Category Archives: NMNH

August 19, 2014 · 1:33 pm

Museums and the Triceratops Posture Problem – Part 2

Triceratops at the National Museum of Natural History.

Triceratops “Hatcher” at the National Museum of Natural History. Photo by the author.

Back in July, I wrote about how the forelimb posture of ceratopsian dinosaurs like Triceratops has puzzled paleontologists for more than a century. Most quadrupedal dinosaurs held their front legs straight under their bodies, and it would make sense if Triceratops and its kin did the same. However, when researchers attempted to physically articulate skeletons for museum displays, they found that that the humerus would only fit properly with the scapula if it projected horizontally from the torso – like the sprawling limbs of a lizard. Over the years, new specimens, new research methods, and new technologies have all been used to help resolve this conundrum, but a consensus has not yet been reached. Of particular interest to me is the unusually central role mounted skeletons in museums have played in this biomechanical mystery. The previous post covered the historic Triceratops mounts; this entry will take a look at some more recent Triceratops displays in American museums.

The Hatcher Project

In 1998, a visitor looking at the Triceratops mount at the National Museum of Natural History happened to sneeze. To her alarm, the sneeze was enough to knock a small fragment of bone off the pelvis and onto the floor. The visitor thoughtfully informed security, and after a thorough conservation assessment by Kathy Hawks, it was determined that the 93-year-old mount needed to come off exhibit, and soon. The delicate fossils had served valiantly through 23 presidential administrations, but now it was time for the skeleton to be disassembled and preserved for posterity.

Retiring the classic Triceratops gave Ralph Chapman, head of the Museum’s Applied Morphometrics Laboratory, an opportunity to take on a project he had been germinating for some time. Chapman wanted to demonstrate the potential of 3-D scanning technology for paleontology research by creating a high-resolution digital duplicate of a dinosaur skeleton. Today, the process of making and studying digital copies of fossils is both widespread  and remarkably straightforward, but in the late 1990s it was practically science fiction. Nevertheless, the historic Triceratops was an ideal digitization candidate for several reasons. First, the digital assets would reduce handling of the delicate and aging original fossils. Second, exact copies of the scanned bones could be made from milled foam and plastics to create a replacement exhibit mount. Finally, a digital Triceratops would be a great opportunity to revisit the ceratopsid posture problem in a new way.

digital hatcher

A rendering of the digital Hatcher. Source

The ensuing Hatcher Project (the Triceratops was named in honor of John Bell Hatcher, who found the original fossils in the late 19th century) was a collaboration between Museum staff and several industry experts, including Lisa Federici of Scansite 3-D Services and Arthur Andersen of Virtual Surfaces, Inc. The first step was to place stickers on 100 key points on the Triceratops. These points were recorded with a surface scanner, so that the historic mount could be digitally recreated in its original pose. After that, fossil preparators Steve Jabo and Pete Kroehler carefully dismantled the skeleton. Each bone from the skeleton’s right side* was then scanned individually, producing 20 gigabytes of data (you’re supposed to gasp…again, this was the late 90s).

*Bones from the right side were mirrored to reproduce the left half of the skeleton. 

Since the original mount had been a somewhat disproportionate composite, the team made a few changes when building the new digital Hatcher. Some elements, including the undersized skull, were enlarged to match the rest of the skeleton. In addition, parts that had either been sculpted or were not actually Triceratops bones – such as the dorsal vertebrae and the hindfeet – were replaced with casts acquired from other museums. The result was the world’s first complete digital dinosaur, and shortly afterward, the first full-sized replica skeleton generated from digital assets.

Updated "Hatcher" mount's rarely seen right side. Source

Hatcher’s seldom seen right side was briefly exposed recently, before the mount was moved to a temporary second floor location. Source

In April 2000, the Hatcher team convened at NMNH to determine how the new replica mount would be posed. Chapman, Jabo, and Kroehler were joined by Kent Stevens of the University of Oregon, Brenda Chinnery of Johns Hopkins University, and Rolf Johnson of the Milwaukee Public Museum (among others) to spend a day working with a 1/6th scale model produced by stereolithography specialist Jason Dickman. The miniature Hatcher allowed the researchers to physically test the skeleton’s range of motion without the difficulty of manipulating heavy fossils.

The day was full of surprises. The team was impressed by the wide range of motion afforded by the ball and socket joint connecting the Triceratops skull to the atlas. They also found that the elbow joints could lock, which may have been helpful for shock absorption when the animal smashed things with its face. Nevertheless, when it came time to articulate the humerus and scapula, the team essentially validated Charles Gilmore’s original conclusion that sprawling forelimbs worked best (although the new Hatcher mount stands a little straighter than the historic version, and a lot straighter than the New York Triceratops). While other paleontologists had used indirect evidence (like evenly spaced trackways and wide nasal cavities for sucking down lots of oxygen) to support the idea that Triceratops was a straight-legged, fast-moving rhino analogue, articulating the actual bones showed once again that ceratopsid forelimbs had to sprawl.

Houston and Los Angeles Mounts

LACM Triceratops mount. Photo by Heinrich Mallison, many more here.

LACM Triceratops mount. Photo by Heinrich Mallison, many more here.

Hatcher is the Triceratops I am best acquainted with, and I can’t help but think of it as the definitive example of this animal. However, two new Triceratops mounts demonstrate a radically different take on ceratopsid posture. In 2011, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County completed a thoroughly renovated dinosaur hall, which features a brand-new Triceratops mount at its entrance. Like Hatcher, this skeleton is a composite of several specimens, in this case excavated in Montana by LACM teams between 2002 and 2004. Phil Fraley Productions, the exhibit fabrication company behind Sue and the Carnegie Museum dinosaurs, was responsible for mounting the fossils. The primary specimen (LACM 141459, which provided the skull and right forelimb) is notable because it included a completely intact and articulated front leg. Although the analysis of this important find has yet to be published, exhibit curator Luis Chiappe tellingly chose an erect, rather than sprawling, forelimb posture.

Meanwhile, the Houston Museum of Nature and Science opened its colossal, 30,000 square foot Hall of Paleontology in 2012. Among the dozens of mounted skeletons on display is Lane, reportedly the most complete Triceratops ever found. The museum purchased the skeleton from the Black Hills Institute, and the company also constructed the display mount. Robert Bakker, who curates the Hall of Paleontology, specifically requested that Lane be given a straight-legged, trotting pose. With two legs off the ground, this display emanates strength and speed.

"Lane" at Houston Museum

“Lane” at Houston Museum of Nature and Science. Source

So how did the Los Angeles and Houston exhibit teams manage to construct plausible-looking, straight-legged Triceratops mounts? Since full descriptions of either specimen have not been published, it’s hard to say for sure. From the look of it, however, the new mounts both have narrower, flatter rib cages (as suggested by Paul and Christiansen), which allows more room for the elbow. Likewise, the shoulder girdles are lower than Hatcher’s, and they seem to have been rotated closer to the front of the chest. Also note that the forelimbs of the Los Angeles and Houston mounts are not completely erect – they are strongly flexed at the elbow, as is typical of many quadrupedal mammals.

These new mounts don’t mean the Triceratops posture problem is resolved, though. The angle of the ribs and the position of the scapula are apparently both touchy subjects, so alternate interpretations are sure to arise in the future. After all, Triceratops forelimb posture isn’t just an esoteric bit of anatomical trivia: it has major implications for the speed and athleticism of an extremely successful keystone herbivore. Understanding the limitations on this animal’s movement and behavior can contribute to our understanding of the ecosystem and environmental pressures in late Cretaceous North America. As such, I am eagerly awaiting the next round in this 100-plus year investigation.

A big thank you to Rebecca Hunt-Foster and Ralph Chapman for sharing their time and expertise while I was writing this post!

References

Chapman, R. Personal communication.

Chapman, R., Andersen, A., Breithaupt, B.H. and Matthews, N.A. 2012. Technology and the Study of Dinosaurs. The Complete Dinosaur, 2nd Edition. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Fujiwara, S. and Hutchinson, J.R. 2012. Elbow Joint Adductor Movement Arm as an Indicator of Forelimb Posture in Extinct Quadrupedal Tetrapods. Proceedings of the Royal Society 279: 2561-2570.

Hunt-Foster, R. Personal communication.

Paul, G.S. and Christiansen, P. 2000. Forelimb Posture in Neoceratopsian Dinosaurs: Implications for Gait and Locomotion. Paleobiology 26:3:450-465.

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July 16, 2014 · 12:16 pm

Museums and the Triceratops Posture Problem – Part 1

The Triceratops in the Hall of Extinct Monsters, circa 1911. Photo from NMNH on flickr.

The world’s first Triceratops mount at the United States National Museum, built in 1905. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Archives.

We know more about dinosaurs today than previous generations of researchers would have ever thought possible. Who would have guessed that in the 21st century, we would have direct evidence for the color of some species, or a detailed understanding of the life history and ontogeny of others? Modern paleontologists can delve deeper into the biology and ecology of extinct animals than ever before, so it comes as a surprise when a very basic question about dinosaur physiology has gone without a definitive answer for well over a century.

