WHERE THE DINOSAURS ARE

Where the Dinosaurs Are

MY DINOSAUR TALE

AN APOLOGIA FOR DINOPHILIA

I like Dinosaurs. I like looking at them, sitting on them, reading about them, drawing them, building models and sculptures of them and talking about them. I think this has been true since I was three or four years old. A lot of people dismiss my interest by saying, "I see you never grew out of it." Au contraire, the science and art of Dinosaurs is growing faster than I can keep up with it. This didn't always seem to be the case. I was fascinated by ancient reptiles as a child in the 1950's, as was true for most of my generation, but it didn't really seem one could make a career about them. I actually managed to get all the way through a major four year university and earn a degree in Zoology without ever seeing a fossil except for the Physical Anthropology class I took in the final quarter of my senior year. I heard no references whatsoever about Dinosaurs. Dinosaurs would have been a guilty pleasure. I say "would have been," since there wasn't much about them anywhere except in childrens' literature. Where most of my friends stashed Playboys, I would have gladly stashed Dinosaur books and magazines if I could have found them. (OK, so maybe I'm exaggerating just a little.) After college I went on to Medical School, which is fairly famous for allowing minimal free time for paleontological or any other outside pursuits. Then it was internship and an Internal Medicine residency, also major roadblocks to non-career interests. Marriage and child raising also had a way of limiting time that could be prioritized for Dinosaurs. My son always liked cars, stars and martial arts, but never really shared my flickering passion for the past. There were a few embers being kept warm and I was peripherally aware that our knowledge of Dinosaurs was moving forward. On our occasional trips to other cities I would usually manage to find a museum and check it out. My wife always said that we saw every dinosaur on the East Coast; quite a feat for a California couple. While she wasn't entirely correct, it was true that when we visited Washington, D.C., she wanted to do things like visit the White House and Supreme Court while I kept going back to the Smithsonian. It turned out that there were a lot of fires going on in Dinoscience elsewhere during this time and I finally felt the heat . The nice thing about having worked hard when I was young is that I can now afford both the time for personal interests and the interests themselves. Dinosaurs grew up a lot while I wasn't looking and I'm still racing to catch up. Today the problem is not finding good Dinosaur material, it's trying to decide which to buy, knowing that something more complete, more dynamic or more beautiful may be coming out next month. It is a lot like trying to keep up with computers. Our knowledge about Dinosaurs is growing at an amazing rate. We are continually naming new species, learning about their evolution and even their behavior. Brilliant men and women are studying them and they are better than ever at communicating with the rest of us about the incredible time that was the Mesozoic! It is safe to say that it is not possible to outgrow Dinosaurs.

Now I am a physician specializing in Internal Medicine, working in a group practice in Vista, California. My office is decorated with Dinosaurs. My bookshelves are full of dinosaur books, model skeletons, casts of teeth, and Dinosaur sculptures. The walls in my exam rooms are hung with display cabinets full of minerals and fossils. People often walk down the hall and stop to stare into my rooms in amazement. Of course they usually say, "Wow, my kid would LOVE this! I see you never outgrew them." Oh well...

I have had this small bronze dino since
early childhood. There was something
about it that struck a chord in me that
is still resonating. The tooth is from a
Spinosaurus.

ALLOSAURUS

Ants magnificent 1:10 scale skeletal reconstruction of the apex predator of the Jurassic of North America. This is probably the best full skeleton kit ever produced for commercial sale. Practically every single bone was a separate piece and the quality of the casting with the minimal amount of flash was astonishing, given what one usually finds in a resin kit. There are times when I wish I had painted it to look more "fossilish", but after what I paid for a plexiglass case with a black back panel, I won't seriously consider it. Anyhow, it is very eye-catching in bone-white. This kit was sculpted by Dr. Steven Wagner, an Albuquerque Dentist, after extensive research. Ants planned to produce a number of skeletons, but after getting no farther than a series of some fairly nice dinosaur and hominid skulls, the company went extinct.

The Euoplocephalus (Ankylosaur) and Stegosaurus Skulls are more of Lascha Tskondia's work for Ants. They were purchased unfinished and I painted them to resemble real fossils. They are hard to find today, but occasionally show up on Ebay. Someone has the molds and at some point we may see them back on the market.

