Meet a Mount: Kelsey the Triceratops

Kelsey the Triceratops (TCM 2001.93.1) is among the most complete examples of its species ever found. It was found by avocational fossil hunters at a quarry near Newcastle, Wyoming which has produced more than half of all known Triceratops fossils. The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis purchased Kelsey in 2001. The Black Hills Institute prepared and mounted the fossils for display. 

Kelsey is one of the few known elderly Triceratops individuals. Arthritic neck and hip joints demonstrate the animal’s advanced age. The fossils also show evidence of scavenging by small tyrannosaurs.

Meet a Mount: TCM Gorgosaurus

The most complete Gorgosaurus ever found (TCM 2001.89.1) was discovered and excavated by avocational fossil hunters in Teton County, Montana. The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis purchased the skeleton in 2001 and the Black Hills Institute prepared and mounted it for display. It is posed guarding a prone Maiasaura.

Like many large theropod specimens, this Gorgosaurus shows signs of an extremely difficult life. In addition to a broken and badly healed left scapula, this animal has a brain tumor, infected teeth, and injuries to its tibia, ribs, and tail. 

Meet a Mount: Peabody Edmontosaurus

Taxon: Edmontosaurus (formerly “Claosaurus”) annectens

Specimen Number: YPM 2182

Dimensions: 29 ft long, 13 ft high

Year Created: 1901

There are plenty of Edmontosaurus skeletons on display today, but the Yale mount is noteworthy because of its remarkably modern appearance. Its raised tail, horizontal posture, and energetic gait all reflect current thinking about dinosaur posture and locomotion. And yet, it was built at the turn of the century, back when paleontologists supposedly all thought of dinosaurs as lethargic lizards.

This specimen was collected in Wyoming by John Bell Hatcher. Charles Beecher selected it for the Peabody Museum’s first fossil mount because it was nearly complete and mostly articulated. Beecher attempted to preserve the fossils within their original matrix wherever possible. Since the skeleton was somewhat laterally compressed, Beecher kept the right side mostly in situ and built up the left in high relief. The head and neck were technically never removed from their matrix block, but since the head was found curved under the body it had to be rotated into its life position. All told, only the right ribs, the corocoids, the final two-thirds of the tail, and some of the vertebral processes were reconstructed.

Meet a Mount: NMNH Eremotherium

Taxon: Eremothierum laurilardi

Specimen Numbers: USNM 20867 and USNM 20872

Dimensions: 20 ft long

Year Created: 1970

The enormous ground sloth pair at the National Museum of Natural History was assembled from at least eight individuals C.L. Gazin recovered in Panama in 1950. After the composite mounts were built, most of the surplus material was repatriated. The mounts debuted in 1970 as the centerpieces of the Quaternary Vertebrates Hall. Unresolvable disagreements between curators and exhibit staff contributed to the hall being closed after just 3 years. It reopened in 1974 as the interdisciplinary Hall of Ice Age Mammals and the Age of Man, with the sloths relocated to the northwest corner. 

The sloths were dismantled in 2014 along with the rest of the east wing fossil exhibits. In the new National Fossil Hall, they will be positioned right at the entrance, representing the weird and wonderful variety of prehistoric life.

Meet a Mount: Carnegie Protoceratops

Taxon: Protoceratops andrewsi

Specimen Number: CM 9185

Year Created: 1945

The Carnegie Museum purchased this Protoceratops as an unarticulated skeleton from the American Museum of Natural History in 1941. It was one of more than a hundred Protoceratops specimens collected during the AMNH Central Asiatic Expeditions between 1922 and 1928. Given its more robust morphology, this specimen is presumed to be a male.

Serafino Agostino mounted the fossils for display at the Carnegie Museum in 1945. The Protoceratops was taken off exhibit for several years, but it returned unmodified in 1979. The team at Phil Fraley Productions was hired in 2005 to remount this and the rest of the classic Carnegie dinosaur skeletons. It can be seen in its updated pose today.

Meet a Mount: NMNH Allosaurus

Taxon: Allosaurs fragilis

Specimen Number: USNM 4734

Dimensions: 17 feet long

Year Created: 1981

After O.C. Marsh died in 1899, the Smithsonian Institution inherited the literal trainloads of fossils he accumulated for the U.S. Geological Survey. Most of the mounted dinosaurs on display at the National Museum of Natural History were made from fossils in this collection. Assembled by Ken Carpenter for the 1981 renovation of the museum’s fossil halls, this Allosaurus is the most recent mount made from Marsh’s fossils. The original material was collected in 1877 by Benjamin Mudge near Cañon City, Colorado.

