People familiar with news in paleontology have no doubt seen that the Cretaceous Crossroads exhibit at the Museum of the Rockies recently opened in Bozeman, Montana. Like all major exhibit renovations, this project actually began years before. We at TPI were honored to be invited to work on many of the specimens now on exhibit, including many in the marine section showcasing the fauna of the Campanian-aged Bearpaw Shale. Thankfully, the staff at the Museum of the Rockies have given us permission to share part of the very involved process on how we accomplished this.
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| Mosasaurus paddle in the Weskan Shale, similar to the Bearpaw Shale |
The specimen I'm most proud of so far is our reconstruction of the small mosasaur MOR 1062. This little specimen is the holotype of Plioplatecarpus peckensis, and as such the very delicate original fossils are best kept securely in collections, disarticulated so researchers can study them. Some museum visitors from time to time seem disappointed that a reconstruction is on display, however what we accomplished made for the absolute best display of this rare and fragile beast.
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| Disarticulated skull elements of the original specimen |
In late summer 2023 we went to MOR to start work on this project. A lot of it was carefully packing some other specimens for safe transport so we could mount original bones, but we also got to scan all the original elements of MOR 1062. Once we found out what was expected of us for the final product, we were a bit nervous. Raising the dead takes a lot of work, in this case nearly 2 years for the project.
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| Subscale skull prints for reference and outreach |
You see, MOR 1062 is a beautiful specimen, however it was a touch on the incomplete side, especially beyond the skull. We would have to reconstruct the lower jaws, most of the ribs, all the paddles, and all the vertebrae from the dorsals on back to the tip of the tail. Hundreds of bones! Where do we even begin?
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| Early draft of the skull reconstruction, with restored elements colored in puce |
The first section we restored was the skull, since the upper portion was almost complete, though most of the individual parts were separated from each other. Mosasaur researchers love their quadrate bones, and their positioning has long been a great conversation starter amongst experts. We were able to print out copies of the back corner of the skull and amazingly, the quadrate clicked into place! Don't try this by bashing the real bones together, but on 3d. This process took a long time, but we may have identified some small skull bones for this animal that initial researchers may have overlooked. We also took the most undistorted quadrate and mirrored it for better symmetry.
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| Final digital model of the fully reconstructed MOR 1062 skull |
The jaws, and a few other skull bones, were "borrowed" from another MOR specimen and digitally modified to make them more svelte and to take out distortion. The material also needed to be resized to fit the teeny skull, and anonymized by removing any pathologies. Originally we used
Platecarpus lower jaws as a stand-in, but they were fairly different in shape even though the two genera are pretty closely related.
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3D Director Evan Sonnenberg posing with the complete skeletal print
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For the body, we really had to comb the literature and ask other researchers for basic info. We had hard questions like "How many vertebrae are in a
Plioplatecarpus tail?" and "What do
Plioplatecarpus rear limbs look like?". We were able to use our extensive digital library of our own mosasaur specimens to fill in the blanks as best we could, and finished with a complete skeleton based on real material including the costal (chest) basket. Well over 200 bones needed to be reconstructed for this and the process took many weeks.
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| Digitally posed 3D model |
Next was the pose. Luckily we could do this all in the computer as well, coming up with a model for our assemblers to match. The specified steep diving pose was both fun to look at, and also absolutely required to help the smaller
Plioplatecarpus fit in the space along with the larger
Mosasaurus specimen MOR 006.
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| Mounted specimen in its display area while exhibit was under construction |
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Mounted skull provided for the Dinosaurs and MOR! event in March 2025
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Our 3D Director Evan Sonnenberg was invited to talk at the 2025 Dinosaurs and MOR! event about the process and got to unveil the finished reconstruction on stage, which made a huge impression. We here at TPI would like to thank the entire crew at MOR that helped us access the specimens for this project, suggested researchers to work with, invited us to give talks, facilitated the installation of the finished specimens and allowed us to talk little about our involvement.