For 125 years, paleontogists have struggled to understand how large ceratopsids like Triceratops held their forelimbs. Usually, someone with a good understanding of anatomy can assemble a tetrapod skeleton without much difficulty. Vertebrates are all built along the same basic body plan, and bones fit together in the same general way. However, the forelimb bones of Triceratops and its relatives are quite perplexing. The head of the humerus, which articulates with the scapula, is off-center and extends backward from the shaft. Meanwhile, the lesser tubercle, a tiny nubbin on a human humerus, is enormous and boxy. Taken together, these two traits make it so that if Triceratops held its arm erect and under its body, like most dinosaurs did, the humerus would either puncture the rib cage or be completely dislocated from the shoulder. The simplest way to solve this is to orient the humerus so that the arms project at right angles from the torso, like the sprawling limbs of a lizard. But this just looks wrong. First, ceratopsid hindlimbs are plainly meant to stand straight up, so sprawling forelimbs make Triceratops look mismatched, like the front end a tortoise was sewn to the back end of a rhino. Second, and perhaps more importantly, a sprawling posture would inhibit speed and maneuverability in what is otherwise a very powerfully-built animal. The posture of Triceratops and its kin would ultimately have had a dramatic impact on the animal’s behavior, lifestyle, and ecological role.

Paleontologists haven’t spent the last century just scratching their heads over this problem. Ceratopsid forelimbs have inspired a considerable amount of research over the years, as scientists continue to develop new methods and new tools to explore the biomechanics of prehistoric animals. My intent with this post is not to thoroughly recount the history of ceratopsid forelimb research (if you’re interested, most of the articles referenced below are freely available online). Instead, I’d like to explore the central role museum displays have played in this debate. An artist drawing a two-dimensional image of Triceratops can fudge the orientation of the limbs (and many have), but the team building a mounted skeleton needs to know exactly how to articulate the bones. The ceratopsid posture question first arose in the process of building a mounted Triceratops skeleton for display, and museum mounts continue to be referenced by researchers looking to “ground truth” their ideas. While museum mounts usually exist primarily for education and display, in the case of the ceratopsid forelimb question these exhibits have been central to the process of studying fossil evidence and creating knowledge.

Early Reconstructions

Marsh's 1891 restoration of Triceratops.

Marsh’s 1888 restoration of Triceratops.

O.C. Marsh published the first illustrated reconstruction of a Triceratops skeleton in 1888. Marsh was legendary in his attention to detail, and the restoration holds up reasonably well today – better, in fact, than his illustrations of Stegosaurus and Brontosaurus. Contemporary scientists had no complaints, even though Marsh had given the Triceratops vertical forelimbs. Other dinosaurs had erect limbs, as does the superficially similar modern rhino, so why shouldn’t Triceratops? Marsh’s reconstruction was brought to three-dimensional life in 1901, when the Smithsonian Institution commissioned a life-sized papier mache replica of a Triceratops skeleton for the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Since the model was hand-sculpted, not casted from original fossils, artist F.A. Lucas had no trouble making Triceratops stand up straight, exactly as portrayed by Marsh. After appearing again at a Smithsonian exhibit in St. Louis, the model was given to the London Natural History Museum, where it remains on display today. Meanwhile, newly hired United States National Museum preparator Charles Gilmore began work on a mounted Triceratops skeleton composed of original fossils.

St. Louis Expo

Straight-legged Triceratops model at the Pan American Expo in St. Louis. Source

Gilmore’s 1905 Triceratops mount was the first real skeleton of a ceratopsid ever assembled for display (first image). Like virtually all dinosaur mounts of the era, the skeleton was a composite of several specimens and a few sculpted pieces. All the Triceratops fossils at Gilmore’s disposal were collected by John Bell Hatcher in the late 19th century, and inherited by the Smithsonian as part of the Marsh collection. USNM 4842, a partial skeleton consisting mostly of a torso and pelvis, formed the basis for the mount, but at least six other individuals were also incorporated. Gilmore selected the skull USNM 2100 because it was more complete and less distorted than the other Triceratops skulls available, but it was on the small side compared to the body. Likewise, the left humerus was about 40% smaller than the right, and conspicuously three-toed Edmontosaurus hindfeet were used (no Triceratops feet had been found at the time). In the process of building his Triceratops, Gilmore had to make several changes to the idealized Triceratops envisioned by Marsh, most notably the orientation of the forelimbs. Not only was it apparently impossible to articulate the humerus in an upright position, but as Gilmore explained it, “a straightened form of leg would so elevate the anterior portion of the body as to have made it a physical impossibility for the animal to reach the ground with its head.”

The American Museum of Natural History produced their own Triceratops mount in 1923. Like its USNM predecessor, the AMNH Triceratops was a composite of several specimens. AMNH 5033, discovered by Barnum Brown in Montana and consisting of most of the dorsal vertebral column, ribs, and pelvic girdle, made up the largest portion of the mount. The skull was recovered by Charles Sternberg in Wyoming, and many of the appendicular bones were sculpted or cast from Smithsonian specimens. Preparator Charles Lang spent over 263 working days on the project, and much of that time was reportedly spent puzzling over the forelimbs. Lang studied living and preserved specimens of a variety of tetrapods, including rhinos, lizards, crocodiles, and tortoises, trying to find a living analogue for the strangely shaped ceratopsid bones. He ended up articulating the forelimbs so that they were even more widely splayed than Gilmore’s reconstruction, to the point that the back of the Triceratops slopes dramatically forward, and the head is almost dragging along the ground. In an accompanying paper, Henry Osborn asserted that “nothing short of a horizontal humerus and completely everted elbow would permit proper articulation of the facets.” By way of explanation, Osborn offered that this posture might have been helpful in withstanding a frontal impact.

triceratops

American Museum of Natural History Triceratops mount, circa 1959. Photo courtesy of theAMNH Research Library.

Together, the Washington and New York Triceratops mounts, with their mismatched tortoise-in-the-front, rhino-in-the-back posture, would come to define both popular and scientific conceptions of ceratopsids for the better part of a century. Other museums followed Gilmore and Lang’s lead and built sprawling ceratopsids of their own, including Richard Lull’s 1929 Centrosaurus at the Peabody Museum of Natural History and Kenneth Carpenter’s 1986 Chasmosaurus at the Academy of Natural Sciences. Even as recently as 1995, AMNH curators chose not to change a single bone on the historic Triceratops mount while modernizing their exhibit.

Voices of Dissent

Robert Bakker was one of the first to challenge the ceratopsid forelimb orthodoxy. In 1986, Bakker criticized Gilmore and Lull’s museum mounts and resurrected Marsh’s original interpretation of a straight-legged Triceratops. His reasoning was that the ceratopsid glenoid fossa (the concavity on the scapula that holds the head of the humerus) was more like the narrow cup of a horse or rhino than the wide trough of a lizard. Bakker went as far as to suggest that Triceratops and its kin might have been able to run or even gallop. Gregory Paul and others piled on, arguing that earlier researchers had run into trouble articulating Triceratops forelimbs because they had made the ribcage too broad. If the ribs were articulated so that the animal had flat flanks, the elbow apparently wouldn’t get in the way. Additional evidence for an upright stance came from a set of ceratopsid trackways described by Martin Lockley and Adrian Hunt. The trackways showed forefeet in line with the hindfeet, suggesting that front and back legs were not mismatched, after all.

This cast of the AMNH Triceratops at the Field Museum replicates the sprawling posture. Photo by the author.

This cast of the AMNH Triceratops at the Field Museum replicates the sprawling posture of the original. Photo by the author.

However, paleontologists like Peter Dodson were unmoved by these new arguments. Dodson proposed that the trackways had been misinterpreted: since ceratopsids are wider at the hips than at the shoulders, evenly spaced front and back prints should imply that the animal was holding its forelimbs out farther than its hindlimbs. Dodson was concerned that the rhino analogy was being taken too far: Triceratops looked like a rhino, so reasearchers were trying their hardest to make it move and behave like a rhino.

As Kenneth Carpenter explained in a comment last year, dinosaurs can do anything on paper, but physically assembling a skeleton forces you to confront the reality of what the bones can and cannot do. In the last decade, two new Triceratops mounts provided paleontologists the opportunity to re-explore this process, with more complete specimens and modern technology at their disposal. Next time, we’ll take a look at what the new Triceratops displays at the National Museum of Natural History and the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum can tell us about ceratopsid posture and lifestyle.

References

Bakker, R.T. 1986. The Dinosaur Heresies: New Theories Unlocking the Mystery of Dinosaurs and Their Extinction. New York, NY: Citadel Press.

Dodson, P. 1996. The Horned Dinosaurs: A Natural History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Fujiwara, S. 2009. A Reevaluation of the Manus Structure in Triceratops (Ceratopsia: Ceratopsidae). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29:4:1136-1147.

Fujiwara, S. and Hutchinson, J.R. 2012. Elbow Joint Adductor Movement Arm as an Indicator of Forelimb Posture in Extinct Quadrupedal Tetrapods. Proceedings of the Royal Society 279: 2561-2570.

Gilmore C.W. 1905.The Mounted Skeleton of Triceratops prorsus. Proceedings of the U.S. National Museum 29:1426:433-435.

Makovicky, P. 2012. Marginocephalia. The Complete Dinosaur, 2nd Edition. Eds. Brett-Surman, M.K., Holtz, T.R. and Farlow, J.O. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Osborn, H.F. 1933. Mounted Skeleton of Triceratops elatus. American Museum Novitates 654:1-14.

Paul, G.S. and Christiansen, P. 2000. Forelimb Posture in Neoceratopsian Dinosaurs: Implications for Gait and Locomotion. Paleobiology 26:3:450-465.