In 2010, Ken Carpenter and Gregory Paul proposed that this specimen replace the extremely fragmentary YPM 1930 as the Allosaurus fragilis holotype. Others are interested in this Allosaurus because of its unique pathologies – in addition to several broken and healed bones, it has a massive puncture wound in its left shoulder bone, which nicely matches the diameter of a Stegosaurus tail spike.

Research Casting International technicians disassembled the Allosaurus last summer. It will be restored and remounted in the new NMNH fossil hall, opening in 2019. Although the original mount was only 30 years old, it will require a few revisions – the barrel-shaped torso needs to be flattened, and the tail needs to be shortened. Curator Matt Carrano is also curious whether a partial jaw in the NMNH collection with a peculiar twisting injury is actually part of this individual.

Meet a Mount: NMNH Gorgosaurus

Taxon: Gorgosaurus libratus

Specimen Number: USNM 12814 (formerly AMNH 5248) 

Year Created: 1918

It’s been too long since I’ve done one of these! This relief-mounted Gorgosaurus has been on display at the National Museum of Natural History since the 1940s, but it was first displayed at the American Museum of Natural History more than 20 years earlier. The skeleton was one of several tyrannosaur specimens recovered by AMNH fossil hunter Barnum Brown near the Red Deer River in Alberta. Our Gorgosaurus was excavated in 1913 and prepared for display by Peter Kaisen in 1918. The head, torso, and arms are original fossils, but the legs are casts and the tail is simply painted onto the backdrop. 

After at least a dozen years on display at AMNH, the Gorgosaurus was traded to NMNH as part of a complicated deal among several museums. While surveying fossil collections throughout the United States, Barnum Brown realized that a single Barosaurus skeleton from Dinosaur National Monument had been divided among three different institutions. Brown initially offered to trade the Gorgosaurus to NMNH for their Barosaurus neck and shoulder, but he was turned down. Eventually, Brown threw in a Moropus skeleton, and a deal was made. Not long after, the Gorgosaurus found its way into the NMNH exhibit, and it has remained on display ever since.

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: National Geographic Spinosaurus

Taxon: Spinosaurus aegyptiacus

Specimen Number: Based on FSAC-KK 11888

Year Created: 2014

Dimensions: 49 feet long

Are we sick of Spinosaurus yet? As part of the colossal media blowout surrounding the Ibrahim et al. "Spinosaurus reboot", Research Casting International was commissioned to built a full-sized replica of the reimagined Spinosaurus skeleton (the skull was modeled by Acme design). The mount is the centerpiece of Spinosaurus: Lost Giant of the Cretaceous, which will go on tour after its debut run at the National Geographic Explorer's Hall.

Much like their recent work on Alamosaurus at the Perot Museum, RCI's new Spinosaurus is based on a digital composite. The new hindlimbs and pelvic girdle recovered by Ibrahim and colleagues were scanned and combined with scans of Spinosaurus fossils held in private collections, as well as reconstructions of the bones that were destroyed during World War II. Remaining gaps were filled in with bones from Spinosaurus relatives like Suchomimus. The resulting digital composite provides a unified vision of Spinosaurus, even though the material it is based on is stored thousands of miles apart. 

Using 3-D printers, RCI produced a life-sized model out of plastic and milled foam. This new technology doesn't mean that dinosaurs are rolling off assembly lines, however: the skull alone reportedly cost $30,000 to produce. 

Meet a Mount: Tylosaurus at KU Natural History Museum

Taxon: Tylosaurus proriger

Specimen Number: KUVP 5033

Dimensions: 45 feet long

Year Created: 1999

In 1911, C.D. Bunker uncovered in western Kansas one of the largest mosasaur specimens ever found. The fossils remained in storage at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum for nearly a century, until the rediscovery of Bunker’s field notes renewed interest in the historic find. The bones had fallen into disrepair, so the museum hired the private company Triebold Paleontology to restore them. Triebold also provided the museum with a complete replica of the skeleton, which now hangs over the three-story entrance hall. Unfortunately, capturing the entire coiled length of the 45-foot sea lizard seems to have eluded most photographers.

