Restoring the skull of Texas Nessie

It's not just your imagination, we have been EXTREMELY busy in the lab and 3D department working on all sorts of new reconstructions of animals. I'm very proud of this next one, which debuted at the TPI booth during the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology annual meeting in Minneapolis this past fall.

The completed polycotylid skull

This skull belongs to a fantastic specimen of polycotylid plesiosaur excavated in 1991 by Mike Donovan, a collector working in the Eagle Ford Shale of Texas. After Donovan passed away, this specimen was donated to the Heard Museum in McKinney, just outside of Dallas. Shortly thereafter we were contracted to mount the original skeleton for display. You should really check it out, my friend Pamela Riddle made the custom mural that's the background for it and I think it looks spectacular. Several paleontologists are working on the description of this animal, and I hope to see the finished paper out soon.

Photo of the display from www.nbcdfw.com

Fast forward to November 2023: Evan, our 3D Director, drove with me down to Dallas for a few projects. In addition to getting to meet up with Pamela at the Perot Museum prep lab we also were able to visit the Heard in order to work on the skull. Darlene Summerfelt was gracious in accommodating us even though she had a touch of a cold a the time. Taking the specimen off of display was a stressful experience, since the real skull bones were mounted individually around a steel armature and plastic casts filling in the reconstruction. 

Darlene (L) and Evan (C) working on the skull as museum visitors observe

We scanned all of the original material and carefully reassembled the skull onto the mount in just one day. That, it turns out, was the easy part. Once back in Colorado we consulted with plesiosaur experts as well as with our own virtual 3D library of plesiosaur material to digitally reconstruct the skull of the animal. Special thanks to Mike Polcyn for letting me pick his brain.

Evan scanning reconstructed jaw parts in the Heard Museum

As you can see, even when the skull is completed, there was a lot of distortion from being buried under Texas for nearly 90 million years. Luckily we were able to remove this deformation. In the old days, during the 2004/5 reconstruction of the Martinectes (formerly Dolichorhynchops bonneri skull, this was done by making plastic casts and then heating and bending them, with lots of manual sculpting, to get them to resemble what they looked like in life, a difficult and time consuming process. 

Early reconstruction work showing the crushed-down top of skull

Once done with that we were able to print out a copy of the completed skull, which I got the privilege to assemble. Working with these highly detailed prints isn't the easiest thing to do, but I've had some pretty good experience with this reconstructing the BCT Teratophoneus skull, the mosasaur Jormungandr, as well as quite a few secret upcoming projects that you'll have to stay tuned for. 

The assembled print of the top of the skull, with me for scale

This one has made it back to Texas for the Heard Museum to put onto display (the Heard's Darlene Summerfelt for scale in this photo). She says she loves the reconstruction. Now that it's available through the www.trieboldpaleontology.com we hope other museums are just as impressed and order one today!

Darlene Summerfelt with the full size (and mini) skull reconstructions

Hell Creek Gar Reproduction Now Available

ValDaGar in initial stages of preparation

Back in the summer of 2012, known as the summer of "Lake Dakota" in the lab due to how much it rained that year keeping us at our soggy campsite, I was lucky enough to discover an articulated gar in the Hell Creek Formation. In the previous decade of Hell Creek fieldwork, I had found hundreds of scales and isolated bones from gar but hadn't given them much thought. 

Hell Creek gar scales

Perhaps it was because of all the rain that year, but late on our first trip out to South Dakota for that season on a low, soft, sandy outcrop I found vertebrae, articulated scales and the outline of a skull just beginning to erode out. I had no idea at the time just how special that discovery would be. It turns out this specimen - RMDRC 12-008 - which I nicknamed "ValDaGar" after my wife giving it a bit of Nordic sounding flair, was the most complete articulated gar fossil out of the entire Mesozoic of North America. 

RMDRC 12-008 ValDaGar as originally found, with beautiful articulated scales

The excavation was pretty straightforward. Our now Executive VP Jacob Jett and I managed to perimeter around the specimen through the soft sand and jacketed the gar all in one day. Unfortunately there were no sizeable outcrops immediately adjacent to the dig to help place us in section, however a butte a short distance away had a Triceratops skeleton eroding out approximately 60 feet above our dig, indicating we were definitely working on a Cretaceous gar, not a later one from the post-asteroid Fort Union Formation. 

Jacob Jett cleaning out the trench before jacketing

I'm not going to lie, I was a bit nervous when it came time to prepare the specimen. The matrix was very soft, which poses quite a few challenges, especially when you're set to work on an animal that is basically a tube sock made of 10,000 scales floating in loose formation in the sand. Since this specimen was extremely rare and scientifically important, I went very slowly.

Initial prep of the skull area in the lab

Much of the initial work was done with just an X-acto knife and chip brushes, slowly working down to the specimen until you feel and hear the "thunk" of the underlying bone or scale. Once the bulk of the matrix was moved off a section, I stabilized it with Paraloid B72 and came back with low pressure air abrasion to finish cleaning the surface. All this was done one section at a time so that the air abrasion wouldn't blow away any adjacent patch of scales that may not have been consolidated yet. 

Skull area after basic consolidation and air abrasion

In the end, prep took me about a solid week. After the specimen was cleaned, we wondered how to replicate this rare (and likely new taxon) gar. Traditional silicone molding techniques were rejected right away due to the danger the demolding process might pose to such a soft and delicate specimen. It would be a shame to rip it apart after all of this work so we turned to technology.

Skeleton after prep, Senior Curator for scale

We were curious how the specimen looked hidden under the surface of scales and sand, and what might be present for the lower jaws that were spun under the skull. For this we took it to a local animal hospital, Powers Pet Emergency in Colorado springs to have it CT scanned in between patients. There were concerns that the metal poles used in stabilizing the field jacket might interfere with the scans however no problems were noted and the images they turned out just fine. 

Image taken of the skull area at Powers Pet Emergency

Luckily though 3d scanning was very much still in its infancy at the time, we at TPI had the equipment and skill to create a very high fidelity surface scan and model of ValDaGar. Turning the digital model into something physical would take a bit more time though, as we thought the resolution of the printers used in making such a large print was insufficient for what we wanted the final product to be. Fast forward about a decade. Luckily for us, technology has caught up enough to allow a high fidelity physical replica to be made. 

Scanning of ValDaGar in our collections area

We were able to print it out, though not all in one piece. That's where I came in, reassembling the parts and getting it ready for our skilled artists to detail and paint up. The detail was fantastic, especially with the diamond plate skin resolution.

With this step finished, we are now able to offer reproductions of this Mesozoic gar for museums across the world. Contact Jacob Jett jacob@rmdrc.com for specifics and to make your order.