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May 18, 2014 · 3:44 pm

Extinct Monsters Updated

artists conception

This early artist’s conception of the new NMNH fossil hall was on display on closing day.

Way back in 2012, I wrote a series of posts on the history of fossil displays at the National Museum of Natural History. Now that the old exhibit is closed for five years of renovation, it seemed like a good idea to go back and revise the old articles. That, and it can be very painful to read things I wrote over a year ago. Each of the seven posts, plus the launch page, have been substantially updated with new information, new images, and less abuse of the passive voice. You can check out the new articles via the Extinct Monsters link at the top of the page, or by clicking here.

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April 13, 2014 · 6:48 pm

Displaying the Tyrant King – Part 3

Subtlety is unnessesary when T. rex is involved.

Who needs subtlety when you have a T. rex?

Start with Displaying the Tyrant King Part 1 and Part 2.

Tyrannosaurus rex displays changed for good in the 1990s thanks to two individuals, one real and one fictional. The latter was of course the T. rex from the film Jurassic Park, brought to life with a full-sized hydraulic puppet, game-changing computer animation, and the inspired use of a baby elephant’s screeching cry for the dinosaur’s roar. The film made T. rex real – a breathing, snorting, drooling animal unlike anything audiences had ever seen. Jurassic Park was a tough act to follow, and in one way or another, every subsequent museum display of the tyrant king has had to contend with the shadow cast by the film’s iconic star.

The other dinosaur of the decade was Sue, who scarcely requires introduction. First and foremost, Sue is the most complete Tyrannosaurus ever found, with 80% of the skeleton intact. Approximately 28 years old at the time of her death, Sue is also the eldest T. rex known, as well as one of the largest. The specimen’s completeness and exquisite preservation has allowed paleontologists to ascertain an unprecedented amount of information about the lifestyle of meat-eating dinosaurs. In particular, Sue’s skeleton is riddled with fractured and arthritic bones, as well as evidence of gout and parasitic infection that together paint a dramatic picture of the rough-and-tumble world of the late Cretaceous.

From South Dakota to Chicago

Sue at Disney World

Cast of Sue at Walt Disney World, Orlando. Source

It was the events of Sue’s second life, however, that made her the fossil the world knows by name. Sue was discovered in the late summer of 1990 by avocational fossil hunter Susan Hendrickson (for whom the specimen is named) on the Cheyenne River reservation in South Dakota. Peter Larson of the Black Hills Institute, a commercial outfit that specializes in excavating, preparing, and exhibiting fossils, initially intended to display the Tyrannosaurus at a new facility in Hill City, but soon became embroiled in an ugly four-way legal battle with landowner Maurice Williams, the Cheyenne council, and the United States Department of the Interior. With little precedent for ownership disputes over fossils, it took until 1995 for the District Court to award Williams the skeleton. Williams soon announced that he would put Sue on the auction block, and paleontologists initially worried that the priceless specimen would disappear into the hands of a wealthy collector, or end up in a crass display at a Las Vegas casino. Those fears were put to rest in 1997 when Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History won Sue with financial backing from McDonald’s and Disney. Including the auctioneer’s commission, the price was an astounding $8.36 million.

FMNH and its corporate partners did not pay seven figures for Sue solely to learn about dinosaur pathology.  Sue’s remarkable completeness would be a boon to scientists, but her star power was at least as important for the Museum. Sue was a blockbuster attraction that would bring visitors in the door, and her name and likeness could be marketed for additional earned income. As FMNH President John McCarter explained, “we do dinosaurs…so that we can do fish” (quoted in Fiffer 2000). Particularly in the late 1990s, with Jurassic Park still fresh in people’s minds, a Tyrannosaurus would attract visitors and generate funds, which could in turn fund less sensational but equally important research, like ichthyology and entomology.

Still, some worried that McCarter, whose background was in business, not science, was exploiting an important specimen as a marketing gimmick at the expense of the Museum’s educational mission. This echoed similar concerns voiced 80 years earlier, when the original mounted Tyrannosaurus was introduced at the American Museum of Natural History. As president of AMNH, Henry Osborn oversaw the creation of grandiose and dramatic exhibits, with the intent to draw crowds and justify private and municipal financial support. When the Museum unveiled the Tyrannosaurus mount, Osborn held a lavish publicity gala for the New York elite and members of the press. The buzz generated by Osborn’s promotion resulted in lines around the block and front page headlines, but the attention was focused on the spectacle of the dinosaur rather than the science behind it. Many academics derided this as lowest common denominator pandering, while others, like anthropologist Franz Boas, grudgingly accepted that “it is a fond delusion of many museum officers that the attitude of the public is a more serious one, but the majority do not want anything beyond entertainment.”

Original skull of Sue the T. rex, displayed on the upper mezzanine. Photo by the author.

FMNH was under similar scrutiny as museum staff revealed their plans for Sue. The role of the corporate sponsors that paid for the fossils was a particular cause for concern, and the marketing team knew it. Although the idea of T. rex-themed Happy Meals was briefly on the table, McDonald’s and Disney wisely opted to present themselves only as patrons of science. McDonald’s got its name on the new fossil preparation lab at FMNH and Disney got a mounted cast of Sue to display at Walt Disney World, but the principal benefit to the two companies was high-profile exposure in association with youth science education. The Museum retained control over the message, highlighting Sue’s importance to paleontology and only coyly admitting her role as a promotional tool. Likewise, FMNH is the sole profiteer from the litany of shirts, hats, toys, mugs, and assorted trinkets bearing the Sue name and logo that are continually sold at the Museum and around Chicago.

You May Approach Her Majesty

Once Sue arrived at FMNH, the Museum did not hold back marketing the dinosaur as a must-see attraction. A pair of Sue’s teeth went on display days after the auction, which expanded organically into the “Sue Uncrated” exhibit, where visitors could watch the plaster-wrapped bones being unpacked and inventoried. Meanwhile, McDonald’s prepared an educational packet on Sue that was distributed to 60,000 elementary schools.

The main event, of course, was the mounted skeleton, which needed to be ready by the summer of 2000. This was an alarmingly short timetable, and the FMNH team had to hit the ground running. Much of Sue’s skeleton was still buried in rock and plaster. The bones needed to be prepared and stabilized before they could be studied, and they needed to be studied before they could be mounted. In addition, two complete Sue casts had to be fabricated: one for Disney World and one for a McDonald’s-sponsored traveling exhibit. The casts were produced by Research Casting International, the Toronto-based company that recently built the mounted menagerie for “Ultimate Dinosaurs“. Phil Fraley Productions, the same exhibit company that rebuilt the American Museum and Carnegie Museum T. rex mounts, was tapped to mount Sue’s original skeleton.

The mounted skeleton of Sue in the Stanley Field Hall. Photo by the author.

Unlike every other Tyrannosaurus mount before or since, Sue can hardly be called a composite. With the exception of a missing arm, left foot, a couple ribs, and small number of other odds and ends, the mounted Sue skeleton is composed of real fossils from a single individual. FMNH public relations latched onto this fact, emphasizing in press releases that while “many museums are displaying replicas of dinosaur skeletons, the Field Museum has strengthened its commitment to authenticity. This is Sue.” Just as they did with the AMNH Tyrannosaurus, Fraley’s team built an armature with individual brackets securing each bone, allowing them to be removed with relative ease for research and conservation. No bolts were drilled into the bones and no permanent glue was applied, ensuring that the fossils incur only minimal damage for the sake of the exhibit. Despite these improvements over historic mount-making techniques, however, the Sue mount does have some inexplicable anatomical errors. The coracoids should be almost touching in the middle of the chest, but the shoulder girdles are mounted so high on the rib cage that there is a substantial space between them. Consequently, the furcula (wishbone) is also positioned incorrectly.

After a private event not unlike the one held by Osborn in 1915, Sue was revealed to the public on May 17, 2000 with the literal raising of a curtain. A week-long series of celebrations and press junkets introduced Sue to Chicago, and she has been one of the city’s biggest attractions every since. All the publicity paid off, at least in the short term: FMNH attendance soared that year from 1.6 million to 2.4 million. 14 years later, Sue the Tyrannosaurus is still known by name, and is even used as the voice of FMNH on twitter. Interestingly, Sue’s new identity as a Chicago landmark seems to have all but eclipsed the legal dispute that was her original source of fame. A recent RedEye cover story goes so far as to proclaim this South Dakotan skeleton as “pure Chicago.”

 The Nation’s T. rex

This customized truck transported the Nation’s T. rex from Montana to Washington, DC.

This year, another Tyrannosaurus specimen has rocketed to Sue-like levels of notoriety. MOR 555, also known as “Wankel Rex”, is being transferred to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where it will eventually be mounted for long-term display. Now dubbed “the Nation’s T. rex“, the promotion of this specimen has mirrored that of Sue in many ways. Front-page media coverage, first-person tweets from the dinosaur and even an official song and dance contest herald the arrival of the fossils from their previous repository, the Museum of the Rockies in Montana. Much like the “Sue Uncrated” exhibit, the process of unpacking the unarticulated bones will soon be on view in a temporary display called “The Rex Room.” Meanwhile, the very name “Nation’s T. rex” is a provocative invented identity akin to Sue’s new status as a Chicagoan.