The original Tylosaurus fossils are held in the University of Kansas collections, but Triebold still offers casts in its catalog of replica fossil mounts. Examples can be seen at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History and the Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland Park, Colorado.

Image Sources: 1, 2

Meet a Mount: Carnegie Apatosaurus

Taxon: Apatosaurus louisae

Specimen Number: CM 11162

Dimensions: 77 feet long

Year Created: 1915

The Apatosaurus on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History was the very first skeleton excavated from Utah’s Dinosaur National Monument. Recovered by a team led by Earl Douglass in 1909, it remains the most complete Apatosaurus specimen known. Museum director William Holland supervised the mounting of the skeleton in 1915, and placed it in the paleontology hall alongside the Carnegie Museum’s star attraction, the 1907 Diplodocus mount.

The story of the misidentified skull of Apatosaurus is widely known, but often told incorrectly. The first Apatosaurus (then labeled Brontosaurus) mount was built by Adam Hermann at the American Museum of Natural History. Since no skull was available, Hermann used a sculpted one that loosely resembled (but was not directly based on) Camarasaurus. A real Apatosaurus skull (still one of only two known) was discovered near the Carnegie skeleton, but it was not used in the mount because museum staff were reluctant to undermine the AMNH version. Douglass objected, and the mount remained headless for 20 years. Eventually a Camarasaurus-like model skull was quietly added. Finally, John McIntosh re-identified the specimen’s true skull in 1979, and unified it with the rest of the mounted skeleton. AMNH and other museums would eventually use casts of the Carnegie skull on their mounts, as well.

In 2007, Phil Fraley Productions was contracted to disassemble, conserve, and rebuilt the Carnegie Apatosaurus, and this version remains on view today.

Meet a Mount: Big Mike the Tyrannosaurus

Taxon: Tyrannosaurus rex

Specimen Number: MOR 555

Dimensions: 38 feet long, 15 feet high

Year Created: 2001

“Big Mike” is a bronze cast of MOR 555 (a.k.a. Wankel Rex, a.ka. the Nation’s T. rex), the second most complete Tyrannosaurus rex specimen yet found. The 60% complete, partially articulated skeleton was discovered by Montana rancher Kathy Wankel in 1988, on land owned by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Although the Corps retains ownership of the fossils, MOR 555 was held in the collection of the Museum of the Rockies for 25 years, before being loaned to the Smithsonian Institution in 2013.

Big Mike was constructed by the Toronto-based company Research Casting International (RCI), based on molds of the original fossils. The project was commissioned by the advisory board of the Museum of the Rockies in honor of Michael Malone, the museum’s former director who passed away in 1999. RCI completed the 10,000 pound bronze cast and stainless steel armature in a mere four months, and had it ready for an unveiling at the 2001 Society of Vertebrate Paleontology conference.  

There are many other casts of MOR 555 on display around the world, including at the University of California Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the National Museum of Scotland. The original skeleton will go on display at the Smithsonian in 2019.

Meet a Mount: Lane the Triceratops

Taxon: Triceratops horridus

Specimen Number: BHI 6220

Year Created: 2012

Dimensions: 25 feet long

In 2002, a Black Hills Institute team retrieved the Triceratops known as “Lane” from private land near Lusk, Wyoming – the same area where Charles Sternberg found the classic “mummified” Edmontosaurus in 1908. Like the Edmontosaurus, Lane was found with fossilized impressions of skin and other integument covering large portions of its body. Surprisingly, this specimen revealed that Triceratops was almost certainly adorned with sizable quills or spines, which were spread evenly across its back and haunches.

The Houston Museum of Natural Science purchased the Lane skeleton and integument impressions, both of which have been on display in the museum’s enormous (30,000 square feet!) Hall of Paleontology since 2012. Exhibit curator Robert Bakker specifically instructed the BHI team to mount Lane in an energetic trotting pose. With two feet off the ground and its forelimbs held erect and under its body, the Lane mount exudes speed and strength - and is a far cry from the sprawling AMNH Triceratops. At 85% complete, Lane is the single most intact Triceratops found to date. Nevertheless, a full description of the specimen and its skin impressions has not yet been published.

