Meet a Mount: NMNH Camarasaurus

Taxon: Camarasaurus lentus

Specimen Number: USNM 13786

Year Created: 1947

Dimensions: 35 feet long

The team at the National Museum of Natural History is currently dismantling the classic Camarasaurus skeleton for conservation and eventual remounting. On display since 1947, this specimen is the second most complete Camarasaurus ever found, just behind the juvenile skeleton on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. With the exception of the cast of Stan the T. rex (added in 2000), it was also the second largest dinosaur on display at NMNH. Unfortunately, the fact that it was exhibited in a death pose on the ground made it look decidedly less impressive.

The NMNH Camarasaurus is actually rather well-traveled. It was collected by Earl Douglass and company at the western Utah quarry that would later become Dinosaur National Monument. It remained in the Carnegie Museum collection, still embedded in sandstone matrix, for many years before Smithsonian paleontologist Charles Gilmore acquired it through an inter-museum trade. As part of the Smithsonian’s display at the 1935 World’s Fair in Dallas, Texas, Gilmore arranged for the Camarasaurus fossils to be prepared live in front of fair-goers. This may well have been the first time that on-site fossil prep was incorporated into an organized exhibit (although “fishbowl” prep labs are widespread in museums today).

More than a decade later, the completed Camarasaurus mount was finally put on display at NMNH. It remained unaltered for more than six decades, with the exception of a few vertebral processes that were stolen by visitors in the 1960s. The Camarasaurus will now be remounted by Research Casting International in Toronto, and will reappear when the National Fossil Hall reopens in 2019.

Meet a Mount #17: NMNH Triceratops

Taxon: Triceratops prorsus

Specimen Number: USNM 500000

Year Created: 1905

Dimensions: 19 ft 8 in long, 8 ft 2 in high

Not counting a papier mache model displayed at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, the world’s first mounted Triceratops skeleton was constructed by Smithsonian curator Charles Gilmore and preparator Norman Boss. Gilmore and Boss assembled a composite skeleton from at least 50 Triceratops individuals of varying ages and sizes found across Wyoming, resulting in a mount that was inaccurate in many details. For instance, the left humerus was noticeably smaller than the right, and the hindfeet actually came from an Edmontosaurus, as no Triceratops feet were available at the time. Most noticeably, the skull was too small compared to the rest of the body. Working with mismatched fossils may also have contributed to Gilmore’s decision to give the mount dramatically sprawling forelimbs, a change from Marsh’s straight-legged 1896 reconstruction. Nevertheless, as the first permanent Triceratops mount on public display, the chimeric Smithsonian mount would go on define the popular and scientific understanding of this animal for the next century. In particular, its peculiar sprawling posture led to decades of very uncomfortable-looking ceratopsids in paleoart.

The Triceratops mount was completed in 1905, and Gilmore humbly reported it as “a fairly accurate representation of the skeletal structure of this particular reptile.” Placed on a pedestal textured to resemble the Lance Formation rocks in which it was found, the Triceratops was unveiled in the Arts and Industries Building and remained there for five years before the entire museum moved to the new building on the north side of the national mall.

In 1998, NMNH conservators determined that the Triceratops mount was in danger of imminent collapse.  After 93 years on on display, damage from vibration and fluctuating humidity had taken their toll on the fragile fossils. Preparator Steve Jabo and others disassembled the Triceratops mount and carefully conserved each element. This involved delicate cleaning of the bones, as well as the application of chemical hardeners. With the exception of the skull and the left humerus, which are on exhibit, all of the bones are now individually stored in the Museum’s collections where they are safer and more accessible to researchers. In their place, a new mount composed of casts of the original fossils has been on display since 2000. Using what was at the time super-sophisticated 3D scanning and printing technology, the new mount has been adjusted to reflect the correct proportions of the animal. The head has been enlarged to match the rest of the body, and the smaller right humerus has been replaced by a mirror image of the left. 

Gilmore's Dinosaur Models

These are plaster copies of models sculpted by Charles Whitney Gilmore, the early 20th century Smithsonian paleontologist responsible for constructing most of the mounted fossil skeletons on view at the National Museum of Natural History. Gilmore's models were sold or gifted to museums across North America and Europe in the 20s and 30s.

See more here!