Nevertheless, the Nation’s T. rex does not quite live up to Sue’s mystique. This Tyrannosaurus is neither as large nor as complete as Sue, and there was no prolonged legal battle or frantic auction in its past. The 60% complete skeleton was found in 1988 by Montana rancher Kathy Wankel, on land owned by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The fossils are now on a 50 year loan from from the Corps to the Smithsonian, (presumably) a straightforward transfer between federal agencies. In addition, MOR 555 is by no means a new specimen. Several casts of the skeleton are already on display, including exhibits at the Royal Ontario Museum, the Museum of the Rockies, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, and even the Google campus. In fact, a cast of the MOR 555 skull has been on display at NMNH for years.

NMNH Director Kirk Johnson, fossil hunter Kathy Wankel, her husband Bob Wankel, and Lt. Gen. Thomas Bostick preside over the arrival of the Nation’s T. rex at the Smithsonian. Source

With that in mind, the hype around the Nation’s T. rex might seem like much ado about nothing. As this series has demonstrated, the number of Tyrannosaurus skeletons on exhibit, whether original fossils or casts, has exploded in recent years. A quarter century ago, New York and Pittsburgh were the only places where the world’s most famous dinosaur could be seen in person. Today, there may well be over a hundred Tyrannosaurus mounts worldwide, most of which are identical casts of a handful of specimens. Acquiring and displaying a T. rex is neither risky nor ambitious for a natural history museum. No audience research or focus groups are needed to know that the tyrant king will be a hit. And yet, excessive duplication of a sure thing might eventually lead to monotony and over-saturation.

So far, such fears appear to be unfounded. A specimen like Sue or the Nation’s T. rex is ideal for museums because it is at once scientifically informative and irresistibly captivating. Museums do not need to choose between education and entertainment because a Tyrannosaurus skeleton effectively does both. And even as ever more lifelike dinosaurs grace film screens, museums are still the symbolic home of T. rex. The iconic image associated with Tyrannosaurus is that of a mounted skeleton in a grand museum hall, just as it was when the dinosaur was introduced to the world nearly a century ago. The tyrant king is an ambassador to science that unfailingly excites audiences about the natural world, and museums are lucky to have it.

The Nation’s T. rex in its final pose at the Research Casting International workshop.

This week, NMNH will be celebrating all things Tyrannosaurus, starting with a live webcast of arrival of the Nation’s T. rex on Tuesday morning. Stay tuned to this blog for further coverage of the events!

References

Asma, S.T. 2001. Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Boas, F. 1907. Some Principles of Museum Administration. Science 25:650:931-933.

Counts, C.M. 2009. Spectacular Design in Museum Exhibitions. Curator 52: 3: 273-289.

Fiffer, S. 2000. Tyrannosaurus Sue: The Extraordinary Saga of the Largest, Most Fought Over T. rex ever Found. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman and Company.

Larson, N. 2008. “One Hundred Years of Tyrannosaurus rex: The Skeletons.” Tyrannosaurus rex: The Tyrant King. Larson, Peter and Carpenter, Kenneth, eds. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Lee, B.M. 2005. The Business of Dinosaurs: The Chicago Field Museum’s Nonprofit Enterprise. Unpublished thesis, George Washington University.

Rainger, R. 1991. An Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn and Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, 1980-1935. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.

Switek, B. 2013. My Beloved Brontosaurus: On the Road with Old Bones, New Science and our Favorite Dinosaurs. New York, NY: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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Filed under dinosaurs, FMNH, fossil mounts, history of science, movies, museums, NMNH, reptiles, science communication, theropods

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April 6, 2014 · 5:56 pm

Displaying the Tyrant King – Part 2

Old meets new

Old meets new: The classic Carnegie T. rex (CM 9380) is now paired with a cast of Peck’s Rex (MOR 980). Photo by the author.

Start with Displaying the Tyrant King – Part 1.

In 1915, the American Museum of Natural History unveiled the first mounted skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex ever constructed. The Carnegie Museum of Natural History followed suit with their Tyrannosaurus mount in 1941, and for most of the 20th century New York and Pittsburgh were the only places in the world where the tyrant king could be seen in person. Nevertheless, these displays propelled Tyrannosaurus to universal stardom, and the instantly recognizable dinosaur appeared in countless books, films, and other media for years to come.

The omnipresence of T. rex was secured in part by two additional museum displays, ironically at institutions that did not have any actual Tyrannosaurus fossils on hand. The Field Museum of Natural History commissioned Charles Knight to paint a series of prehistoric landscapes in 1928, the most recognizable of which depicts a face-off between Triceratops and a surprisingly spry Tyrannosaurus. In 1947, Rudolph Zallinger painted a considerably more bloated and lethargic T. rex as part of his Age of Reptiles mural at the Peabody Museum of Natural History. Both paintings would be endlessly replicated for decades, and would go on to define the prehistoric predator in the public imagination.

Rex Renaissance

Despite enduring public enthusiasm, scientific interest in dinosaurs declined sharply in the mid-20th century, and new discoveries were few and far between. This changed rather suddenly with the onset of the “dinosaur renaissance” in the 1970s and 80s, which brought renewed energy to the discipline in the wake of evidence that dinosaurs had been energetic and socially sophisticated animals. The next generation of paleontologists endeavored to look at fossils in new ways to understand dinosaur behavior, biomechanics, ontogeny, and ecology. Tyrannosaurus was central to the new wave of research, and has been the subject of hundreds of scientific papers since 1980. More interest brought more fossil hunters into the American west, leading to an unprecedented expansion in known Tyrannosaurus fossils. Once considered vanishingly rare, Tyrannosaurus is now known from over 50 individual specimens across a wide range of ages and sizes. Extensive research on growth rate, cellular structure, sexual dimorphism, speed, and energetics, to name but a few topics, has turned T. rex into a veritable model organism among dinosaurs.

RTMP 81.6.1, aka Black Beauty, mounted in relief at the Royal Tyrell Museum. Source.

RTMP 81.6.1, aka Black Beauty, mounted in relief at the Royal Tyrell Museum. Source

The most celebrated Tyrannosaurus find from the early years of the dinosaur renaissance came from Alberta, making it the northernmost and westernmost T. rex to date. The 30% complete “Black Beauty” specimen, so named for the black luster of the fossilized bones, was found in 1980 by a high school student and was excavated by paleontologist Phil Curie. The original Black Beauty fossils were taken on a tour of Asia before finding a permanent home at the newly established Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta. In lieu of a standing mount, Black Beauty was embedded in a faux sandstone facade, mirroring the environment in which the fossils were found and the animal’s presumed death pose. This relief mount set Black Beauty apart from its AMNH and CMNH predecessors, and even today it remains one of the most visually striking Tyrannosaurus displays.  Since the original specimen consisted of less than half of a skeleton, much of this display is made up of sculpted bones, including the pelvis, scapula, and most of the ribs. The mounted skull is a cast, but the real skull is displayed behind glass nearby. A complete cast of Black Beauty in a traditional free-standing mount is also on display at the Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm.

The World’s Most Replicated Dinosaur

Driven by the increased public demand for dinosaurs, many museums without Tyrannosaurus fossils of their own have purchased complete casts from other institutions. In 1986, the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia opened “Discovering Dinosaurs”, the world’s first major exhibit showcasing active, endothermic dinosaurs. The centerpiece of the exhibit was a cast of the original AMNH Tyrannosaurus, posed for the first time in the horizontal posture that we now know was the animal’s habitual stance. The following year, another AMNH cast appeared in the lobby of Denver Museum of Nature and Science in a strikingly bizarre pose, with one leg kicking high in the air. The mount’s designer Robert Bakker intended to push boundaries and demonstrate what a dynamic and energetic Tyrannosaurus might be capable of, although the mount has subsequently been described as dancing, kicking a soccer ball, or peeing on a fire hydrant. Meanwhile, The Royal Tyrell Museum prepared a mount of RTMP.81.12.1 (a specimen consisting of a relatively small number of postcranial bones) that was filled in with AMNH casts, including the highly recognizable skull.

Cast

Tyrannosaurus cast at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Source

Since the late 1990s, however, casts of another specimen have overtaken AMNH 5027 for the title of most ubiquitous T. rex. BHI 3033, more commonly known as Stan, was excavated in South Dakota in 1992 by the Black Hills Institute, a for-profit outfit specializing in excavating, preparing, and mounting fossils. Stan is significant for being over two-thirds complete and for including the best-preserved Tyrannosaurus skull yet found. BHI has sold dozens of casts of the Stan skeleton to museums and other venues around the world. At a relatively affordable $100,000 plus shipping, even small local museums and the occasional wealthy individual can now own a Tyrannosaurus mount. With over 50 casts sold as of 2017, Stan is, by a wide margin, the most duplicated and most exhibited dinosaur in the world.

Stan the Tyrannosaurus at the National Museum of Natural History. Photo by the author.

Stan the Tyrannosaurus at the National Museum of Natural History. Photo by the author.

All these new Tyrannosaurus mounts are forcing museums to get creative, whether they are displaying casts or original fossils. Predator-prey pairings are a popular display choice: for example, the Houston Museum of Natural Science T. rex is positioned alongside an armored Denversaurus, and the Los Angeles Natural History Museum matches the tyrant dinosaur with its eternal enemy, Triceratops. Meanwhile, the growing number of juvenile Tyrannosaurus specimens has allowed for family group displays. A second T. rex exhibit at LACM features an adult, subadult and baby, while the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis pairs a Stan cast with the original skeleton of Bucky, a “teenage” T. rex. The most unique Tyrannosaurus mount so far is certainly the copulating pair at the Jurassic Museum of Asturias.

