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.

Here is a website that goes into considerable detail about this kit:  Brantworks
Brant was a research scientist in an Australian biotech company who has a serious interest in dinosaur skeleton models.  His interest was so serious that he is now the director of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs, which is a full time job!   He managed to track down one of these kits and felt that as rare as they are, he didn't think he should build it.  Instead, he cast a complete new kit from the pieces and then went on to rework the pelvis and sacrum as he found there were some subtle errors in the original, as well as adding a furcula (wishbone).  I am impressed.  In his assembly,  he uses brass connectors in each of the joints rather than glue.  It sounds rather tedious, but it is a great idea.  I built this kit back in the early 90's and it was my first resin kit.  I don't recall that I even used accelerator to get the superglue to set.  Today, it is very fragile.  Brittle may be the most accurate description.  I have probably had to repair the tail at least four times as it tends to sag and eventually fall off somewhere around the 25th vertebra.  I recently moved my practice to a new office and when I picked up the model, the right leg fell off.  I glued it, using Zap-kicker this time, but when I went to put it on its new shelf, it fell off again.  While in transit, the head and first cervical vertebra fell off, and when I accidentally dropped the skull, it and that vertebra went their separate ways.  In regarding the puny locater tabs on the hip and the skull/cervical vertebra articulations, I realized that little short of a solid mass of cured superglue would be likely to stand up to the gravitational stresses those parts will face in the future.  Rather than make it appear that my beast suffers from serious ankylosing spondylitis, I decided it was time for pinning.  Trying to steady the cervicals while drilling a hole through their center without disrupting the entire neck was a pretty anxiety-provoking experience, as was turning the whole model on its side so I could angle the micro bit on the Dremel into the hip socket without breaking anything else.  The operation was a success and I was able to insert short lengths of textured finishing nails into the sockets and join the pieces with a satisfying sense of  strength as the skull and leg remained steadily suspended.  

The Ankylosaurus and Stegosaurus Skulls are more of Lascha Tskondia's work for Ants, now

available from Echoes In Time.  They were purchased unfinished and I painted them to resemble real fossils.

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

Every once in a while, someone looks at  my license plate holders and asks me, "What  is a ... how do you pronounce that anyway?"  After I tell them , they usually look just as mystified as before I answered.   However, there are  a few folks who say, "Wow!  How cool!   A Die-nah-NAI-kuss license plate!"  That makes it all worth it.

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.

DINOSAUR-LOVERS

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

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 .

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 Brantworks in the caption to my Allosaurus skeleton model above.  Brant Bassam is an Australian with a serious interest in dinosaur skeletal models.  His website has a lot of fascinating images and information about skeletons he has built or is working on.  If he isn't satisfied with the accuracy of a piece, he modifies it or makes his own. 

Horst Bruckmann's Dinosaur Model Collection has many galleries of beautifully built and painted models of dinosaurs and other prehistoric life.

 Kazunari Araki is one of the world's premier dinosaur sculptors and his website is extensive.  

Gaston Design is a company that makes full-size replicas of dinosaur skeletons, so you will need a LOT of shelf space, not to mention a sauropod sized budget to purchase most of their products.  They do have a fabulous 1/12 scale Apatasaurus, sculpted by Phil Platt, that is a bit more affordable. 

Link and Pin Hobbies has a large selection of dinosaur kits and toys.

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

  MEGALANIA   is a rather old website that has not been updated since 1998.  Nonetheless,  it is fun to look around at Larry Dunn's models and kit reviews, some of which may actually still be in production.

  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.

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?