Meet a Mount: AMNH Tyrannosaurus

Taxon: Tyrannosaurus rex

Specimen Number: AMNH 5027

Year Created: 1915 (original), 1995 (remount)

Dimensions: 38 feet

How have I not done this one yet? The American Museum of Natural History Tyrannosaurus rex mount is no less than an icon. It was the first mounted T. rex ever built, and has been a destination attraction in New York for longer than the Empire State Building. Constructed by Adam Hermann, the original mount combined the original fossils of a specimen discovered by Barnum Brown in 1908 with a cast of the pelvis and legs of the 1905 T. rex holotype. Missing portions of the skeleton, including the arms, feet, and most of the tail, were sculpted based on Allosaurus fossils. When the Tyrannosaurus was unveiled in 1915, it was akin to a mythical dragon made real. A front page article in the New York Times was heavy 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.”

In 1993, AMNH commissioned Phil Fraley Productions to restore and remount the classic Tyrannosaurus. The new mount not only corrected the dinosaur’s posture, but improved visitors’ view of the fossils by replacing vertical supports with steel cables suspending the skeleton from the ceiling. Regrettably, the new mount did not replace the legs, which are too large for the rest of the body, or the feet, which are now known to be much too robust for a tyrannosaur.

Historic photo courtesy of AMNH Research Library.

Meet a Mount: AMNH Triceratops

Taxon: Triceratops “elatus” (now considered Triceratops horridus)

Specimen Numbers: Composite of AMNH 5033, 5045, 5039 and 5116

Year Created: 1923

Like its Smithsonian predecessor, the American Museum of Natural History Triceratops mount is a chimera composed of several specimens found in both Montana and Wyoming. Most of the torso, pelvis and hindlimbs come from AMNH 5033, found by Barnum Brown near Lismas, Montana in 1909. The skull was found by Charles Sternberg in Niobrara County, Wyoming, also in 1909. Two other partial skeletons, as well as sculpted bones based on specimens held in other museums, were used to complete the mount.

Charles Lang led the construction of this Triceratops over 263 working days. Much of that time was spent attempting to find an appropriate way to articulate the forelimbs. Lang concluded that a strongly sprawling posture, with the humeri extending horizontally from the body, was the only possible solution. Specifically, Lang referenced monitor lizards and tortoises when selecting a pose. In his accompanying paper, curator Henry Osborn explained that the mount was meant to be charging, with its head down and its limbs spread wide to best absorb the imminent impact.

Although the AMNH fossil exhibits were thoroughly renovated in 1995, the Triceratops mount was not reposed. A cast of this skeleton is on display at the Field Museum of Natural History (3rd image).

Meet a Mount: FMNH Parasaurolophus

Taxon: Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus

Specimen Number: FMNH P27393

Year Created: 1963

The Parasaurolophus mount currently on view in the Field Museum of Natural History’s “Evolving Earth” exhibit is the type specimen of Parasaurolophus cyrtocristatus. The incomplete skeleton, which includes a partial skull, was collected in 1923 by Charles Sternberg. Although it came from northwest New Mexico, the exact locality is unknown in part because of Sternberg’s terrible handwriting in his field journal. The specimen was eventually purchased by the Field Museum and described by John Ostrom in 1961. Ostrom declared it a third species of Parasaurolophus due to its shortened, curved crest, although later researchers have speculated that this individual might represent the female form of Parasaurolophus tubicen.

The mount was built in the 1960s, but it was apparently modernized for the “Life Through Time” exhibit that opened in 1994. Life Through Time was replaced by Evolving Earth in 2006, although the mount appears unchanged. The Parasaurolophus mount incorporates much of the original postcranial skeleton, but the skull is a replica. 

Meet a Mount: Peabody Museum Stegosaurus

Taxon: Stegosaurus ungulatus

Specimen Number: PMNH 1853 and PMNH 1858

Year Created: 1910

Stegosaurus was a strange looking animal, but with its long, tottering legs and minuscule head, the Peabody Museum of Natural History Stegosaurus ungulatus mount is stranger still. This mount, constructed by Hugh Gibb and W.S. Benton under the supervision of curator Richard Lull, owes its bizarre proportions to the fact that it is a chimeric combination of at least five differently-sized individuals. 

 O.C. Marsh named Stegosaurus ungulatus in 1877 based on fossils found at Como Bluff, Wyoming, and illustrated it with eight tail spikes. Although modern researchers have since rejected this reconstruction, the mount at Marsh’s home institution still sports the extra-spikey tail. In another way, however, this Stegosaurus mount was ahead of its time. Lull insisted that the tail was held aloft, rather than dragging on the ground, to better function as a defensive weapon.