Tyrannosaurus versus Denversaurus at the Houston Museum of Nature and Science. Photo by the author.

Each of these displays gives a substantially different impression of Tyrannosaurus. Depending on the mount, visitors might see T. rex as a powerful brute, a fast and agile hunter, or a nurturing parent (or a gentle lover). Each mount is accurate insofar that a real Tyrannosaurus probably adopted a similar stance at some point, but the museum’s choice of pose nevertheless influences visitors’ understanding of and attitude toward the dinosaur.

Restoring the Classics

With dozens of new Tyrannosaurus mounts springing up across the country and around the world, the original AMNH and CMNH displays began to look increasingly obsolete. Unfortunately, modernizing historic fossil mounts is an extremely complex and expensive process. The early 20th century technicians that built these displays generally intended for them to be permanent: bolts were drilled directly into the bones and gaps were sealed with plaster that can only be removed by manually chipping it away. What’s more, the cumulative effects of rusting armatures, fluctuating humidity, and vibration from passing crowds have considerably damaged historic mounts over the course of their decades on display.

AMNH 5027 was restored and remounted in 1995.

AMNH 5027 was restored and remounted in 1995. Photo by the author.

Despite these challenges, AMNH and CMNH have both been able to restore and update their classic Tyrannosaurus displays. While fossil mounts used to be built in-house, often by the same people who found and described those fossils, modern mounting projects are typically outsourced to specialist companies. Phil Fraley Productions, an exhibit fabrication company based in the Pittsburgh suburbs, was responsible for both T. rex restorations. At AMNH, Jeanne Kelly spent two years disarticulating and conserving each bone before Phil Fraley’s crew took over to build the new armature. The new mount not only corrected the dinosaur’s posture, but improved visitors’ view of the fossils by removing obstructive vertical supports. Instead, most of the skeleton’s weight is now supported by steel cables hanging from the ceiling.  Each bone is secured to an individual metal bracket, allowing researchers to easily remove elements for study as necessary. A new cast of the skull was also prepared, this time with open fenestrae for a more natural appearance. Rather than attempting to match the dramatic and showy T. rex mounts at other museums, the AMNH team chose a comparatively subdued stalking pose. A closed mouth and subtly raised left foot convey a quiet dignity befitting this historically significant display.

Historically, the 1941 CMNH Tyrannosaurus had never quite lived up to its New York predecessor. Although it incorporated the Tyrannosaurus type specimen, it was mostly composed of casts from the New York skeleton, and it sported an unfortunately crude replica skull. It is therefore ironic that CMNH now exhibits the more spectacular T. rex display, one which finally realizes Osborn’s ambitious plan to construct an epic confrontation between two of the giant predators. As they had with the AMNH mount, Phil Fraley’s team dismantled the original display and painstakingly removed many layers of paint, shellac, and plaster from the bones. Michael Holland contributed a new restored skull, actually a composite of several Tyrannosaurus skulls. The restored holotype T. rex now faces off with a cast of “Peck’s Rex”, a specimen recovered from Montana in 1997. Despite the difficulty of modernizing the historic specimen, the team reportedly developed a healthy respect for turn of the century mount-makers like Adam Hermann and Arthur Coggeshall, who developed the techniques for making enduring displays of fragile fossils that are still being refined today.

Continue to Displaying the Tyrant King Part 3.

References

Colbert, E.H., Gillette, D.D. and Molnar, R.N. “North American Dinosaur Hunters.” The Complete Dinosaur, Second Edition. Brett-Surman, M.K., Holtz, T.R. and Farlow, J.O., eds.Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Dingus, L. 1996. Next of Kin: Great Fossils at the American Museum of Natural History. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

Johnson, K. and Stucky, R.K. 2013. “Paleontology: Discovering the Ancient History of the American West.” Denver Museum of Nature and Science Annals, No. 4.

Larson, N. 2008. “One Hundred Years of Tyrannosaurus rex: The Skeletons.” Tyrannosaurus rex, The Tyrant King. Larson, Peter and Carpenter, Kenneth, eds. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Naish, D. 2009. The Great Dinosaur Discoveries. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Norell, M., Gaffney, E.S. and Dingus, L. 1995. Discovering Dinosaurs: Evolution, Extinction, and the Lessons of Prehistory.  Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Psihoyos, L. 1994. Hunting Dinosaurs. New York, NY: Random House, Inc.

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Filed under AMNH, CMNH, dinosaurs, fossil mounts, history of science, museums, NMNH, paleoart, reptiles, theropods

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April 2, 2014 · 9:44 am

Displaying the Tyrant King – Part 1

 

The original Tyrannosaurus rex mount at the American Museum of Natural History. Photo from Dingus 1996.

The original Tyrannosaurus rex mount at the American Museum of Natural History. Photo from Dingus 1996.

Woodrow Wilson is in the white house. The first World War is raging in Europe, but the United States is not yet involved. The women’s suffrage movement is picking up speed. And you just heard that the skeleton of an actual dragon is on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. It is difficult to imagine a time before every man, woman, and child in the developed world knew the name Tyrannosaurus rex, but that world existed not even a century ago. In 1915, AMNH unveiled the very first mounted skeleton of the tyrant lizard king, immediately and irrevocably cementing the image of the towering reptilian carnivore in the popular psyche.

Today, Tyrannosaurus is a celebrity among dinosaurs, appearing in every form of media imaginable. More importantly, however, it is an icon for paleontology and an ambassador to science. The cult of T. rex began in the halls of museums, and museums remain the prehistoric carnivore’s symbolic home. The mounted skeletons in museums provide the legendary T. rex its credibility: these are the authentic remains of the giant predator that once stalked North America. And yet, most of the dozens of  Tyrannosaurus skeletons on display around the world are casts, and none of them represent complete skeletons (rather, they are filled in with spare parts from other specimens and the occasional sculpted bone). These are sculptures as well as scientific specimens, works of installation art composed by artists, engineers, and scientists. Herein lies the paradox presented by all fossil mounts: they are natural specimens and constructed objects, embodying a challenging duality between the realms of empiricism and imagination.

A Tyrannosaurus mount is at once educational and spectacular. Both roles were embraced at AMNH in 1915, and these dual identities have defined T. rex displays ever since. 14 years ago, FMNH PR 2081, also known as Sue, became a star attraction for the Field Museum of Natural History and the city of Chicago at large. Later this month, another T. rex will unwittingly take on a similar role: on April 15th, MOR 555, an 80% complete Tyrannosaurus specimen discovered in Montana, will be dubbed “The Nation’s T. rex“ and entered into the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History collection with considerable fanfare.

Skull cast of MOR 555, soon to be "The Nation's T. rex", at NMNH.

Skull cast of MOR 555, soon to be “The Nation’s T. rex“, at the National Museum of Natural History. Photo by the author.

This three part series is a look back at how the tyrant king has defined, and been defined by, the museum experience. Part 1 will cover the circumstances surrounding the creation of the iconic original Tyrannosaurus mount in New York, as well as its successor in Pittsburgh. Part 2 will explore the changing role of Tyrannosaurus in museums caused by a surge of new fossil finds and a revolution in our understanding of dinosaurs. Finally, Part 3 will conclude with a discussion of the positives and negatives of a modern world saturated in all things T. rex.

The Original Tyrant

Between 1890 and 1910, the United States’ large urban natural history museums entered into a frenzied competition to find and display the largest and most spectacular dinosaur skeletons. Although the efforts of paleontologists O.C. Marsh and E.D. Cope in the late 19th century fleshed out the scientific understanding of Mesozoic reptiles, it was these turn-of-the-century museum displays that brought dinosaurs into the public sphere. Bankrolled by New York’s wealthy aristocrats and led by the ambitious mega-tool Henry Osborn, AMNH won the fossil race by most any measure. The New York museum completed the world’s first mounted skeleton of a sauropod dinosaur in 1905, and also left its Chicago and Pittsburgh competitors in the dust with the highest visitation rate and the most fossil mounts on display.

Osborn’s goal was to establish AMNH as the global epicenter for paleontology research and education, and in 1905 he revealed his ace in the hole: two partial skeletons of giant meat-eating dinosaurs uncovered by fossil hunter Barnum Brown. In a deceptively brief paper in the Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, Osborn described the fossils from Wyoming and Montana, coining the names Dynamosaurus imperiosus and Tyrannosaurus rex (a follow-up paper in 1906 reclassified “Dynamosaurus” as a second Tyrannosaurus specimen). Fully aware of what a unique prize he had in his possession, Osborn wasted no time leveraging the fossils for academic glory (and additional funding from benefactors). He placed the unarticulated Tyrannosaurus fossils on display at AMNH shortly after his initial publication, and commissioned legendary artist Charles Knight to prepare a painting of the animal’s life appearance.

In 1908, Brown collected a much more complete Tyrannosaurus specimen (AMNH 5027), with over 50% of the skeleton intact, including the first complete skull and a significant portion of the torso. With this specimen in hand, AMNH technician Adam Hermann and his team began work on a mounted Tyrannosaurus skeleton to join the Museum’s growing menagerie of mounted dinosaurs and prehistoric mammals. Inspired by the Museum’s collection of taxidermy mounts in dynamic habitat dioramas, and seeking to accentuate the spectacle of his reptilian monster, Osborn initially wanted to mount two Tyrannosaurus skeletons facing off over a dead hadrosaur. He even published a brief description complete with illustrations of the projected scene (shown below). However, the structural limitations inherent to securing heavy fossils to a steel armature, as well as the inadequate amount of Tyrannosaurus fossils available, made such a sensational display impossible to achieve.