RIOJASUCHUS

This is the skull of an interesting creature that actually lived somewhat before Dinosaurs and was more closely related to crocodiles. This was built from a kit by Wiccart. I have a number of kits from this company featured on these pages. I believe that I bought an example every kit that Steve Harvey made, with the exception of his complete Rhamphorhynchus skeleton. Unfortunately, he closed his company and is no longer producing these kits. As with Ants, companies making nice dinosaur models are as likely to become extinct as non-avian dinosaurs themselves. The quality of these models was fabulous and I'll be sorry when I finish building the few still hiding in my closet. There are some very nice full-skeletal sculptures available today from Healthstones, but you don't get the satisfaction of building and finishing the kit yourself.

TAKING LICENSE WITH DINOSAURS

LINKS There are a tremendous number of websites devoted to Dinosaurs. I doubt it would be possible even to attempt to list a top 50 without leaving off some excellent sites and offending their authors. There are sites by museums and universities. Some sites are devoted to images and sculpture and some concentrate on models. Some websites tackle certain species and some don't really do dinosaurs at all, but are devoted to other ancient reptiles such as Mosasaurs or Pterosaurs. There are several websites that are fairly encyclopediac in their approach, and they are full of links to all sorts of other paleontology on the web.
These are among my favorites to visit, and remember that once you get to them, you can go anywhere.

MUSEUMS

The Royal Tyrrell is a fabulous Paleontology-only museum in Alberta. Their website has a virtual tour of their exhibits.

The American Museum of Natural History has an excellent section on Dinosaurs.

The Peabody Museum at Yale University has a great tour of the famous Zallinger mural of the Mesozoic and even some of the Paleozoic.

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History is currently undergoing renovations, but there is still quite a bit going on at their website.

DINOSAUR-LOVERS

The Dinosauricon, Dinosauria On-Line , and Kuban's K-Paleo Place are extensive websites with lots of information and extensive links to Dinosaurs in cyberspace.

Dinosaurnews is a webzine with links to the latest news and findings.

While they may not have been Dinosaurs, there were impressive reptile rulers of the seas during the Mesozoic, and there's a great webpage about them at THE OCEANS OF KANSAS PALEONTOLOGY .

DINOSAUR MODELS AND REPLICAS

WOW! TABURIN'S DINOSAURS is an amazing website! He is an extremely talented woodcarver and has made an extensive collection of skeletal reconstructions. There are dinosaurs, mosasaurs and pterosaurs. He shows several of them in various stages of carving and construction so that you can see how he does what he does. That probably makes them even more impressive. He also has a number of other fascinating links. While the site is Japanese, Taburin-san (actually, I think his name is Ryoji Tabuchi) has more than enough information presented in English, so navigating his site is pretty easy.

I mentioned Healthstones above. They sell a variety of skeleton models and representations of dinosaurs "in the flesh".

Triceratops Hills Ranch , at Link and Pin Hobbies, has a huge selection of kits and replicas.

An excellent catalog of Dinosaur sculptures and replicas, including an extensive inventory of skulls can be found at TWO GUYS FOSSILS .

Remember, there is always Ebay!

PREHISTORIC TIMES is a magazine devoted to art, models, toys, collectibles and a little bit of science about Dinosaurs and other paleo subjects. It's a lot of fun; the type of magazine I would have loved to stash under my bed in college. It has provided a place for us Dino-consumers to learn about the amazing things being made today, and probably has done more than anything to provide a market for all of the other sites in this section.

Back to the other pages in this website:
Where the Dinosaurs Are Homepage
T-rex: A Call For Arms .
Raptor Revisionism
Mesozoic Meandering .
Art and Artifice .

Thank you for visiting. If you have any comments, please let me know at tyrarex2@gmail . Use the entire address, not just the link!
If you are interested in another area of paleontology, I also have a page about Trilobites at AMONG MY TRILOBITES .
My family Homepage is at the GALEF OCEANSIDE ASYLUM

MACHOSAURUS REX : Horror of the Mesozoic
It has been theorized that the large structures on the head may have been
used for signaling a mate. It is unlikely it could hear very well at all.

YOU CAN LEAVE A FOOTPRINT IN MY GUESTBOOK
YOUR VERY OWN TRACKWAY

This Paleo Ring site is owned by

Frank Galef. If you use this link, put tyra in front of it!

[ Next Site | Previous Site | Next 5 | Problems? ]

Want to apply for membership?

This page created with Netscape Navigator Gold