the poor reception of the abstract, and further conflicts between Peters and academic paleontologists through the 2000s, appearances at conferences became less frequent and publication in scientific journals more difficult.

Peters has no formal qualifications in paleontology, and does not usually personally examine fossils as do most paleontologists, instead relying on photographs of fossils manipulated in Photoshop. Peters contends that by using image manipulation, specifically a process he refers to as "Digital Graphic Segregation", he can uncover meaningful details in the fossils that paleontologists do not.

Brian Andres, a geologist at the University of South Florida who specializes in pterosaur systematics, recalled that Peters had interpreted marks made when he had prepared a fossil as being of biological significance. and 2020. Concern has been raised about Peters' work misleading non-experts.