Model of unrealized T. rex showdown mount from Osborn 1913.

Model of unrealized T. rex showdown mount. Image from Osborn 1913.

Instead, Hermann prepared a single Tyrannosaurus mount, combining the 1908 specimen with plaster casts of leg bones from the 1905 holotype. The original skull was impractically heavy, so a cast was used in its place. Finally, missing portions of the skeleton, including the arms, feet, and most of the tail, were sculpted by hand using bones from Allosaurus as reference. During the early 20th century, constructing fossil mounts was a relatively new art form, and while Hermann was one of the most talented and prolific mount-makers in the business, his techniques were somewhat unkind to the fossil material. Bolts were drilled directly into the fragile bones to secure them to the armature, and in some cases steel rods were tunneled right through the bones. Any fractures were sealed with plaster, and reconstructed portions were painted to be nearly indistinguishable from the original fossils. Like most of the early AMNH fossil mounts, preserving the integrity of the Tyrannosaurus bones was often secondary to aesthetic concerns like concealing the unsightly armature.

Tyrannosaurus and others in AMNH Dinosaur Hall, 1927. Photo courtesy of AMNH Research Library.

AMNH Tyrannosaurus, ca. 1940. Photo courtesy of the AMNH Research Library.

The completed Tyrannosaurus mount, a magnificent sculptural combination of bone, plaster, and steel, was unveiled in 1915 to stunned audiences. The December 3rd New York Times article was thick with hyperbole, declaring the dinosaur “the prize fighter of antiquity”, “the king of all kings in the domain of animal life,” “the absolute warlord of the earth” and “the most formidable fighting animal of which there is any record whatsoever” (and people say that today’s science journalism is sensationalist!). With its tooth-laden jaws agape and a long, dragging lizard tail extending its length to over 40 feet, the Tyrannosaurus was akin to a mythical dragon, an impossible monster from a primordial world. This dragon, however, was real, albeit safely dead for 66 million years.

Today, we know that the original AMNH Tyrannosaurus mount was inaccurate in many ways. The upright, tail-dragging pose, which had been the most popular attitude for bipedal dinosaurs since Joseph Leidy’s 1868 presentation of Hadrosaurus, is now known to be incorrect. More complete Tyrannosaurus skeletons have revealed that the tail reconstructed by Osborn and Hermann was much too long.  The Allosaurus-inspired sculpted feet were too robust, the legs (casted from the 1905 holotype), were too large compared to the rest of the body, and the hands had too many fingers (the mount was given proper two-fingered hands when it was moved in 1927). It would be misleading to presume that the prehistoric carnivore’s skeleton sprang from the ground exactly as it was presented, but it is equally problematic to reject it as a fake. There are many reasons to criticize Osborn’s leadership at AMNH, but he did not exhibit outright forgeries. The 1915 Tyrannosaurus mount was a solid representation of the best scientific data available at the time, presented in an evocative and compelling manner.

The AMNH Tyrannosaurus mount was no less than an icon: for paleontology, for its host museum, and for the city of New York. The mount has been a New York attraction for longer than the Empire State Building, and for almost 30 years, AMNH was the only place in the world where visitors could see a T. rex in person. In 1918, Tyrannosaurus would make its first Hollywood appearance in the short film The Ghost of Slumber Mountain. This star turn was followed by roles in 1925’s The Lost World and 1933’s King Kong, firmly establishing the tyrant king’s celebrity status. It is noteworthy that special effects artist Willis O’Brian and model maker Marcel Delgado copied the proportions and posture of the AMNH display exactly when creating the dinosaurs for each of these films. The filmmakers apparently took no artistic liberties, recreating Tyrannosaurus precisely how the nation’s top scientists had reconstructed it in the museum.

A T. rex for Pittsburgh

In 1941, AMNH ended it’s Tyrannosaurus monopoly and sold the incomplete type specimen (the partial skeleton described in Osborn’s 1905 publication) to Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Natural History. While it is sometimes reported that this transfer took place to keep the valuable fossils out of harm’s way during World War II (e.g. Larson 2008), the deal was apparently underway well before the United States became involved in the war. Having paid an astounding $100,000 ($1.7 million in today’s dollars) for the fossils, CMNH staff wasted no time in assembling a mount of their own. The Tyrannosaurus holotype only included only about 15% of the skeleton, so most of Pittsburgh mount had to be made from casts and sculpted elements. Somewhat pointlessly, the skull fragments included with the specimen were buried inside a plaster skull replica, making them inaccessible to researchers for several decades. Completed in less than a year, the CMNH Tyrannosaurus was given an upright, tail-dragging posture very much like its AMNH predecessor.

Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Photo from NPR.

CM 9380 at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Source

The mid-20th century is sometimes called the “quiet phase” in vertebrate paleontology. After enjoying public fame and generous federal support during the late 1800s, paleontology as a discipline was largely marginalized when experiment-driven “hard” sciences like physics and molecular biology rose to prominence. By the 1950s and 60s, the comparably small number of researchers studying ancient life were chiefly concerned with theoretical models for quantifying trends in evolution. Although the aging dinosaur displays at American museums remained popular with the public, these animals were perceived as evolutionary dead-ends, of little interest to the majority of scientists. Between 1908 (when Brown found the iconic AMNH Tyrannosaurus skeleton) and 1980, only four largely incomplete Tyrannosaurus specimens were found, and no new mounts of this species were built.

Continue to Displaying the Tyrant King Part 2.

References

Dingus, L. (1996). Next of Kin: Great Fossils at the American Museum of Natural History. New York, NY: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc.

Glut, D. 2008. “Tyrannosaurus rex: A century of celebrity.” Tyrannosaurus rex, The Tyrant King. Larson, Peter and Carpenter, Kenneth, eds. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Hermann, A. 1909. “Modern Laboratory Methods in Vertebrate Paleontology.” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 21:283-331.

Larson, N. 2008. “One Hundred Years of Tyrannosaurus rex: The Skeletons.” Tyrannosaurus rex, The Tyrant King. Larson, Peter and Carpenter, Kenneth, eds. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

“Mining for Mammoths in the Badlands: How Tyrannosaurus Rex Was Dug Out of His 8,000,000 Year old Tomb,” The New York Times, December 3, 1905, page SM1.

Naish, D. 2009. The Great Dinosaur Discoveries. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Osborn, H.F. 1906. “Tyrannosaurus, Upper Cretaceous Carnivorous Dinosaur.” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 22:281-296.

Osborn, H.F. 1913. “Tyrannosaurus, Restoration and Model of the Skeleton.” Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 32:9-92.

Rainger, Ronald 1991. “An Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn and Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, 1890-1935. Tuscaloosa, Alabama. University of Alabama Press.

Wesihampel, D.B. and White, Nadine M. 2003.The Dinosaur Papers: 1676-1906. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books.

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Filed under AMNH, CMNH, dinosaurs, fossil mounts, history of science, movies, museums, NMNH, reptiles, theropods

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March 12, 2014 · 7:25 pm

The Top Seven Dinosaur Mounts #MuseumDinos

According to Twitter, today is #MuseumDinos day, possibly because it’s the 10th anniversary of the groundbreaking DinoSphere exhibit at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum. At any rate, dinosaurs in museums is a thing I’m kind of interested in, so here’s the first ever DINOSOURS! listicle: the hastily-planned and in-no-way-definitive top seven coolest dinosaur extinct animal mounts from around the world.

7. Megatherium, Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales

The original Megatherium fossils have been remounted at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales. Image from TripAdvisor.

Megatherium at the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales. Source

Let’s start with the eldest. There are quite a few ground sloth mounts in the world, but the Megatherium in Madrid has the distinction of being the first assembled skeleton of a prehistoric animal ever put on public display. It’s hard to imagine, but when Juan Bautista Bru created this mount in 1795, biological evolution was completely unknown, and naturalists were just beginning wrap their heads around the idea that organisms could become extinct. This Megatherium was a product of a very different era of human understanding about the natural world, but unlike other historic mounts like the Peale mastodon and Leidy Hadrosaurus, it has survived to the present day.

6. Stegosaurus and Allosaurus, Denver Museum of Nature and Science

Stegosaurus and Allosaurus

Stegosaurus and Allosaurus at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Source

In addition to being a respected scientist, Ken Carpenter is among the most skilled fossil mount creators working today. Among his most recognizable work is the Stegosaurus and Allosaurus face-off at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Featuring a remount of a historic Stegosaurus specimen and an Allosaurus discovered and mostly excavated by 12-year-old India Wood, this lively display was unveiled in 1995 as the centerpiece of the “Prehistoric Journey” exhibit. In addition to biomechanical accuracy exceeding many other modern mounts, this display by Carpenter and Bryan Small is imbued with remarkable dynamism and energy.

5. Tyrannosaurus pair, Museo Jurasico de Asturias

Tyrannosaurus at Museo Jurasico de Asturias. Source

Tyrannosaurus at Museo Jurasico de Asturias. Source

Then again, there are a lot of fighting dinosaur mounts. I love that dinosaurs had big teeth and killed things as much as the next person, but it’s refreshing to see a mount that showcases some other aspect of these animals’ lives. That said, the Spanish Museo Jurasico de Asturias is, as far as I know, the only museum to display a pair of copulating dinosaurs. The T. rex on the bottom looks like yet another Stan cast, but I’m not sure about the one on top.

4. Diplodocus, Carnegie Museum of Natural History (and elsewhere)

The original "Dippy" the Diplodocus at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

The original “Dippy” the Diplodocus at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

Like the Madrid Megatherium, this Diplodocus is intractably situated in history. If the worldwide popularity of dinosaurs could be traced to a single specimen, it would be this one. At the turn of the 20th century, Andrew Carnegie, who funded the creation of the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, demanded that his museum find and display a sauropod dinosaur. This launched the Great American Sauropod Race, a frenzied competition among the United States’ large natural history museums to assemble the biggest dinosaur for display. The American Museum in New York was first across the finish line in 1905 with their composite “Brontosaurus”, although the Diplodocus collected by the CMNH team was a more complete specimen. Not to be outdone by his New York competitors, Carnegie commissioned several casts of the skeleton, which he presented to several cities in Europe and Latin America. Diplodocus casts sprang up seemingly overnight in London, Paris and elsewhere, and the original specimen was unveiled in Pittsburgh in 1907.

3. Giraffatitan, Museum für Naturkunde

Should the Giraffatitan at Berlin's Museum fur Naturkunde be displayed in Germany? Image from Wikipedia.

The biggest fossil mount in the world. Source

The Berlin Giraffatitan is on this list for two reasons. First, it’s really big. The biggest mount in the world composed mostly of original fossils, as a matter of fact, and big things are awesome. However, this display is also a fascinating example of the cultural meaning natural specimens can take on when placed on display. The fossils themselves were removed from what is now Tanzania under the authority of a colonial government that is no longer considered legitimate or appropriate, and the mount itself was completed in 1935, a time when the hall it was displayed in was filled with swastika flags. The fossils themselves (and the current museum staff that have inherited them) obviously have nothing to do with Nazis or colonial imperialism, but the display they were incorporated into is entrenched in history that should not be ignored or forgotten.

This is actually the second iteration of this display, the bow-legged original having been remounted in 2007.That’s one of the Carnegie Diplodocus casts peeking in from the right, by the way.

2. Triceratops, National Museum of Natural History

Triceratops at the National Museum of Natural History.

Triceratops at the National Museum of Natural History.

Triceratops is objectively the coolest dinosaur ever, and NMNH is the home to the definitive (and first) Triceratops mount. Charles Gilmore and Norman Boss constructed this composite skeleton in 1905 from fossils collected throughout Wyoming, resulting in a mount that was inaccurate in many details; most noticeably, the skull was too small compared to the rest of the body. Nevertheless, this Triceratops was the basis for illustrations in popular books for decades to come. In 2000, Steve Jabo and others retired the original mount, conserving the fossils and replacing them in the exhibit hall with a casted duplicate. Among other improvements, the undersized head was corrected by digitally scanning the original and 3D-printing it at a different scale.

1. Barosaurus and Allosaurus, American Museum of Natural History

Allosaurus and Barosaurus mount in the Roosevelt rotunda of the American Museum of Natural History. Source: http://www.ourtravelpics.com.

Allosaurus and Barosaurus mount at the American Museum of Natural History. Source

Was there ever any question what would be in first place ? The Barosaurus encounter in the Theodore Roosevelt rotunda at AMNH is a prime contender for the world’s most spectacular fossil mount. What I like most about this exhibit is the purposeful mise-en-scene: the dinosaurs decisively fill the space, drawing the viewer’s eye not only around the room but up the neck of the 50-foot Barosaurus toward the high vaulted ceiling.  Since 2010, visitors have been able to walk between as well as around the mounts, inserting their own human scale into the scene. According to AMNH paleontologist Mark Norrell, the objective of this exhibit was “to imagine dinosaurs as living organisms, facing challenges similar to those that confront animals today.” However, Norrell freely admits that the display was also meant to be a spectacle, emphasizing the “romantic history and grandeur of fossils”.

References

Brinkman, P.D. (2010). The Second Jurassic Dinosaur Rush: Museums and Paleontology in America at the Turn of the 20th Century. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Carpenter, K., Madsen, J.H. and Lewis, L. (1994). Mounting of Fossil Vertebrate Skeletons. In Vertebrate Paleontological Techniques, Vol. 1. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

López Piñero , J.M. (1988). Juan Bautista Bru (1740-1799) and the Description of the Genus Megatherium. Journal of the History of Biology. 21:1:147-163.

Norrell, M.A., Dingus, L.W. & Gaffney, E.S. (1991). Barosaurus on Central Park West. Natural History, 100(12), 36-41.

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Filed under AMNH, CMNH, dinosaurs, fossil mounts, history of science, mammals, museums, NMNH, paleoart, reptiles

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February 20, 2014 · 8:39 am

Extinct Monsters: Brachyceratops

Click here to start the Extinct Monsters series from the beginning.

Most of the mounted dinosaur skeletons at the National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) represent taxa that are well-known to casual paleontology enthusiasts. But nestled amongst household names like Triceratops, Stegosaurus and Diplodocus is an easily-overlooked horned dinosaur that was historically called Brachyceratops montanensis (it’s currently labeled Styracosaurus sp). Tucked away in a glass case behind the giant Triceratops, this pocket-sized ceratopsian may not be the most spectacular display in the exhibit, but it is nevertheless an important one for the Museum. Discovered in 1913 by the Smithsonian’s own Curator of Fossil Reptiles Charles Gilmore, Brachyceratops represents one of only a few dinosaur species excavated, prepared, described and exhibited entirely in-house at NMNH. It is therefore unfortunate that modern researchers have banished the name Brachyceratops to the realm of taxonomic obscurity. What’s more, the days of the Brachyceratops mount, on exhibit since 1922, are numbered: when the NMNH paleontology halls closed for renovation in April 2014, this specimen was be retired to the collections, and is not planned for inclusion when the exhibit reopens in 2019.

The Brachyceratops mount today. Photo by the author.

The Brachyceratops mount today. Photo by the author.

During his tenure at NMNH, Gilmore was an inexhaustibly productive writer, publishing at least 170 scientific articles, including numerous important descriptions and reassessments of fossils discovered by O.C. Marsh’s teams in the 19th century. However, Gilmore was much happier studying fossils in his lab than excavating new finds in the field, taking part in a scant 16 NMNH-sponsored field expeditions over the course of his career. A 1913 trip to the Cretaceous Two Medicine Formation in Northeast Montana was therefore unusual for Gilmore. He was following in the footsteps of Eugene Stebinger of the US Geological Survey, who had reported the previous year that the region was only minimally explored but clearly awash in vertebrate fossils.

On this inaugural fossil prospecting trip, Gilmore’s team located abundant remains of fish, small reptiles and dinosaurs, especially hadrosaurs and ankylosaurs. The most notable find, however, was a small bone bed (about six feet square) of ceratopsian fossils, representing at least five individuals. Gilmore described this find in a 1917 monograph, naming the dinosaur Brachyceratops montanensis. Today we know that ceratopsians were quite diverse, particularly during the Campanian, but in the early 20th century the true extent of the group was only just being revealed. Still, it was clear to Gilmore that at an estimated six feet in length, Brachyceratops was an unusually small ceratopsian. He proposed that it may have fed on different plants or occupied a different niche than larger contemporaries like Centrosaurus and Styracosaurus.

pretty art

Reconstruction of Brachyceratops holotype skull. Plate from Gilmore 1917.

In 1917, most of the dinosaur mounts on display at NMNH came from fossils collected by Marsh for the US Geological Survey, and many represented species also on display in New York, Pittsburgh and New Haven. Accordingly, Gilmore was doubtlessly enthused by the prospect of displaying a dinosaur exclusive to Smithsonian. He awarded the task of creating a Brachyceratops mount to preparator Norman Boss, who would spend 345 working days on the project. Of the five individuals found in Montana, USNM 7953 was selected as the basis for the mount because it was the most complete, with the sacrum, pelvis, femora and complete set of caudal vertebrae found articulated in situ. Helpfully, Gilmore published a list of precisely which parts of the mount came from which individual specimen (see below). This was a marked contrast from some of his contemporaries at other museums, who would not bother to record such information, or even actively obscure how many disparate specimens they were using to build their mounts.

Gilmore's helpful list

A helpful breakdown of the Brachyceratops mount from Gilmore 1922.

Boss based his restoration of Brachyceratops closely on the complete, articulated Monoclonius (=Centrosaurus) specimen (AMNH 5351) discovered by Barnum Brown in 1914. In particular, Boss replicated the angle of the scapulae and the number of vertebrae (22) on the American Museum of Natural History skeleton. Missing bones and portions thereof were sculpted in plaster, easily recognized by their solid color and smooth texture. Just as Gilmore and Boss had done with their 1905 Triceratops mount, the Brachyceratops was given strongly flexed elbows. According to Gilmore, a very large olecranon process on the ulna would have forced all ceratopsians into this somewhat awkward stance. Of particular note is the restoration of the skull, which was found shattered into dozens of pieces, many smaller than one inch. A close look at the specimen reveals how Boss painstakingly reassembled these fragments. Unfortunately, this is difficult in the exhibit hall because the mount is posed with the side of the skull that is mostly plaster facing visitors.

Norman Boss Brachyceratops courtesy Smithsonian archives

Norman Boss puts the finishing touches on the Brachyceratops mount. Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Archives.

The completed Brachyceratops mount was placed on exhibit in 1922, on the same pedestal in the Hall of Extinct Monsters as the Triceratops. The substrate beneath the mount was colored and textured to match the Two Medicine Formation sandstone in which the fossils were found. Gilmore also prepared one of his charming models of Brachyceratops, mirroring the pose of the mount, but it is unclear whether it was ever exhibited.

woo triceratops

Brachyceratops on exhibit with Triceratops. Plate from Gilmore 1922.

The Brachyceratops has remained on view through each subsequent renovation of the fossil halls, always placed close to Triceratops. This close association has prompted many visitors to mistake the diminutive Brachyceratops for a baby Triceratops, and in fact these visitors are on the right track. While Gilmore always described Brachyceratops as an unusually small but full-grown ceratopsian, Scott Sampson and colleagues confirmed in 1997 that all five specimens were juveniles. A century’s worth of new fossil discoveries has provided modern paleontologists with a thorough understanding of ceratopsian ontogeny, and characteristics like the unfused nasal horn clearly mark the mounted Brachyceratops as a young animal. Unfortunately, Gilmore’s Brachyceratops specimens lack any good diagnostic features that could link it to an adult form. According to Andrew McDonald, the most likely candidate is Rubeosaurus ovatus, which was, incidentally, discovered by Gilmore on a 1922 repeat trip to the Two Medicine site. Nevertheless, without the ability to recognize other growth stages of the same species, the name Brachyceratops is unusable and is generally regarded as a nomen dubium.

It is not difficult to surmise why the Brachyceratops would end up near the bottom of the list of mounts to include in a renovated gallery. It is not especially large or impressive, it doesn’t have a recognizable name (or any proper name at all, really) and it doesn’t tell a critical story about evolution or deep time. With limited space available and new specimens being prepped for display, little Brachyceratops will have to go. It’s not all bad, though. Taking these fossils off exhibit will make them more accessible to researchers, and allow them to be closely examined in all aspects for the first time in decades. Perhaps one day soon we will have a clearer idea of the identity of one of Gilmore’s great finds.

References

Gilmore, C.W. (1917). Brachyceratops, a Ceratopsian Dinosaur from the Two Medicine Formation of Montana, with Notes on Associated Fossil Reptiles. Washington, DC: US Geological Survey.

Gilmore, C.W. (1922). The Smallest Known Horned Dinosaur, Brachyceratops. Proceedings of the US National Museum 63:2424.

Gilmore, C.W. (1930). On Dinosaurian Reptiles from the Two Medicine Formation of Montana. Proceedings of the US National Museum 77:2839.

McDonald, A.T. (2011). A Subadult Specimen of Rubeosaurus ovatus (Dinosauria: Ceratopsidae), with Observations on other Ceratopsids from the Two Medicine Formation. PLoS ONE 6:8.

Sampson, S.D., Ryan, M.J. and Tanke, D.H. (1997). Craniofacial Ontogeny in Centrosaurine Dinosaurs: Taxonomic and Behavioral Implications. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 12:1:293-337.

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August 21, 2013 · 11:50 am

D.C. area fossils on WAMU

Matt Carrano of the National Museum of Natural History, Alan Dooley of the Virginia Museum of Natural History and Dave Hacker of Maryland’s Dinosaur Park were interviewed on the Kojo Nnamdi show this afternoon. You can listen to the stream here. Topics covered include the 2019 re-opening of the NMNH fossil halls, local Cretaceous and Miocene paleoenvironments, the harm caused by commercial fossil collecting and the Discovery Channel C. megalodon travesty. Since I work for the MNCPPC at Dinosaur Park and have been involved with NMNH in the past, this is all quite near and dear to me. If you’ve got 20-30 minutes, it’s well worth a listen!

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Filed under Dinosaur Park, dinosaurs, field work, NMNH

August 6, 2013 · 7:52 pm

The Gilmore Models: Where are they now?

Regular readers of this site (if there are any) undoubtedly know Charles Whitney Gilmore as the Smithsonian paleontologist who, between 1903 and 1964, led in the creation of most of the mounted dinosaur skeletons that remain on display at the National Museum of Natural History today. You don’t necessarily have to be in Washington, DC to see Gilmore’s reconstructions, however. In addition to being an expert anatomist and fossil preparator, Gilmore was a formidable sculptor, and during his tenure at the Smithsonian he produced a number of gorgeous life reconstructions of prehistoric animals. Plaster copies of these models were gifted or sold to large and small museums in North America and Europe, including the Sternberg Museum of Natural History, the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and the Hunterian Museum at the University of Glasgow. These models were typically displayed alongside isolated fossil elements to give a sense of the entire animal at institutions where complete mounts were unfeasible.

Gilmore with Diplodocus vertebrae.

Charles Gilmore, or Chucky G, as he was known to his friends.

Unfortunately, many of the museums that acquired copies of Gilmore’s models in the 1920s and 30s seem to have lost the detailed provenance of these acquisitions (not a rare occurrence, as museums must track literally millions of objects and historic records on paper do not always survive). The Hunterian Museum has the best records regarding these models that I am aware of, and incidentally their online catalog is the source of most of the photographs in this post.

Stegosaurus model in plaster of paris. Image courtesy of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery.

Stegosaurus model in plaster of paris. Image courtesy of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery.

While Gilmore’s models are obviously far from accurate by modern standards, a closer inspection reveals that Gilmore was familiar with every inch of the fossils in his care, and put that knowledge to use in his sculptures. The Stegosaurus above, for instance, is a perfect match for Gilmore’s full-sized mount in terms of pose and proportion. Undoubtedly, physically assembling an actual skeleton is among the best ways to become familiar with how an animal would work in three dimensions. In particular, note that unlike many contemporary reconstructions, Gilmore did not fudge the number or position of the plates; they’re all accounted for.

Stegosaurus model in plaster of paris. Image courtesy of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery.

Triceratops model in plaster of paris. Image courtesy of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery.

The Triceratops model exhibits a number of interesting choices. The classic bowed ceratopsian forelimbs (which Gilmore first proposed after finding no other way to articulate them in his 1905 Triceratops mount) are clearly in evidence, but my eye is drawn to the scrawny, lizard-like hindlimbs. Comparing this model to Gilmore’s mount, there would appear to be virtually no muscle back there. The size of the head is yet another remnant of the mounting process. Since his Triceratops mount was a composite of numerous specimens, Gilmore used the skull of an inappropriately small animal, and apparently carried the chimeric proportions to this sculpture. The lack of cheeks and extremely thick neck are also characteristic of older ceratopsian reconstructions, although I can’t comment on precisely when or why that look went out of style.

Stegosaurus model in plaster of paris. Image courtesy of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery.

Diplodocus model in plaster of paris. Image courtesy of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery.

This Diplodocus has a much more defined shape than most mid-century sauropod reconstructions. Note in particular the sloping back, which peaks at the sacrum. This differs from the 1907 Diplodocus mount at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which had a completely horizontal spinal column. When Gilmore led the creation of the Smithsonian Diplodocus mount, he had the opportunity to use a vertebral column that was found articulated in situ, and was thus able to more accurately portray the shape of the animal’s midsection.

Ceratosaurus
Ceratosaurus. Image courtesy of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery.

Gilmore’s Ceratosaurus is the liveliest of the set, and is the only one that doesn’t strictly adhere to the pose of a corresponding fossil mount. Delivering a killing blow to a hapless ornithopod, one can easily imagine the energetic pounce that preceded this scene. I will point out, though, that this guy’s hindquarters are enormous. 

Gilmore's stub-tailed Dimetrodon. Image from Gilmore 1939.

Gilmore’s stub-tailed Dimetrodon model. 

Gilmore also sculpted some non-dinosaurs, including at least one prehistoric horse and the Dimetrodon pictured above. Note the teensy stub of a tail, which this model actually shared with Gilmore’s mount of the pelycosaur. The lips obscuring most of the teeth except for a couple incisors is an unusual choice, and I’m not sure what inspired it. This image is from Gilmore’s 1939 paper on Dimetrodon, and the Basiliscus basiliscus in the corner provides a helpful comparison to a contemporary animal with a similar dorsal sail.

In addition to the models shown here, Gilmore created sculptures of “Anatosaurus”, “Brachyceratops” and a Cenozoic horse, as well as busts of Styracosaurus and Corythosaurus (and there may well have been others I haven’t seen). As mentioned, copies of these mounts were distributed to museums and possibly private collections throughout the 20s and 30s, and I have no idea how many were actually made. A few museums, such as the Sternberg Museum, actually have these models on display, but at other institutions they have been relegated to storage. Objects like these present an unusual challenge for collections managers. They were accessioned as scientific representations, but their value has shifted over the last century to the realm of art and history. While these models are undoubtedly important, they are probably no longer useful at many of the institutions that hold them. As such, the Gilmore models exemplify that museum collections are not necessarily static, but change in meaning as the years go by.

If you work at an institution that has one or more Gilmore models in its collection, feel free to leave a comment. I’d love to start a working database of where copies of these models have ended up!

References

Gilmore, C.W. (1939). “A Mounted Skeleton of Dimetrodon gigas in the United States National Museum, with Notes on the Skeletal Anatomy.” Proceedings of the US National Museum 56:2300:525-539.

Gilmore, C.W. (1932) “On a newly mounted skeleton of Diplodocus in the United States National Museum.” Proceedings of the United States National Museum 81:1-21.

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